A free framework to come up with a marketing campaign
Cookie Cutter Solutions don't work
Without knowing an industry, the current financials of your business, the capacity of your marketing department, the strength of your brand, and a multitude of other information, it's impossible for anyone to tell you what sort of campaign to develop. What I aim to do is to put together a process that let's to systematically approach developing a campaign instead of a haphazard, ad-hoc methodology.
First things first. What are your Goals?
You have a Job to be done. What portion of that J2BD is this campaign attempting to address? How is this supposed to complement your other activities like activations, launches and promotions? In short, what outcomes are you expecting of this campaign? If you to have more than one so write them all down. If you only have one, skip ahead to the next section.
Once you've written them down, choose the most important three and highlight them.
Done? Now from those three, pick the most important one.
That is your goal - everything else is secondary. If you try to get one campaign to do achieve several goals, chances are you won't achieve anything.
Fix your KPIs
Once you know your fiscal goal, put it into the below format to make it more human and consumer facing.
Get _____________ to do _____________ by _________________.
Get [who] to do [what] by [what means].
There are two types of KPIs to address. Tracking KPIs and input KPIs. To put simply, to understand if you're on the right path to achieving your goal, you place tracking KPIs that let you know what percentage of your goal has been achieved. For example, if your goal is to generate leads from your website, a good tracking KPI is the traffic that you're generating on your website but a great KPI is the number of form entries or inquiries you are getting.
An input KPI is slightly different. What do you have to do in terms of effort or investment that controls the tracking KPI? Keeping with the previous example of generating leads, using social media marketing can generate traffic to your website as can using content marketing, email marketing or writing a relevant ebook and trading emails for the book for free. The different activities provide different challenges in terms of effort and investment. A good input KPI can be "writing a weekly blog" or "spending $1000 monthly on social"
This way, if you are generating 100 clicks by writing a blog post a week, you know that writing two will generate 200 clicks. Similarly, if you increase your monthly spend to $1500, you will have 150 clicks. If 100 clicks translates to 10 leads, then you know that 1 blog post a week roughly equates to 10 leads a week. Obviously these figures are hopeful.
Develop your Creative
The previous section was about controlling distribution which, for the purpose of this article and simplicity, essentially controls the volume of conversions you receive. If you reach 250,000 people in total a month and get 25 clients new clients, you know your reach-close ratio is 0.01%. This ratio does not change based on how much you spend. In short, spending double is going to get your 500,000 reach and 50 clients but the ratio stays at 0.01%.
The quality of the creative that drives your campaign controls this ratio. The best creatives in the world are ones that add both long term and short term value. These creatives are generally developed on top of consumer insights. Consumer insights is a vast topic by itself but for the purpose of this article, I'll explain it this way: An insight is a paradox that seems obvious in hindsight. (Sudhir Sitapati, Executive Director, Hindustan Unilever) Now that's a bit of a mouthful but that is one of the most concise definitions I have come across. Using an example explanation seems to be an easier route to take.
Why the creative in Nike's find your greatness campaign is so good is because it uses a human insight - the fact that professional athletes are too far, too few and casual athletes are those who struggle not only with fitness but also with motivation. This seems like a simple enough idea but that is only because we're looking at it in hindsight.
Deciding how your brand would react to being presented this insight and delivering it's reply in its unique style of communication is what makes a good creative.
A good creative, moving your reach-close ratio from 0.01%-0.02% is a HUGE increment in terms of sales where you now have 50 clients for reaching the 250,000 people and as long as the creative costs less than the increment in distribution budget to get the same number of clients, you've won. Something else to consider is that campaigns of this nature can be executed for months, if not years before a change is required, where you will reap the rewards of a higher conversion rate.
It's not one-and-done.
Putting it all together.
Define your goals, make them as concise and clear as possible and try not to have more than one actual goal - no one every achieved anything by being less focussed.
Understand what it means to reach your goals. What sort of metrics need to move for you to know you are hitting them and what do you have to put in, in terms of effort and investment, to make those metrics move.
Decide what you're trying to communicate and how you're going to communicate it. Whether you're making a long term investment in your creative or you're running short term campaigns is up to you but understand which one you're doing and why.
Finally, Execute to perfection. From the word go, you need to be on the ball, making sure things happen on time, deadlines, quality goals and quantity goals are met. Your KPIs are your new religion.
Why is an identity designer writing a detailed article about this? Because an identity is useless without sophisticated, powerful marketing. I run my business by creating value for my clients and that is impossible to do, regardless of how well designed an identity is, if it isn't being marketed equally well.
If you have more questions about this topic, use the contact link on the bottom right to email me. I'm always willing to help.
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Dhyresh Mendis
is a Graphic Designer specializing in Brand Identity Design. His love for structures and systems has sent him on a journey to understand the fields that Identities support at great depth - Marketing and Brand Building.
Cookie Cutter Solutions don't work
Without knowing an industry, the current financials of your business, the capacity of your marketing department, the strength of your brand, and a multitude of other information, it's impossible for anyone to tell you what sort of campaign to develop. What I aim to do is to put together a process that let's to systematically approach developing a campaign instead of a haphazard, ad-hoc methodology.
First things first. What are your Goals?
You have a Job to be done. What portion of that J2BD is this campaign attempting to address? How is this supposed to complement your other activities like activations, launches and promotions? In short, what outcomes are you expecting of this campaign? If you to have more than one so write them all down. If you only have one, skip ahead to the next section.
Once you've written them down, choose the most important three and highlight them.
Done? Now from those three, pick the most important one.
That is your goal - everything else is secondary. If you try to get one campaign to do achieve several goals, chances are you won't achieve anything.
Fix your KPIs
Once you know your fiscal goal, put it into the below format to make it more human and consumer facing.
Get _____________ to do _____________ by _________________.
Get [who] to do [what] by [what means].
There are two types of KPIs to address. Tracking KPIs and input KPIs. To put simply, to understand if you're on the right path to achieving your goal, you place tracking KPIs that let you know what percentage of your goal has been achieved. For example, if your goal is to generate leads from your website, a good tracking KPI is the traffic that you're generating on your website but a great KPI is the number of form entries or inquiries you are getting.
An input KPI is slightly different. What do you have to do in terms of effort or investment that controls the tracking KPI? Keeping with the previous example of generating leads, using social media marketing can generate traffic to your website as can using content marketing, email marketing or writing a relevant ebook and trading emails for the book for free. The different activities provide different challenges in terms of effort and investment. A good input KPI can be "writing a weekly blog" or "spending $1000 monthly on social"
This way, if you are generating 100 clicks by writing a blog post a week, you know that writing two will generate 200 clicks. Similarly, if you increase your monthly spend to $1500, you will have 150 clicks. If 100 clicks translates to 10 leads, then you know that 1 blog post a week roughly equates to 10 leads a week. Obviously these figures are hopeful.
Develop your Creative
The previous section was about controlling distribution which, for the purpose of this article and simplicity, essentially controls the volume of conversions you receive. If you reach 250,000 people in total a month and get 25 clients new clients, you know your reach-close ratio is 0.01%. This ratio does not change based on how much you spend. In short, spending double is going to get your 500,000 reach and 50 clients but the ratio stays at 0.01%.
The quality of the creative that drives your campaign controls this ratio. The best creatives in the world are ones that add both long term and short term value. These creatives are generally developed on top of consumer insights. Consumer insights is a vast topic by itself but for the purpose of this article, I'll explain it this way: An insight is a paradox that seems obvious in hindsight. (Sudhir Sitapati, Executive Director, Hindustan Unilever) Now that's a bit of a mouthful but that is one of the most concise definitions I have come across. Using an example explanation seems to be an easier route to take.
Why the creative in Nike's find your greatness campaign is so good is because it uses a human insight - the fact that professional athletes are too far, too few and casual athletes are those who struggle not only with fitness but also with motivation. This seems like a simple enough idea but that is only because we're looking at it in hindsight.
Deciding how your brand would react to being presented this insight and delivering it's reply in its unique style of communication is what makes a good creative.
A good creative, moving your reach-close ratio from 0.01%-0.02% is a HUGE increment in terms of sales where you now have 50 clients for reaching the 250,000 people and as long as the creative costs less than the increment in distribution budget to get the same number of clients, you've won. Something else to consider is that campaigns of this nature can be executed for months, if not years before a change is required, where you will reap the rewards of a higher conversion rate.
It's not one-and-done.
Putting it all together.
Define your goals, make them as concise and clear as possible and try not to have more than one actual goal - no one every achieved anything by being less focussed.
Understand what it means to reach your goals. What sort of metrics need to move for you to know you are hitting them and what do you have to put in, in terms of effort and investment, to make those metrics move.
Decide what you're trying to communicate and how you're going to communicate it. Whether you're making a long term investment in your creative or you're running short term campaigns is up to you but understand which one you're doing and why.
Finally, Execute to perfection. From the word go, you need to be on the ball, making sure things happen on time, deadlines, quality goals and quantity goals are met. Your KPIs are your new religion.
Why is an identity designer writing a detailed article about this? Because an identity is useless without sophisticated, powerful marketing. I run my business by creating value for my clients and that is impossible to do, regardless of how well designed an identity is, if it isn't being marketed equally well.
If you have more questions about this topic, use the contact link on the bottom right to email me. I'm always willing to help.
Dhyresh Mendis
is a Graphic Designer specializing in Brand Identity Design. His love for structures and systems has sent him on a journey to understand the fields that Identities support at great depth - Marketing and Brand Building.