A truly amazing campaign wows almost everybody but how difficult is it to create an effective marketing campaign that will get noticed?
I’m sure we can all think of at least one marketing campaign that has stuck in our memories.
Mine is the 60ft floating yellow duck that causally floated along the River Thames in December 2012. This campaign had a lot of success grabbing the attention of thousands of city workers and press. The newspaper coverage and online news was something to be proud of and yet the reason why it worked – simply because it left spectators wondering what it was all about. Leading to Google searches and social media posts to find out the reason and the company behind the big yellow duck!
The idea was to ‘cheer people up’ in London and promote part of a marketing campaign to grant funds to individuals who have great ideas to create and produce with the aim to cheer people up.
Obviously, unless you have the budget for half a ton of materials and 60ft of rubber, something on this scale can be hard to beat.
It is important to work out a budget, research and brainstorm as much as possible to ensure you can achieve a successful marketing campaign on any scale. Below are some key things to keep in mind when planning your marketing campaign.
Know and understand your audience
If you are reaching out to a new target audience then you need to ensure that you have a clear idea and understanding of whom you are targeting and why you are targeting them.
Create a profile for a few ‘members’ of your target audience, get into their heads. Who are they? How old are they? Are they male or female? What do they do for a living? ? Are they married or single? Do they have children? What do they do in their spare time? What are their hobbies? What do they read? Do they use the Internet?
Creating profiles that answer questions like these will give you a better understanding of your audience. Aim to create at least 3-5 different profiles to get a range of ideas.
Contact companies in the industry of your target market or the profession of your audience profiles; conduct an interview or a series of Q&A to a member of staff to gain insight knowledge.
Create a survey, put it on your website, email it to clients (if targeting existing audience), head out to the streets and businesses and get people involved to help with your research. Be sure to ask as many questions and opinions as possible at this stage of your research and remember to ask them if any marketing campaigns have caught their attention recently.
Competitors
Understanding your competitors is essential to the research process. If you have a better understanding of your competitors you can start to analyse them and discover ideas to take on board. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Who are your competitors?
- Why are they a competitor?
- Do they have the same audience as you or your new target audience?
- What are they doing differently to you?
- What is their selling message?
Once you have information for the above questions you can begin to compare your business to theirs and way up pro’s and con’s and key differences.
Research
Research and look into previous successful marketing campaigns.
You can use examples that you may have been given during your survey – look them all up and learn from them. What grabbed your attention? Why was it a good campaign?
Share your ideas with the team, get each other’s ideas and opinions together and use visuals of existing marketing campaigns to show everyone else. One great tool to you collate your ideas is to create a mood board to refer to and continue to inspire you.
Budget
Work out your budget. How much can a marketing campaign realistically cost your company?
Be sure to have flexibility within the budget incase the campaign runs slightly over the expected amount. The last thing you want to do is stretch to the top end of your budget from the start incase things go wrong and additional costs come up.
Once you have a rough budget to work towards you can start to build ideas for your campaign.
Think outside the box
You want to create something new that hasn’t been done before to grab the attention of your audience or the public. Brainstorm and create more mood boards to build on ideas (yes, we do love a mood board!)
Once you have some ideas, arrange a meeting with the team and get feedback from everyone, remember every person will have their own opinion and this is valuable information to take into consideration. Discover what the favourite option is and expand on this idea.
Important: remember to refer to your audience profile examples to ensure that the ideas are suitable.
Bring your idea to life!
Determine the final idea of your marketing campaign.
Create a step-by-step plan/checklist for everyone to follow as a guide throughout the creation promotion.
It is a good idea to keep a visual of where you are with the budget for you to refer to each step of the way.
Have a back up plan for if anything goes wrong. What would you do? How would your company rectify the situation?
Mistakes and mishaps are bound to happen and having a back up plan is essential. These can often turn out for the best and improve your campaign so be sure to stay positive and keep moving forward!
Promotion
How are you going to help promote your marketing campaign?
Produce some additional content marketing such as a press release, blog posts and social media marketing.
Ensure you have a dedicated individual to manage the social media surrounding the after affects of the campaign. Post pictures and create a hashtag on Twitter to keep the campaign alive! It’s good to have someone monitoring the hashtag, the conversations and attention your campaign will hopefully receive. Try to respond to as many tweets as possible.
If you do not have the resources to appoint a member of your team then you could look into hiring an intern for a few months – they gain essential work experience and you get some extra hands!
Finally
Measure the success of your marketing campaign – what worked well? What didn’t work well? What could you have done differently? How can you move forward?
It’s important to monitor the success after a marketing campaign to understand whether it worked and how you will now manage the outcome.
Share this information with your audience, write a further press release and blog post on the outcome and include pictures to refresh people’s memories.
Even if the campaign is a bit of a flop – find a spin on it. How can you use it to your advantage?
If you are inspired but struggling to create your own marketing campaign then our marketing team are happy to help. We are full of ideas just buzzing away that will help introduce ideas to you that you may not have thought of yourself!
We can also manage the whole campaign for you from start to finish and work closely with your team to create the best possible outcome.
Be sure to get in touch if this is something you would like to discuss with our team. Call 01622 728800 or email sales@reflectdigital.co.uk and get the ball rolling today...
