Today we will be discussing the 3 key marketing campaign considerations you must know before starting a marketing campaign. The old adage goes “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. This sentiment holds true especially when it comes to starting your marketing campaign. One important aspect to your business’s branding efforts is to show alignment in every customer touch point, making sure your brand’s message and image is consistent to your audience. Thus there is a need for an increased emphasis on planning out your marketing campaigns and the messages it should convey. Regardless of whichever form of Marketing you’re dealing with, it is crucial that you’re able to identify the kinds of tone that your client wants to maintain consistency for their brand across all channels.
Before we start every Marketing campaign, regardless of whether is it a Pay-Per-Click, an SEO one or a Social Media Management campaign, we will always require our clients to fill in a campaign brief form that details essential information regarding their brand. At MarketingGuru, we pride ourselves as being able to come up with personalized proposals for each client and as such, the planning step of a Marketing campaign is one that we will put a lot of time and effort into crafting.
Consideration #1: Brand Values and Messages
The first important consideration when planning out any form of marketing campaign is always the brand message and values. Consistency in brand message across every piece of content crafted by your brand will leave the message imprinted in your consumers’ mind. This is paramount to your business’s branding.
When we talk about brand message consistency, we don’t mean for your brand to have precisely the same message through every piece of content that you create, but rather, it is about having a consistency in values of the message that you’re trying to drive across. These values are what attracts and helps your audience to relate to your brand. It is about how your company inspires them through the conveyed message on the advertisement, making them want to be a customer of your brand.
To make this concept of brand values and messages easier to understand, here are a few examples of brand messages in the form of slogans from a few of the world renowned brands:
- Nike – Just Do It
- Adidas – Impossible is Nothing
- Subway – Eat Fresh
- Redbull – Gives You Wings
Of course, brand messages and values aren’t just catchy one liners that roll off the tongue easily. It is definitely more than an attractive slogan. The reason why these taglines work for the aforementioned companies are because the brands that carry them reflect the messages in their products and other customer touch points. Brand values and messages consist of an amalgamation of your brand’s products/services point of differentiation, value proposition, target audience and positioning. These elements will then serve to guide your marketing campaign and should be reflected in every content that your company churns out.
One of the most successful example of delivering a consistent brand message that conveys the company’s values would be Redbull. Redbull, while having a catchy slogan of “Gives You Wings”, reflect this very message in the events they sponsor. Redbull sponsors extreme events, ranging from sponsorship of Formula One teams to mountain biking events and even to Felix Baumgartner’s freefall parachute jump from outer space. Their social media page is filled with content like point of view videos of extreme sports stunts and adventures. Although at the very core of their business, Redbull is just an energy drink company, its messages and brand value of bringing energy and “giving wings” to people in their everyday lives is consistently felt throughout their Marketing efforts. This model is also replicated by many of its competitors like Monster Energy drink and Reign Body Fuel, both of which whom followed suit into Redbull’s Marketing model of sponsoring and hosting such events.
Ultimately, putting in thought into what brand messages and values your company has is important prior to your execution of any marketing campaign. It will set the tone for the channels that you select and the kind of content you will produce and share. Having a solid idea of your brand message and values will make your marketing campaigns more successful as it helps consumers better relate to your company.
Consideration #2: Brand Voice and Tone
Every brand must be treated as a person. A person brimming with life and personality. Therefore it is essential that the person’s voice and tone, which is your brand’s persona, be properly conveyed through in every piece of Marketing content that gets produced. If you have no idea what sort of personality or what kind of persona you want your brand to have, here’s a commonly followed framework by Jennifer Aaker.
This is of course not the only framework that must be followed, there are also other frameworks out there like the brand archetype framework that can help guide you in creating a brand personality.
Once you’ve decided (or already have) crafted your brand’s personality, you must help its personality show through your brand’s voice and tone. This could be done in a multitude of ways. It could be as simple as how your brand reacts to certain news on its Twitter account to the way your emails are sent.
One example of a brand using its tone and voice on social media to convey its personality is fast food chain, Wendy. Generally, you would expect restaurants chains to want to shape their brand’s personality around the traits of being Sincere, Competent and Exciting. Wendy is no different, their brand also seeks to portray themselves in such a manner. They do it in a very effective and innovative manner by responding to users on Twitter with wit, displaying their brand’s wit, humor and relatability.
By responding in such a manner helps Wendy to form their brand’s personality in the minds of consumers. Consumers would find Wendy’s interactions and roasting of users on social media platform to be relatable, akin to how friends roast each other. This is in compliance with their brand personality of being down to earth and funny.
By planning out the tone that you want to set for your company when dealing with the different customer touch points, you will be able to help better bring across your brand’s personality to your target audience. This makes it easier for them to buy into your brand as it becomes easier for them to agree with your brand’s messages and value
Consideration #3: Unique Selling Point
Before the inception of every company, their owners MUST already have a unique selling point in mind. This is the reason why your business is even in the market, it is the sole reason for why your business exists and what makes your business stand out. Of course this must be a consideration when executing the marketing plan.
Every company must be able to convey what makes them special and this must be very clearly shown in your marketing material.
In order to do this, you must ascertain what is it that your company could do that has a demand in the market that your competitors can’t fulfill. This will be the unique selling point. Conveyance of this point in your marketing message could be done through means like infographics and press releases highlighting your product’s or service’s features.
Conclusion
When people think of marketing and advertising online, oft times, they just think of throwing an amount of budget, targeting the right audience and hope for results. They tend to forget greater considerations like how they ultimately want to shape their brand’s consumer perceptions and values that they want to be associated with. Today we have covered the important considerations that you should always look for and plan out before you start your marketing campaign. Hopefully, this article helps you better understand that marketing, be it traditional or digital, requires a well thought out plan and campaign brief. These considerations if stated clearly and thought out well, will help you shape your brand’s success not just in that campaign alone, but also for the future.
