Preparing for success.

Setting up the foundations before launch ensures that you can monitor the effectiveness across campaigns, especially if you’re deploying an omnichannel strategy. When setting up your marketing infrastructure or developing campaigns, you want to ensure you can measure performance. In this post we will discuss the following categories:

• Objectives
• Defining your message
• Performance monitoring system
• Content
• Marketing channels
• Time

Outline your objectives.

You need to first determine why you’re running your marketing campaign(s), this sounds like common sense so a lot of people skip over the part of outlining their objectives and go straight to market. I would advise against this. To run an effective marketing campaign, you need to have a strategy and to have a strategy, you need to know your why (Thank you Simon Sinek).

Campaigns are run for a myriad of reasons, the important thing to determine, what are the needs of the business and what part this campaign plays in getting you there. Set priorities, and build a campaign strategy from the outlined objectives which are your agreed-upon goals. Your objectives could be anything from increasing sign-ups, generating leads, or promoting brand awareness.

Create a clear message.

Your objective should inform your content including your messaging, imagery/videography, copy, style, etc. all with the intention of delivering a clear message. If there were to be a fundamental that is simple but often overlooked it is this, build your campaign with a clear message. Lessen the cognitive load for your audience. Your customer should be able to understand the message behind your product, whether it’s an emotive response-based strategy or one selling the benefits of a superior product. Campaigns that refine their messaging well – produce the best results.

*Tip – when you are analysing the data after the campaign has run and you notice a good CTR (click-through rate) but poor conversion or high bounce rate then this is usually indicative of a barrier in the customer journey and needs analysed. Ensure there is continuity between the ad and the proceeding step in the funnel. Examine the hook, copy, and creative ensuring what drew the customer in is clearly communicated in the 2nd step.

Identify what metrics you are going to monitor.

Metrics are simply how you measure success. If you aren’t tracking the right metrics then you are wasting money. Your campaign may do well out of sheer luck, but it is highly probable that you will face less than desirable results. Depending on the nature of your campaign, identifying the right metrics to track will be crucial to ensure optimal performance. In the data economy, data is in abundance and as a result, so are tracking metrics. What you should aim to do, is choose which metrics are relevant to your campaign goals and monitor them, avoid tracking too many as it will only produce noise – a topic which isn’t much discussed in marketing literature with respect to metrics. This leads us nicely to our next point.

Build the system to monitor effectively.

Your performance monitoring system is the system that allows you to review performance over your campaigns through a desired period of time. It is simply:

• The metrics you are tracking.
• The method or application to track the metrics.
• A way to periodically review performance over a given time period.
• Recording results – Dashboards and/or a reporting system

You often come across businesses that have elaborate systems in order to perform the above functions. While there may be use in doing so, I find the best systems are simple and easy to interpret. To overcomplicate a process for a function as important as the performance review, can make it cumbersome to derive insights, especially for those new to the role.

What really matters, is for you to be able to read performance over set periods of time.

Create a content strategy that suits your campaign goals.

When building a content strategy whether it be for your social channels or outbound marketing, you should define:

• the type of content
• the objective behind the content
• which channel (this will determine the dimensions or weight)
• which content type your audience engages with the most
• how much content is needed across a defined timespan
• a system to batch process the creation of your content (cost efficiency)

Once you have defined the details of how, where, what, when and why then you will need to consider the resources needed for the content creation. If by now you aren’t considering budget – then you should. When you are building out your content system, always relate this to what budget has been allocated and ensure there is a degree of flexibility.

A general rule of thumb should be substance > style. There are few exceptions to this rule, which are mainly centered around product shots. Don’t allocate too much budget to high production with low impact. This burns capital unnecessarily. Always consider the ROI.

This is quite a large topic to discuss so I will break this down a bit further in future posts, but for now, the main message is to ensure that when creating content, it should serve a purpose.

Marketing channels

Finding the right placements of your content can significantly boost the results of the campaign. Digital marketing has developed rapidly in the last decade which has meant there are numerous channels to pick from when attracting your audience. What it comes down to is understanding who it is you are trying to market to.

The marketplace is already extremely crowded with highly competitive offerings unless you have uncovered a new or emerging market. This makes it crucial to ensure your product has a defined USP or point of differentiation – which could even be price. So our job is to first build the right content highlighting our product and secondly find the right spaces to deliver ie where your audience resides.

An omnichannel strategy is advisable if you had a substantial budget to put behind your campaigns. If you have a limited budget for getting your product to market or are in early testing, don’t dilute too heavily, in this instance it is better to focus on one outlet and build out a strategy that will target your audience. Ensure to conduct enough market research before deciding which outlet you choose, get your campaign out there – test and learn!

Time

Ok so now you have defined your objectives, your message, your metrics to monitor, which system to monitor, built a content strategy and determined what channels, now you need to consider time.

How long will you run these campaigns and why? You can of course produce evergreen campaigns and this does work effectively, especially when the core of the campaign is to highlight the features of the product and/or target a defined and known market, but don’t rely solely on this, otherwise, you will face audience fatigue.

Consider a campaign calender that allows you to plan in advance. Know what content is coming up and aim to produce content in cycles, rather than working ad-hoc. This allows you to effectively test variables against each other and over time you will produce campaigns that not only speak to your defined audience but will convert them into loyal fans.

Be methodical in your approach, don’t leave things to chance. If you have any questions or would like further explanation – don’t hesitate to send a message.