Themes to consider when creating a marketing campaign

An interview with Julia Ogden from Zazzle Media, a marketing firm based in Peterborough, revealed the top 3 themes that you should consider when creating a marketing campaign as well as another 6 vital questions that you should be asking.

News and seasonal ideas

Keeping up with current topics in the news or even the season in which your marketing campaign is going to take place will never fail to attract audiences. For example, around Christmas time consumers are willing to spend a lot more money during the months leading up to Christmas. A marketing campaign during christmas may include christmas characters and objects, anything that allows the customer to link the product with christmas. For example, a business may want to advertise gift vouchers – the strapline for the campaign could be ‘a perfect gift for your loved ones’, this line is encouraging customers to buy store credit, therefore attracting more customers into the store in the future.

Unique data

Customer insights can help highlight what a campaign should focus on. An example of a successful campaign using customer insights is Spotify’s ‘2018 Goals’ campaign. The company created this campaign in 2017 and it created goals based upon habits their listeners had in the year of 2017. In the sample below, the goal is ‘Be as loving as the person who put 48 Ed Sheeran songs on their ‘I Love Gingers’ playlist’. Then the customer insight is ‘Shape of You, was the most streamed song. Ever’. This information is telling the customer how popular spotify is but also showing off features it has such as building your own playlist.

Human Interest Stories

Human Interest stories create a lot of views and can be very popular with audiences. Creating a campaign based on a human interest story can be eye opening for the audience whilst also raising awareness of something. For example, a campaign to reduce drink driving may focus on facts and figures as well as an interview with a police officer as well as a victim, this would create emotion for the audience.

6 questions to ask yourself whilst creating a campaign

1. Is there a hook?
2. Is it unique?
3. Does it provoke an emotional response
4. Does it tell a story
5. Which personalities does it target
6. Do you believe in the idea

A recipe for a successful marketing campaign

Making a successful marketing campaign takes time and effort, as well as a fair amount of practise, here are a few things to consider whilst creating the perfect campaign.

The audience

Who is the campaign for? Targeting the wrong groups of people will lead to poor sales, so targeting the right people very important. Creating a profile of your ideal consumer or consumers will help you to visualise who is going to use your product. The profile can also help to highlight what interests the audience have  that could potentially be a key selling point to focus on. The profile should go into extreme detail, but starting with the basic information such as the persons age, gender, earnings and hobbies is essential. To find out more about creating a customer description read this post by TheBalanceSMB.

Objectives and goals

What does your client want from this campaign? What do they stand for? How will you be able to deliver this campaign? When creating a campaign it is important to think about what you want to achieve from the campaign and in what timeframe. Using SMART targets can help define both small and large goals. SMART targets need to meet 5 criterias: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely.

Specific

Think about what you want to achieve, where you’re going to achieve the goal, how you are going to achieve it, who are you going to achieve your goal with, any limitations you may face and why you want to achieve the goal.

Measurable

Break your goals down into sections with smaller goals and a date in which you are going to achieve them goals. Keep a clear timeline of dates where you will start and finish your goal as well as when you will check-in with your progress.

Achievable

Your goal needs to be able to be reached in the timeline you have set for yourself. If you only give yourself 2 weeks for a 3 month project, your goal is not achievable and it may come with consequences.

Realistic

You need to think about how much relevance your goal has to the campaign and if you have the correct skills and equipment in order for the goal to be achieved. Is your end goal really worth the, time, costs and effort it takes to achieve it? If not, scale your goal down to make it more manageable and set the bigger goal as a more long-term goal.

Timely

You are more likely to achieve your goal if there is an end date. It may not have to be a specific date but for a short term goal specify a month and for a long term goal you may wish to put the year in which this goal should be achieved.

Social Media

Social media is essential to any campaign, Statistica reports than in 2017 there were 2.46 billion social media users worldwide. Social media is key for success as it has everyone from every age range in one place which allows a larger audience to be targeted. Using popular hashtags and having a big online presence will boost views and encourage new customers to your social media pages. Here is a list of the top 5 social media sites your business should consider using, find 16 more at Buffer.com.

1. Facebook
2. YouTube
3. WhatsApp
4. Messenger
   
5. WeChat

A timeline of events

Keeping a timeline of events full of SMART goals will keep everyone involved and give everyone a clear idea of when events in the campaign happen as well as when goals should be reached. Keeping a timeline of your campaign will help you to keep track of progress and what goals have or have not yet been achieved.

The new type of celebrity: Social media influencers

Instagram has introduced a new type of ‘celebrity’ into today’s society called social media influencers. These are normal people who have a large, niche following on their social media accounts.

Influencers will generate sales and click through rates for your business – they have such a big influence on those that follow them, hence the title ‘influencer’. But why do they have such a big say in what is popular now and whether or not their audience should buy a certain product? The answer is simple; It’s because many people look up to them and follow them as they see them as more of a friendly, relatable figure compared to big A-list celebrities.

Types of influencers

Many influencers make posting on social media sites, such as Instagram and YouTube, their full time job. Therefore, they probably know their audience’s likes, dislikes, behaviours and demographics, so first off, you need to make sure your campaign is a match for both the influencer and their audience. Here is a list of the 5 types of social media influencers, to read more about each one head over to Repped.io:

• Celebrity Influencers
• Authority Influencers
• Social Media ‘Sensations’
• Micro-Influencers/Macro-influencers
• Bloggers

Each of the influencers listed above will give your brand a boost, however each one will have a different level of impact as well as very different price tags. One of the most successful influencers is the micro-influencer, this is someone with a following of under 20,000 followers. A macro-influencer is someone with a following that exceeds 500,000 followers but is still seen as a friendly figure to followers and has a good relationship with big brands. Below is a case study of how an influencer with a ‘small’ following can boost sales for brands.

How Mrs Hinch used her influence to increase sales for cleaning product Zoflora

Mrs Hinch is a social media influencer with a following of 2.2M on Instagram. She has seen a rapid growth of followers in the last few months. Mrs Hinch is best known for her love of cleaning and often shares tips and tricks with her followers. In April 2019, she released a book which is both a biography and a how-to guide. She mainly uses Instagram stories to keep fans up to date about products she loves, life updates as well as recent buys. In many of her Instagram stories, Mrs Hinch can be seen using the different scented, disinfectant spray, Zoflora. Her influence caused the low-cost disinfectant to be sold out around the country and the manufacturers have had to increase the production rates to 70,000 bottles per week.