It really isn't a question of whether or not to use advertising and promotion - you must. The important questions to answer are: what is the corporate communication message or messages, how to advertise and promote effectively, how much is needed, what media to pick, and when. An effective corporate communications program uses advertising and promotion as the link between a business and its potential customers. A business must communicate its ability to satisfy needs to that segment of the population that has those needs. Many smaller businesses follow a one-shot, touch and go, unplanned advertising policy, which is almost sure to guarantee the waste of the advertising dollars or P/R efforts that are being spent in this way. Needed here, as with every other aspect of COMMON SENSE management, is a plan with goals, objectives, and self-assessment.

Your communication needs and capabilities can be carefully evaluated and a framework established within which you can make the best decisions for your business. The creation of an effective communications program is a systematic process. It is described in this learning workbook as a nine-step framework to help you first establish a communication policy and then create a methodology for its implementation. The result will be an identification of ways that you can make the most of your businesses advertising and public relation's potential, turning what is often a problem into the huge benefit for your business that corporate communications through advertising and promotion is supposed to represent.