One of the biggest market growth secrets that big brands like Nike, Coca-Cola etc have hacked is flawlessly executing relatable, humane and effective marketing campaigns each business year. You may not be playing in such a league yet but you can begin to position your creative business as a force in your industry by using marketing campaigns to increase visibility, create awareness, attract and retain your target market.
Whether you're launching a new product line or promoting an existing one, marketing campaigns are a way to communicate an intended message to your target market such that they're reeled in and buying.
Here are steps to creating an effective marketing campaign.
It is important that you are realistic with your timelines to ensure that your campaign is delivered on schedule.
Determine your 'Why'
Why are you creating this campaign? This is an important question to ask yourself before starting this task as it will determine the direction in which your campaign will go.
Do you want to get people familiar with your brand?
Do you want to make sales on a new product line?
Do you want to create awareness on a social cause?
These different questions amongst others require different approaches when creating your campaign so you want to answer them as critically as possible.
Craft Your Story
Having determined your 'Why', the next step is to craft your campaign story. The best marketing campaigns are oiled by relatable content that the target market connects with. By this point, you should already have an understanding of what your target market is like, what they like and how you can reach them. If you do not know this yet, you can learn how to reach your target market here.
If for instance, you are a fashion designer who is creating a collection for plus sized women, you want to carefully craft a storyline that highlights their fashion struggles and tells them that they're seen, one that they can connect to. Pay attention to every detail that encourages body positivity.
Worthy of note is the need to prepare a moodboard that visually represents the story you're trying to tell. With the use of physical boards or applications, prepare a board that simulates the campaign, including elements like colour theme, items that represent the elements of the story, etc.
In summary, identify the pain points of your target audience and use it to craft a story that sends a message to them and connects them with your brand.
Create Your Campaign Schedule
Based on the goal for your campaign and your storyline, you have to create your campaign schedule by determining the timelines like how long it would take you to curate the resources you need for the campaign, build the campaign team, duration of the campaign, when to deploy the campaign, etc.
It is important that you are realistic with your timelines to ensure that your campaign is delivered on schedule. Having ensured this, create your schedule then attach tasks to dates.
Determine Your Communication Modes & Channels
With your storyline crafted, you have got to determine the best way and medium through which you can deliver it to your target audience. Where can you find them? Physical locations or social media platforms?
Can your target audience be reached through that strategically located billboard, TV Commercials, Radio Jingles, Newsletters, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc?
Are pictures and videos enough to attract them or would a well written copy do the trick? Knowing your audience, determine these factors ahead of creating your campaign.
Prepare Your Resources
By now, a lot of factors that are required to execute your campaign are clear. Based on the schedule created, do you have enough time to see the campaign from conception to execution? Do you need to move some other unrelated tasks to the back burner?
Now is also the time to prepare your budget, with this, you should highlight all possible tasks and estimate a realistic cost to them. This will also help you to determine if you are financially capable of successfully executing the campaign or if you need to seek funds from other quarters.
Do you have the manpower for this campaign? Would you need to put together a team for this campaign? Collaborating with other creatives is also an option at this point and you can learn more about such collaborations here.
Prepare Your Content
Got your finances, manpower and other resources sorted? Here is where it gets technical! Assuming that you have your product line ready, it's time to go for it. Depending on what type of content your campaign will run with, it's time to record the videos, take those photographs, write the copy for your website or newsletter, etc.
There's no campaign without all of these and you want to make sure that your story is brought to life just how you envisioned it, with the intended message. Nothing else will do!
Deploy and Evaluate
You're set, now it's time to deploy! Having ascertained your preferred mode or channel of communication, you're ready to deploy your prepared content and the set time to your audience. Make sure that the time is right and as scheduled.
As you deploy, monitor your statistics and ensure that things are going according to plan.
After the campaign has been deployed, the success is determined by the response you get from your target audience and if your goal for the campaign was achieved.
However the result, it is important to take the lessons learned from the success of your campaign or otherwise to better execute future campaigns.
Brilliant. Thanks for sharing. This will come in handy for my first campaign later this year!