How do you know the Marketing campaign that you have built is going to perform? Well, there are some who will quote John Wanamaker and say “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half” but there are some who would want to go the extra mile and ensure that they do everything possible to ensure their campaign doesn’t fail.
In this blog, I would like to list down what I have learned in my experience working with CXO’s of leading B2B organizations on building the right marketing campaign.
Strategies to validate Marketing Campaign for optimal results
1. Buyer persona
HubSpot defines a buyer persona as a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers. The more details you have about your Buyer Persona, the more it will help you.
A typical buyer persona should include the following information:
Demographics
Age Range, Key Education (are you looking for techies, managers, etc.)
Job responsibilities
Define their key responsibilities. The objective here is to list it down from your services perspective
What will make them a star
How can you make them a star in your current organization, is it by helping them save X $$ or increase sales. This information/intelligence will help you grab their attention
What is their biggest challenge
This can be across the industry/role and also specific to a few individual accounts that you want to target.
The buyer persona will help you determine the messaging and the channels for outreach. Without this detailed information, executing a marketing campaign is like shooting in the dark, you may be successful or maybe not.
2. Messaging
The tag line, the action item, and the core differentiator.
NotME
Most marketing campaigns fail because they are inward-looking, they talk about what you can do as an organization, what are your service offerings, what are your capabilities, etc.
Your clients are generally more interested in knowing about what you can do for them and not your history and geographical presence. You should focus on working to get the first contact and then details can follow
ForYOU
All the good campaigns that I have seen, had one thing in common. They were able to put a context in the first 2 -3 seconds and in the first glance itself.
Looking at the copy they were able to get the attention they wanted, for example, “As a CMO of a Fortune 1000 company” or as the “Leader of Business Transformation” etc.
What you are effectively doing here is connecting the message with the audience and telling them that it is specifically for them.
Reference
Another important aspect of the messaging is the frame of reference; in as many few words you would want to define why they should believe you.
Action
This is the most critical part of the messaging. The action needs to be carefully planned, what does the target audience do after they have seen the marketing campaign? Do they submit their details or follow your website?
This needs to be clearly thought through to also ensure there are follow up steps.
Creative rendition
An important point of the campaign is the creative rendition. The first thing that draws to the user’s attention is creative with the tagline. It is important for the visual to be relevant and the headline should be clearly visible.
3. Leveraging the right channel
So, you have your buyer persona ready, you have your messaging sorted out but how do you get your marketing campaign out.
There are multiple factors that must be taken into account when leveraging a specific channel for marketing with a budget and the relevant target audience is the most important one.
For example, while email marketing is one of the most cost-effective campaigns the results are generally not that great for B2B campaigns, similarly LinkedIn campaigns can get you the right visibility but will be more expensive.
Leveraging a combination of the right channels can help you achieve your marketing goals in the planned budget.
4. Measuring the performance of the campaign
Once you have initiated the marketing campaign it is very important to review the campaign regularly and tweak for performance, these tweaks may be small such as changing an audience in Facebook Ad or tweaking the spend of budget but a regular monitoring program is an essential ingredient to make the marketing program a success.
Even when you look at all these parameters there will be instances when the campaign is not performing as per your expectations. While it is important to give some time to a campaign to perform, it is equally important to know when to pull the plug.
I have seen instances where marketers become too emotionally attached to a campaign and are unable to pull the plug at the right time resulting in overshooting of budgets. It is essential to understand the metrics and ensure you monitor the campaign actively.
Must Read: Reasons why the best designed Marketing Campaigns Fail
