Marketing Campaign: The Right Time to Hang Your Boots

The campaign you initiated in 2018 was not the banger you expected,  you must be taking stocks, counting your losses, and probably licking your wounds; it may be time to call it quits with that campaign. You sure did kick off the new campaign with high hopes and expectedly you believed it was going to be a winner, only to see poor results right out of the gate.

Not every channel is a winner. In fact, most are losers. So it’s an important skill to be able to acknowledge defeat when a campaign just isn’t working and move on.

But wait a minute! Before you plunge headlong into another campaign for the year 2019, you need to check up on the different marketing key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to find out where you got it all wrong.

It will be sheer suicidal to allow the same mistake to occur the second time and investors may come calling this time around. For sure, the resources that were sunk into the failed campaign could have been utilized in some other areas.

Even where you own the business outrightly, it may not withstand all the bashing and unnecessary drains.

You need to get your acts right from the onset and understand that a marketing campaign doesn’t include all marketing efforts for a brand.

A marketing campaign is an organized, strategized effort to promote a specific company goal, such as raising awareness of a new product or capturing customer feedback. It typically aims to reach consumers in a variety of ways and involves a combination of media, including but not limited to email, print advertising, television or radio advertising, pay-per-click, and social media.

Great marketing campaigns follow a consistent theme and promote a single or focused idea or goal. As you are embarking on the campaign, you should always remember that marketing has evolved.  

Today’s marketing benefits from leveraging digital innovation–such as augmented reality and AI–and continuously taking risks to invest media dollars into digital platforms, influencer marketing, and adapting brand creative to speak to current consumer needs in concise, impactful ways.

So, what didn’t you do right?

1. Map out your goal

Your goal must be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely.  Determine if this a campaign to reach new customers, increase brand loyalty and repeat patronage, increase average ticket sale, or introduce something new for your business.

Try to determine what you can do to move your business forward and create specific goals based on what you find. The more specific you can be (as opposed to, for instance, setting a goal to increase profit), the better you will be able to create messaging and measure the success of the campaign.

Determining such distinct measures for your campaign may prove tough. Don’t fret because making hard decisions now will make your life — and campaign — much easier in the future.

2. What metrics do you have in place?

You probably waited to the end to put a means of measuring your performance, that can be disastrous. As you kick-start the campaign, you need to have a yardstick to measure successes and failure handy.

You can use any of the following metrics depending on the goal you have set out to attain:

• In promoting a new product or service: Pre-orders, sales, upsell.
• For increasing brand awareness: Sentiment, social mentions, press mentions.
• When gathering customer feedback or content: Social mentions, engagement
• For generating revenue: Leads, sales, upsell.
• If boosting user engagement: Blog shares, social shares, email interactions.
• In advertising an upcoming event: Ticket sales, vendor or entertainment bookings, social mentions.

3. Your target audience

This may be the cornerstone of your campaign and depends on who uses your products or services already and if you want to expand your reach. Your marketing message will vary depending on whether your campaign audience is in the Awareness, Consideration, or Decision stage.

It’s important to note that a marketing campaign can include collateral for people in various stages of their journey. For example, while your campaign might target current customers, it might also bring brand awareness to new consumers.

You can’t afford to lose sight of the average income of your current customers which translates to an in-depth knowledge of who they are. This knowledge will also help you to know the type of new customers to target if that is your aim.

By determining why your current customers choose your business, you have an edge to pinpoint what needs your business fulfills for them and what the strengths of your business are. You can then easily leverage on that to acquire new customers with a similar need.

4. Campaign media plan

The demographic data you gathered about your consumers will be very beneficial in determining the media to use. From the information on which media your target audience frequently visits or are subscribed to, you should be able to determine which of them align with the goal and budget of your campaign.

In altering or expanding your marketing assets to fit whichever media channels you choose knowing fully well that your campaign images, video, and copy might vary between social media, email, and print, you will have to expend more. The comforting angle is that the end will justify the means.

A result oriented campaign should utilize a mix of different media to target and re-target customers. You may even venture into trying a new media in addition to trusted ones and seeing how it impacts your campaign since you have a lot of them at your disposal.

5. Put up a budget

The fact that you want to create an overwhelming presence in the market does not mean that you rush on blindly. You must have a budget that guides the number of resources you put in.

It is highly important to put up an actionable and realistic budget that is both big enough to effectively communicate your message to your audience and small enough to maintain your profit margins. You must have shot yourself in the foot if you are not able to cover the cost of the campaign being planned.

6. The message

After all the preparatory stages you want to launch the real thing, that is the real message you want to pass across to your consumers. But you need to realize that a marketing campaign is like its own brand.

It requires a mission, a vision, and a visual identity. A great campaign is an offshoot of the parent brand, both visually and creatively — it stays consistent with the business brand but maintains its own identity.

You want the message to resonate with your target audience, so you will want to create a message that speaks to their needs, interests, and experiences. Remember, messaging should be focused on the consumer and how your business will benefit them.

You don’t have all the time in the world so your message must be succinct but very convincing and provides a clear call-to-action (CTA). You may want to incorporate images for a better comprehension of your message.

7. The overall outcome

Since you were cross-checking all along, you won’t be surprised at the eventual outcome. However, at the end of the campaign, study the results to determine whether you succeeded in meeting the goal you outlined at the onset.

If you are satisfied with what you’ve got, you work out how you can capitalize on that success and turn it into more successes. On the other hand, if you fell short of your expectations, what prevented you from reaching your goals and how can you do better next time?

Were there any unexpected outcomes that might help you improve your business and future marketing? Whatever the case may be, there’s a difference in a campaign that works and a campaign that’s worthwhile.

A worthwhile campaign gives you an ROI that’s proportionate to the time, funds, energy, and other resources you invested in it in the first place.

On a final note, you may want to check out your competitors. What makes them thick? Why are they succeeding while you fall short? You can borrow a leaf from what they do.

You need to ensure that the competitors you understudy are those that share the same target audience with your brand and offer similar products and services. The bottom line is that a marketing campaign involves a lot of information, decision-making, ideas, and observation.

Photo Credit: TheCX Flickr via Compfight cc