We caught up with Catherine Lynch, Campaigns Manager at Reach. 

 

With 20 years of marketing experience under her belt, Catherine is expertly placed to share advice & guidance on creating your next marketing campaign.

 

Q: What are the initial steps you recommend when planning a marketing campaign? 

A: The first thing I suggest you do when planning a campaign is to create a campaign proposal document that answers the What, Why, Where, Who & When. You should have a definitive answer for each question, and if you don’t, it may be worth re-evaluating the need for a campaign.

• What is the desired outcome of your campaign? Do your campaign goals align with the broader business objectives?
• Why are you planning a campaign – what is the opportunity?
• Who is your target audience? What are their typical pain points & objectives?
• When do you plan to launch your campaign? Is it time sensitive to coincide with seasonal events or the launch of new products?
• Where do you want your campaign to feature? What channels & formats are relevant to your target audience and campaign message?

A campaign proposal is also a really useful document to refer back to, to make sure your outputs meet the goals and objectives you’ve set out.

 

Q: How do you tailor your campaign’s message to resonate with your target audience? 

A: Identifying & understanding the typical pain points and goals of your target audience allows you to create campaign content and messaging that is tailored to their needs. Remember to adapt your tone of voice and style to reflect your brand and to influence your audience. You may have a different tone & style if you’re communicating to different types of groups, e.g. you might use a casual & friendly tone for a B2C audience, and an informative, persuasive tone for a B2B audience. 

 

Q: What criteria do you use to set objectives for your marketing campaigns, and why are they crucial? 

A: This is where spending time to develop a campaign proposal really helps to clearly set out your campaign objectives. Marketing objectives should be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant & Time-bound. If your campaign goal is, for example, to increase newsletter sign ups then your objective should give details on how you’re going to achieve this. 

 

Q: From your experience, what are common stumbling blocks in crafting a campaign and how do you navigate them? 

A: When planning and running a campaign, you may come across some of these common stumbling blocks:

• Resources; do you have people on your team that have the skills, knowledge & capacity to help achieve campaign objectives? Based on the clear goals you set, be realistic on what can be done in-house and what you may need to outsource.
• Flexibility; you can have your campaign planned to the micro-detail and have everything in place ready to go, but you should be prepared to expect the unexpected and adapt plans. Working in advance as much as possible gives you wiggle room to react to changes.

 

Q: How do you define and measure success? 

A: Again, this comes back to following the roadmap you set out in the campaign proposal with your  clear goals and objectives. For example, if your goal was to increase online restaurant reservations by 15% in February, did you track the booking page conversions, measure the referrals (the channels you used in your campaign), record the number of bookings compared to previous months? This will tell you a – if you achieved your goal and b – how you achieved your goal.

Outside of the various metrics & numbers it’s also worth reviewing campaign content that has resonated with your target audience and see if you can repurpose it or create similar content for future campaigns.

 

Q: With digital marketing continuously evolving, how do you adapt your planning process for flawless campaign execution? 

A: It’s always a good idea to be aware of emerging trends & technological advances, however, don’t feel pressured into using something just because it is new or trending. You should always ask yourself if it is relevant to your target audience. If not, then don’t use it for the sake of it.

With that said, for developments that are relevant to the audience you wish to target, don’t be afraid to test things out and set aside a budget to get a good indication of how it might work for your business.

 

Q: Finally, what are three key points to remember when it comes to campaign planning?

• Keep abreast of opportunities that are relevant to your business that you should plan a campaign for, e.g. you have an events space that can host parties and are aware that people start searching for “Christmas party venues” in August. Work backwards from this date so your campaign is running for when people are starting to research.
• Set out clear objectives and goals – this will help you stay on track & measure your campaign performance.
• Identify & understand your target audience’s pain points & objectives & how your product / service can help. This is essential when it comes to producing relevant campaign content & messaging that resonates.

 

Let the experts help

We have a team of experienced experts available to create your perfect campaign – allowing you to concentrate on managing your business. We can create custom campaigns to suit all budgets and have the resources to do the research into what works and when, within your area of business.

Get in touch with us now by completing the short form below, and one of our team will be in touch.