Take a campaign approach for better results

If there is one secret to marketing that most business people and even marketing people do not know, it is this: You need to take a campaign approach for better results.

Common practice is to organise your marketing around the way you will reach your market; for example, by buying lots of print advertising, booking radio space, doing a flier drop into letterboxes, advertising on television etc. However this is just the media and organising your marketing around the media is inefficient and often does not work. A much better idea is to take a campaign approach – to integrate different aspects of your marketing so they’re all working together for a common purpose, to deliver you the best result.

The reason your marketing needs to be a campaign is because you need to be there with your customers throughout their buying process, giving them the right information at the right stages, in the right way, and always giving them a good reason to say “yes” right now.

Think of your marketing as an integrated process, combining all your marketing efforts so that they reinforce each other and drive towards the sale. Each marketing tactic will reinforce the other, creating synergy. By using different tactics and focusing on the same market with consistent messages, you will make a big hit on your market.

Don’t let the word ‘campaign’ put you off or think that it means ‘expensive.’ You can have a perfectly effective campaign that has no paid advertising in it. Deciding what will be part of your campaign is simply a matter of determining what will reach your target market and conveying the information that makes it easy for them to buy from you.

Campaigns can save you money too. By focusing your marketing on campaigns, you stop much of the ad hoc marketing you are doing – especially those things that you can’t measure and cannot see a real return on – saving yourself the hassle and the cost.

So next time an advertising sales rep calls you with a never-to-be-repeated-special-advertising-rate, the first thing you should ask yourself is “How can this fit into the campaigns that I am currently working on?” In many cases it won’t, and therefore, you will politely turn down their offer. Of course, if what they are offering you does fit with your campaign, then it deserves serious consideration.

For many, this approach is a real challenge to their current thinking on marketing. It can take a little more time planning what you are going to do but it will save many hours and dollars. Stop all your ad hoc marketing programmes and integrate them into campaigns and it will make a big difference to your results this year.

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An effective ‘campaign’ has 5 key elements.

Focus

Have a clear focus for every marketing campaign. Set yourself clear objectives up-front and write down exactly what it is you are trying to achieve. As a small or medium-sized business with a limited marketing budget, you need to focus on generating leads for your business and finding prospects. Do not be tempted to have as your focus ‘develop brand awareness’. This is simply not specific enough, is difficult to measure, and is often an excuse for doing something with results that you simply cannot measure. You need to focus on those marketing initiatives that are measurable and can show you a return on investment.

Take half an hour to write yourself a promotion brief, detailing what you want to achieve (in numbers), how you are going to achieve it, and who you are targeting.

Consistency

Being consistent with all your messages, the information you give, and the call to action is important. You need to reach your prospective customers at several turns. Use various marketing elements together with the same messages and offers. People need to see your offer several times before they will act. Use the different media to build on each other. For example, in an advert, you have very limited space in which to communicate your message but you can refer customers to your website for more detailed information, a technical specification, or a downloadable ‘special offer’ voucher.
In addition, make sure that you use your brand consistently, with the colours and font always looking the same. It all helps to build brand recognition and give a professional image.

Persistency

There are no ‘one hit wonders’ in marketing; even overnight successes take lots of time and effort one way or another. Your marketing job is to help your customers through their buying process as quickly and smoothly as possible, but it does take time. Be persistent and give them many opportunities to say “yes” to you. Staying power is critical.

A Blend of Media

Use different media to reach different people in your target market. Lots of people make up your target market and you cannot expect them all to be the same. They have similarities but they are not identical. Some will read, some will attend functions, some may have health issues, some will surf the Internet, and some may subscribe to a magazine. So use a mix of different media to reach as many of them as you can.

By using a mix of media, you are able to give different levels of detail and information about your offer and reach the same people repeatedly. Make sure you use each type of media to support the other: advertising can be timed to appear in the newspaper as a follow up to fliers being distributed to letter boxes; and publicity/a free editorial in your local paper can be used to provide added credibility to your advertisements.

One marketing tactic rarely works on its own unless the offer is amazing; however, that does not mean you have to do everything available. You just have to use a variety of media that reaches your target market wherever they turn, and encourages them to buy.

Timing

Timing is a matter of giving your campaign a start date and an end date. This means you can focus your efforts into a selected period and then measure the results both at the end of and during the campaign. Timing is also a matter of when it makes sense, from a customer’s perspective, to run the campaign. Think of what is likely to happen in your customers’ lives just prior to needing your service. A very obvious example is seasonal timing. If you are selling heat pumps, then the event likely to happen to your customers just prior to needing a heat pump is a change in seasons from summer to autumn, or from autumn to winter. Time your campaign to coincide with this change. Another example is, if your business experiences a low period every June, then you may want to begin a ‘lead generation campaign’ in March, which will boost your bookings or sales in June.
 

• This information is provided by My Marketing Expert:
  
  http://www.mymarketingexpert.co.nz/site/my_marketing_expert/