How to Create Effective Marketing Campaigns
by Sam Ashe-Edmunds
Marketing includes the upfront research that leads to the development of the communication of a sales message. A marketing campaign starts with learning about your target customer, marketplace and competitors. Using that information, you will choose different types of media and create your advertising and promotions. Start with number crunching, then use that information to create effective communications to boost your sales.
Research
1. Research the marketplace. Determine if there is a need for your product or service, or customers might not want to buy it. Do this by looking for competitors. In addition to finding competitors, examine the differences between their business and yours. Look for a unique aspect about what you sell. For example, there might be many restaurants in your city, but you might be one of only a few that cater to budget-conscious families.
2. Create a demographic profile of your potential customers. List the gender, age, race, location, marital status, parental status and income level of your primary customer and secondary buyers. Conduct customer surveys if you have access to their phone numbers or email addresses. Contact your industry's or profession's trade associations for research they have conducted. Conduct a survey on your website and offer a prize for participation. Limit this to people who have purchased your product online or who use a code on product packaging.
3. Research your competitors to learn their price, selling message and product or service benefits. Compare your business to your competitors.
Product Development
1. Determine if you need to change your product or packaging to better compete in your marketplace. A menswear store might consider adding boys clothing. A hair stylist might benefit from adding facials, manicures and pedicures and becoming a full-service salon.
2. Develop a brand, image or position for your product or service in the marketplace. Your brand might be that you offer low-cost quality or that you provide high-end service. You might offer name brands or focus on servicing what you sell. You can position yourself as the destination of young, hip consumers, or sensible, practical seniors.
3. Price your product to achieve your marketing goals. Once you know what you need to charge to make a profit, determine if you will undercut your competition, sell at a competitive price or price yourself higher. A low price positions you differently than a high price in the eyes of consumers. A low price decreases your profit margin but can help you take market share from higher-priced competitors. A high price might reduce sales but gives you higher margins and might position you as a higher-quality product or service.
Promotion
1. Decide where you will sell your product. Based on your target customer and brand position, your best options might include retail stores, online, in catalogs, through TV offers or with direct mail. Consider your price point and branding when you choose distribution channels. Selling a high-end product at Wal-Mart, for example, sends a mixed message.
2. Develop a public relations campaign to generate free media attention about your product. Send press releases to newspapers, industry trade associations, magazines, websites and radio stations. Write your press releases to focus on the newsworthiness to the public rather than making your communication read like a free ad. If you are a new business, stress that angle in local publications. If you have won awards, play that up. If you are creating jobs in a community, lead with that fact.
3. Create an advertising campaign to send a controlled message to the marketplace. Research different media using each one's media kit. A media kit contains the demographics of the readers, viewers or listeners of a newspaper, magazine, website, TV station or radio station. Using the reader profiles in the media kits, choose media outlets with audience demographics similar to your target customers. In the ads, sell the benefits of your product or service rather than the features. Have a grand opening.
4. Use promotions to generate more brand or product awareness. Create in-store promotions, such as coupons, aisle displays or product sampling. Sponsor events, such as charity balls, auctions or sporting events. Donate products to charities to raffle or auction.
7 Steps to Planning a Successful Promotional Campaign
How to Plan and Execute a Promotional Campaign
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A promotional plan is an important marketing tool when it comes to launching a new service or product or expanding your market reach into new verticals or demographics. When planning a promotional campaign, keep in mind that a successful campaign achieves all of the following desired outcomes and goals:
The question is how do you achieve these outcomes with your campaign? The process is easy, but it takes "planning" time. Here are seven steps that will get your campaign off to the right start.
Step 1: Assess Marketing Communication Opportunities
It's important in this first step to examine and understand the needs of your target market. Who is your message going out to? Current users, influencers among individuals, decision-makers, groups, or the general public?
Step 2: What Communication Channels Will You Use?
In the first step of planning, you should have defined the markets, products, and environments. This information will assist you in deciding which communication channels will be most beneficial. Will you use personal communication channels such as face to face meeting, telephone contact, or perhaps a personal sales presentation?
Or will the nonpersonal communication such as newspapers, magazines, or direct mail work better?
Step 3: Determine Your Objectives
Keep in mind that your objectives in a promotional campaign are slightly different from your marketing campaign. Promotional objectives should be stated in terms of long or short-term behaviours by people who have been exposed to your promotional communication.
These objectives must be clearly stated, measurable, and appropriate to the phase of market development.
Step 4: Determine Your Promotion Mix
This is where you will need to allocate resources to sales promotion, advertising, publicity, and, of course, personal selling. Don't skimp on either of these areas. You must create an awareness among your buyers in order for your promotional campaign to succeed. A well-rounded promotion will use all these methods in some capacity.
Step 5: Develop Your Promotional Message
This is the time that you will need to sit down with your team and focus on the content, appeal, structure, format, and source of the message. Keep in mind in promotional campaigns appeal and execution always work together.
Step 6: Develop the Promotion Budget
This is the exciting part. You must now determine the total promotion budget. This involves determining cost breakdowns per territory and promotional mix elements. Take some time to break down allocations and determine the affordability, percent of sales, and competitive parity. By breaking down these costs, you will get a better idea on gauging the success potential of your campaign.
Step 7: Determine Campaign Effectiveness
After marketing communications are assigned, the promotional plan must be formally defined in a written document.
In this document, you should include situation analysis, copy platform, timetables for effective integration of promotional elements with elements in your marketing mix. You will also need to determine how you will measure the effectiveness once it is implemented. How did the actual performance measure up to planned objectives? You'll need to gather this information by asking your target market whether they recognized or recall specific advertising messages, what they remember about the message, how they felt about the message, and if their attitudes toward the company were affected by the message.
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