Planning and Running Campaigns

Key Issues in Planning and Running Campaigns

 

 

Purpose: Why do marketers run campaigns?

Whether you are a Fortune 500 company selling your products and services in numerous countries across the world or a small company selling its IT services to people in a city, you need to market your services. The purpose of marketing is to create awareness about your products and services, get the word out so that you can win more business.

A typical marketer (be it with small firm or large enterprise) spends about 75% of their time in planning and running campaigns. The goal of the campaigns is to introduce a product or service, create brand awareness, do promotions, i.e. sales related offer to inspire customer to make a purchase or lead generation.

How campaigns are typically run?

A typical marketer engages a creative firm for planning the campaign and probably same or another agency to create the campaign and run it on multiple channels. The marketing gives its inputs such as goal of the campaign, duration and budget for the campaign and the agencies design the concept and plan the campaign which on approval by the marketer, runs on various channels.

However, the campaign gets into issues without careful planning and coordination at this point simply due to multiple parties getting involved, not counting the complexity of the concept itself.

Different stakeholders can have different understanding of the goal of the campaign or different channel managers may approve different concepts which affect consistency and thereby creating confusion for the consumer.

Mistakes marketers make in planning and running campaigns

1.       Not understanding the purpose of the campaign. Marketers need to start with the end goal in mind. What is the purpose of the campaign? To gain new customers, to increase sales, to create brand awareness or to let the world know of your products and services? The marketing team needs to be clear about the purpose of the campaign and the goals it wants to achieve.

2.       Trying to achieve a lot from one campaign. The campaign objective will be better served if the campaign is focused. The campaign that informs customers about your products and services may not do as well as a campaign that asks customers to you’re your products or services. You need to focus the campaign around the goals you want to achieve.

3.       Campaigns are not flexible to adapt and do course correction based on the feedback from the market. When the response from the market is not as expected by the marketing team, the marketer should be able to change the campaign message or change the channel mix so that the campaign budget can be optimized. However, most marketers have do not leave room to make changes to the campaign when the campaign do not run as planned.

4.       Understanding of the target customer. Marketer needs to understand the target customer profile for planning an effective campaign. Demographic and psychographic data gathered through customer and market research can be of good use when planning campaigns. You need to understand who your target customer is and why they would want to buy your product or service.

5.       Selection of the proper marketing channels for the campaign. The campaign needs to be planned in such a way that it reaches the maximum number of target customers. This means selecting the proper marketing channels and dividing the marketing budget in such as way to maximize the reach. You cannot reach your target customers by advertising in newspapers if your target audience is online, although the print media might complement your campaign online.

6.       Delivering consistent and target message to the audience. When you know your target customers and their purchase behavior, you can deliver a customized yet consistent message across the various channels the campaign is getting executed. The multiple channels used for the campaign should not be delivering confusing message. The message to the audience should consistent and focused on a certain call to action such as visiting a website, calling a phone number or filling an online form.

7.       Tracking the campaign results and interpreting them right. Once the campaign is launched and running, the campaign needs to be tracked for the effectiveness and if it is doing right. Online campaigns can be tracked in real-time and changes can be made if the campaign is not meeting its objective. However, offline campaigns such as Print or TV are not that flexible and need better planning and tracking mechanisms to meet the objectives.

 Author Resource:

-     Mr. Chaitanya Mudunuri is the CEO at Ray Business Technologies, www.raybiztech.com. He has years of experience in CRM space and is also a known speaker for his innovative ideas to enhance profits. He is an MBA from University of Oxford.