Marketing is a difficult concept to grasp for some people.
It is a very broad term that encompasses a lot of actions and decisions in an organization. It includes everything from your company attire to your mission statement. And of course it includes everything you’re already thinking about like the company Twitter account & the magazine ads you just finished purchasing.
But a specific marketing campaign is something that is planned out and executed in brief spurts. This may be a series of billboard ads or a TV spot, something that has a definitive start and finish date. It centers around a certain new idea or product you are promoting and the message has not been sent before.
Here is where many people get it wrong. These are 5 Ways to Improve Your Next Marketing Campaign to make sure it isn’t a waste of resources.
1.) Give Your Campaign Specificity
Most brands want to make ads like Nike. But 99.9% of brands don’t have the notoriety of Nike, they are like your local neighborhood dentist.
Nike can be mysterious & vague, it’s one of the most well known names on the planet. But the dentist down the street? They need to be more specific about what they do, where to find them, and why you should pick them over the other 2,000 dentists in your city.
An example of this came from a spinning studio ad I recently had the pleasure of critiquing. It was a ¼ sheet of paper and at the top is the logo for “Revolution” and at the bottom (cutoff) is “www.ride-rev.com.” Does the ad below tell you anything important?
I knew what the ad was for, but any Joe Schmo that picks up that piece of paper is going to throw it away out of confusion. There’s a big difference in creating intrigue versus just leaving out important pieces of information.
Be intentional about sharing your business’s specifics, otherwise people cannot equate who you are with what you do.
2.) Give Your Campaign a Call to Action
To this day, the most effective ads I’ve ever seen used are small, corrugated yard-signs we used while promoting new furniture stores. The signs were hand-written and plugged into the ground near stop signs.
They read 3 simple lines: New Queen Pillowtop // Mattress Set // $150 // 843 – 696- 5212
A similar dining set sign
There was no confusion, there was no sex appeal, there wasn’t a brand name, there wasn’t anything clever about it. There was just a simple call to action, a phone number.
This is obviously an extreme example. Many people want to brand their businesses with more than a phone number.
But think about how you can cut the fat in your next ad and make it more direct. Sure it won’t be as sexy or funny, but that’s not what marketing campaigns are about.
Marketing campaigns are about getting people to buy your product or service. If a marketer selling an idea or their medium of advertising uses the term “raising awareness” you should turn & run.
That is a fancy way of saying, “We’re going to put this in front of people, but don’t expect to get your money back on it because we don’t have a call to action that can be recorded.”
If you design an ad with a good call to action (sign up here, click this, call us, etc.) you will be able to measure your results & be able to answer this simple question: “Did this ad pay for itself or not?”
3.) Direct Your Campaign to the Correct People
I frequently go to WordPress meetups and I see people who are trying to market their web design services at these gatherings.
The other attendees are not their customers!
Their potential customers are the people who own small & medium sized businesses, not other people who sell SEO services & build websites for a living.
Ask yourself, “Who are my customers?”
If they are boat people, find ways to get their attention at marinas. If they are golfers, find ways to get their attention at the links and driving ranges. If they are bargain hunters, find ways to utilize Craigslist.
A major marketing mistake is saying everyone is a potential customer. Everyone is not your customer. Not even Wal-Mart can boast that.
Be realistic about who you are targeting and go find where they spend their time.
Don’t waste time trying to convert people who may be interested in your product/service. Focus your efforts on the people you know for a fact are already interested in your industry.
Find your audience.
4.) Tailor Your Message to Your Audience
Once you find your audience, it’s time to relate to them.
I use sports analogies because I know many of my readers have sports backgrounds. You have to speak the language of the locals to be accepted. If you can’t relate, they’ll never understand your message.
Looking again to the Revolution ad above, what message are they promoting by having sweaty models in their ad? Are you supposed to be young to come to these classes? Do you want to fill your classes with people who are skinny or do you want people who want to lose weight? If you’re appealing to the fitness community, what sort of workout is this?
Tailor your message to your audience to be more effective.
If you’re trying to reach small business owners, make sure to show how you can improve their business. If you’re trying to get people to sign up as a volunteer for your organization, make sure to show how your cause affects them. And if you’re trying to get people to come to your spinning class, tell them it’s a full-body spinning workout.
5.) Track Your Results
It blows my mind how many business owners don’t know where their sales comes from.
Did newspaper ads or social media produce more sales last month? Did the $2,000 spent on that radio spot pay for itself or not? How many sales came from the direct mailing campaign used?
These are important questions to ask ones self if you’re spending money on a marketing campaign. If you don’t know what is producing results, you could be making some serious mistakes.
If your billboard campaigns aren’t effective, stop paying for them. If you are getting great results from Adwords, dump more into the account & work on improving the conversion process.
The process of tracking your results starts before the campaign even begins. Know what ROI you need in order to make your money back. Do you need to sell 20 widgets or 25 widgets to pay for this? And if you do sell that many, will you run the ad again?
Knowing this before signing a contract will help make your next campaign a clear success or failure. And if you don’t know if it was a win or a loss, you might end up spending more money than you can afford.
When you have a clear goal in mind, you can tailor your ad with the specifics it needs to bring more customers your way.
With these 5 elements combined, your next marketing campaign is sure to have better results than previous attempts. Have a plan and be intentional about your next marketing campaign
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What are some examples of good & bad promotions you’ve seen? Share them below in the comments or chat with me on Twitter (@mikemccann3)!
Have a great rest of the week!
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