Marketing Campaigns: Antidote to Going Viral
Marketing campaigns are the things of legend. If you’re at all aware of the Netflix show, Emily in Paris, you’ve probably seen how the bubbly young marketer constantly manages to save her agency in 30 minutes or less. Though she is junior on her team, she brings her unique perspective to challenging business problems every episode, and without fail grabs the attention of the greater Paris Metro area via viral tweet, stunning photoshoot, or unexpected product partnership.
And while it is easy to imagine this is exactly how marketing works, I hate to burst your bubble, it isn’t. Remember the first thing we shared in this series, marketing cannot be hacked. And good marketing campaigns typically don’t unravel in 30 minutes or less.
Even when building campaigns for consumers (think Nike or Skittles), a lot of thought and effort goes into building a successful campaign. Emily in Paris is entertainment, if you’re into that kind of thing. Building campaigns for an audience that is especially sensitive to marketing requires even more consideration. Seriously, how many ad blockers, email spam filters, and community forums specializing in questioning every nuance can one community employ? So let’s look at what it takes to build a successful marketing campaign that will actually support your business goals.
What is a marketing campaign?
A marketing campaign is a series of coordinated and targeted marketing activities designed to achieve a specific business goal or objective. This could be promoting a new product or feature, increasing brand awareness, generating leads, or whatever you have set out to do.
Marketing campaigns typically involve a mix of different tactics, such as advertising, social media marketing, email marketing, content marketing, and public relations. The campaign is often centered around a particular message or theme. And ultimately the campaign should drive the target audience to take a desired action—like trialing or purchasing your product, using a new feature, signing up for your newsletter, or whatever action answers your business objective.
Successful marketing campaigns are typically well-planned and executed, with much thought given to the target audience, messaging, timing, and budget. Keep in mind, your target audience could be a subset of your entire audience. And in order for you to know if your campaign was successful, you must involve some form of measurement to track performance of your campaign.
example given
It’s one thing to talk about the theory of a marketing campaign, another to see it in practice. Let’s try building one. As we get started, it’s important to remember why we run campaigns–to achieve a specific business goal or objective. So depending on your objective, you could be designing a large or small, long or short campaign.
For the purposes of this exercise, let’s say we want to promote a new feature within our platform. This feature is a key differentiator, it positions us well against the competition. The business objective is to see existing customers use it, and attract new sales.
Based on this information, let’s outline our campaign:
Why? We want more people to be aware of and use a new feature within our platform. We see this feature as a key differentiator that positions us ahead of our competition.
Who? Our target audience includes both new prospects and existing customers.
What? We want new prospects to become customers, and we want existing customers to adopt the new feature.
When? We’ve decided to make our announcement at a major partner event. We selected this event because large numbers of our target audience will be present. Furthermore, we can leverage the excitement around the event and our partner’s channels to help amplify our own efforts.
How? Using our customer journey map we will send messages, place ads, and share information that we know will resonate with these two audiences. We’ve decided to focus on two main areas: content that will make people aware of the new feature and the value it provides, and content that provides education on how to use the feature.
Throughout all of this we will measure how effective these activities are. While it may be tempting to focus on metrics like how many people opened the email or clicked a link, ultimately we want to know how many existing customers started using the feature and how many new customers signed contracts. So definitely pay attention to how effective those emails are at driving people to websites, but be sure you’re tracking how many new customers and existing customers are actually adopting the new feature.
Build your own
As you get started with your campaign, here are some things to remember:
Make sure you have a clear objective. It’s important to remain focused in each activity you set up. If the goal of your email is to drive prospects to the product site, then that should be the only call to action within it. Asking people to do anything else will distract from that, and ultimately disrupt the path you’ve set up for them.
Make sure you understand key metrics before the campaign starts. This way when you set each part of your campaign in motion, you can see how they are performing. Are your emails getting people to sign up for a free trial or webinar? How are the ads in different places performing? Pay attention and be ready to pivot if necessary.
Digital marketing is a conversation, be present for it. There will be elements that resonate with your audience and those that don’t. Be prepared to participate and respond. Sometimes, if there’s room for it, having a sense of humor is a great way to humbly recover from an embarrassing hiccup.
Plan accordingly! At this point I’m sure you can appreciate that even a minor product release can have quite a few moving parts. Make sure your team has the time they need to build each piece and prepare for the campaign launch. If you can’t do all the things, then select those that are within reach that will help you meet your main objective.
A well thought out and executed campaign can drive significant results. Remember to stay focused, and you’ll likely see positive results. And always pay attention to key metrics, so you can use that feedback to inform how you construct and execute your next campaign.
This is one post in a series focused on marketing to developers. Check back soon for more posts that will dive deeper into managing an editorial calendar and understanding your ideal customer profile, among other things.
