In our Little Black Book, we combine all of our many contacts and can provide recommendations for a huge range of agencies: from Media Buyers to Exhibition Specialists to PR or Social Media experts. Jo from Creative Agency Oyster Studios writes this month about ensuring your marketing campaigns are effective and engaging:
A successful marketing campaign requires careful planning and execution. We recognise there is no ‘one size fits all’, sure-fire formula to create a successful, integrated campaign. However this useful guide outlines a step-by-step process to approaching your next marketing campaign.
1) Define your campaign strategy.
What are the objectives of the campaign and how does it fit with your business strategy? Are you aiming to build brand awareness, launch a new product or generate leads? What results are you looking for – scope out what good looks like so that you can objectively review the outcome, learn lessons and evolve your campaign.
2) Agree who your target audience is.
What market segments or demographics are you looking to introduce your business to – or expand current demand for? Are you a business-to-business organisation with a specific decision maker in mind like Finance Directors? Are you in the B2C market targeting football fanatics? Define your buyer profile or persona in as much detail as possible – what are their specific needs or challenges and how does your business help them. Is there a requirement for distinct campaigns with bespoke images and messaging that are more targeted and relevant to your audiences?
3) Research your market and competition.
Who are the big players in the industry? What is the market share break down and how do their products or services compare to yours? Scope out what you believe your competitive advantage is, for example quality, price or service and what would compel some one to choose you. Define in detail the features and benefits you are aiming to communicate. How are your competition marketing themselves? On what channels, with what message? It is vital that your campaign has clear stand out and is not a “Me too.”
4) Choose your marketing channel.
You need to decide how often and on what marketing media channels you need to, (and can afford to), expose customers to your message, that will create the results you require. Where is the best place or marketing channel to target your customers and prospects – think about your demographic. If they are young, social media will be very relevant, but older audiences may not be on line, so direct mail could have greater cut through. How large and clean is your database – if you have a strong loyal contact list then an E-shot campaign will be a good way to get traction. Are your target market regular readers of a trade magazine(s)? – Could print or online advertising be a productive way of getting your message across? Ideally you should feature your campaign across several relevant marketing channels for maximum engagement.
5) Brain Storm ideas.
Having spent extensive time researching your market and agreeing your strategy it is time to get creative and begin the campaign development process. Ideally get a team together to brain-storm ideas, after all two heads are better than one. Remember no idea is a bad idea – throw random thoughts into the pot, ask questions, think laterally. It can help to bring magazines, websites and other source material to the table, to get the ideas flowing. Always make sure you keep your target audience and brand values front of mind. There is no point in creating a humorous, irreverent campaign if this is not inline with your business positioning.
6) Develop concept boards.
Take the best ideas from your brainstorm and design a range of campaign concepts for all stake-holders to review. Focus on the headline and imagery in the first instance. You can refine the complete marketing messaging at a later stage. Put dummy or Greek text as a place-holder and consider including call out text, bullet points and testimonial quotes in the messaging.
7) Refine your marketing campaign.
Take the short listed concept board and make any agreed amends following the stakeholder feedback. Complete the copywriting process – you may need a short punchy version of the campaign message for some channels e.g social media graphics and a longer version for a full page print ad for example. Next finalise and perfect all imagery required. This could mean commissioning a photo shoot or purchasing images and fine-tuning them in Photo Shop. Bespoke graphics and illustrations are also a powerful visual tool for marketing campaigns that will deliver impact and re-call. Importantly you MUST ensure the campaign is developed consistently across all the channels and delivers a professional and cohesive message.
8) Develop print and or digital ready artwork/assets.
Having finalised the design(s) across each channel it is time to create print and or digital ready artwork with assets that can be dispatched for campaign delivery. Pay careful attention to details like spelling, image quality and bleed – there is no going back after this stage!
9) Run the campaign and monitor the results.
It’s time to see the fruits of your labour! Whether it’s monitoring the traffic to your website, growth in your followers on Twitter or enquiries to your call centre..don’t forget to monitor and analyse the results of the campaign. Did you meet your objectives, have you learned any lessons to help evolve your next campaign? In reality marketing can involve an element of trial and error however you will quickly learn which channels are most cost effective for your business.
Hopefully this step-by-step process to approaching your next marketing campaign will provide a useful guide – feel free to share it!