If marketing isn’t your main job, but rather something you’ve been lumped with, it can be difficult to know what takes a marketing campaign from average to great. Where do you even start? What marketing activities should you actually be doing?
Buckle up and hold on tight, we’re about to take you on a marketing campaign crash course.
Get the foundations in place
Before you start thinking of fun adverts, or which customers would be good for a case study, you need to get your foundations in place. Start by answering the following questions:
- Who am I trying to reach?
Age, gender, location are good starting points. If you’re a B2B company, you might also want to look at job titles. You may have more than one segment.
- Where do they hang out?
This can be both online and offline. What media do they consume? What social media platforms do they use?
- What am I trying to achieve?
This could be more sales, more website users, better recognition of your brand.
- What messages am I using to achieve this?
These should be the two to three most important points you want to make about your product or service.
Once you’ve got the basics right you can begin planning out your campaign. A good marketing campaign has to align both with your business objectives and with your overall brand. By having a clear understanding who you’re targeting, you are much better positioned to create an impactful campaign.
Create your campaign with the goal in mind
The best marketing campaigns are results-focused. They use activities that will work towards achieving the objectives you have set out for the campaign. So beginning your planning with the goal in mind will help you ensure that you know exactly how you’re going to see results.
At Digital Glue, we use this pyramid to help us determine our strategy and tactics to achieve our goals. Start from the top and work your way down.
- Goal: What you want to achieve. This is often the big thing – for example £100,000 in revenue or 1,000 app downloads.
- Strategy: How are you going to achieve it? This can often look like: increased website traffic, increased brand awareness, or getting more followers on social media.
- Tactics: These are the different tools you are going to use to deploy your strategy and achieve your goals. This can be social media posts, pay per click advertising, and PR among others.
By making sure you always have the goal in mind when you are planning your campaign, you can take your marketing activities to the next level. But the goal is not the only factor in making a great marketing campaign – you need to make sure that your execution resonates with your target audience.
Get on your people’s level
In your planning phase you discovered who your target audiences are. When you are thinking of ideas for your marketing campaign, think about what they will interact with. What problems can you help them solve? What type of media and content do they interact with? Where is the sweet spot between your brand and the people?
Knowing the key things you want to tell your customers about your brand and understanding what problems these solve for them will help you cut through the clutter. Making sure you tell the same messages consistently means it is more likely to have an impact.
It might be an idea to look back at historical data from previous campaigns or activities. Take a look at your social media channels and see what types of posts your followers interact with. And, get your team on board for a brainstorming session – even if marketing is not part of their job, they can bring valuable insights and fun ideas, but make sure they know exactly what you want to achieve with the campaign.
Get inspired in the world around you
If you’re seeing others do something cool, it’s most likely because it’s a success. So, take inspiration from other brands and see how you can implement similar ideas in your own campaigns. Don’t be afraid to look outside your sector – even if you’re a B2B business, you might be able to implement variations of B2C campaigns. The important thing here is to make sure you don’t plagiarise.
At DG, we always talk about what other companies are doing well and share examples of what we have seen. Below are a few examples of where we think companies are doing great marketing work:
- Barbie movie launch campaign
- Sony showing its headphones are waterproof
- Gymshark leg day on the London Underground
So, what actually makes a great marketing campaign?
It’s a combination of knowing what you want to achieve, what your audience love – and what problems they have, and fun ideas and tactics that will capture their attention and create the action you want them to take. All great marketing campaigns have these three in common:
- A SMART goal
- Strategy and tactics to achieve the goal
- A focus on the people you want to take action
You’ll know you’ve been successful when you’ve achieved your goal. You may want to set milestones for your campaign, and track critical success factors to make sure you are staying on track. And if you’re struggling to get there – change your tactics up until you see the results you want.
Have you seen a campaign that made you twitch? Or perhaps you made a mistake in the past and have learnt and grown from it? We want to hear from you!
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Ready for your next breakthrough? Get in touch with Digital Glue.
