Create cost-effective agile marketing campaigns (12 steps)

Creating cost-effective agile marketing campaigns

Create cost-effective agile marketing campaigns (in 12 steps). Ensure your campaign creation process enables you to create, test, execute, measure and modify with speed. Use simple automation, minimum viable content, repurpose content, create selfie videos and produce compelling 'company to customer' journey-based calls-to-action. Embrace the transparency and control of digital marketing campaigns; have enough leads, hit the pause button, need more leads, switch the campaigns back-on or turn-up the investment.

If you know what you are aiming to achieve in 2018 sales it is likely you have created a marketing plan to help you deliver success. This plan will detail the enquiries and leads you need each month, at your average or estimated lead to order conversion rates, to achieve your sales targets. Understanding the profile of your demand generation waterfall will help you minimise marketing waste by establishing an optimal focus with your marketing campaigns on targeting, creating and converting business.

Companies with the highest annual revenue report more visitors, leads and sales opportunities than other companies. Use effective campaigns to grow yours.

74% of those that aren't exceeding their revenue goals didn't know their performance against their visitor, lead and sales opportunity metrics (Source: HubSpot).

Once you know your metrics and conversion targets, create in advance your marketing campaign roadmap relating to your marketing plan considering the content you need to create to achieve your desired campaign engagement and to effectively execute. This will allow you to plan the necessary supporting resources.

In addition to having planned campaigns that give you time to build them, agility comes from your ability to move quickly. The best campaigns are frequently those that are created to rapidly respond to something that is happening around us. For example, at one company where I worked, we sold remote working communication solutions so events such as impromptu train strikes represented an opportunity to promote the benefits of remote working. To create a campaign and get the message out to our audience within a few days tested the agility of our processes and our ability to harness resources quickly. 

Whether you are writing an email, posting on social, creating a campaign landing page, wanting to perform on SEO, or planning to run an event, producing engaging content is going to be key to maximise your campaign’s results. When creating content write it so it can be used with small tweaks across all of your marketing channels. Also, consider using Minimum Viable Content (MVC) rather than aiming for content perfection. 50% of all marketing content is wasted (Source: OMI). Repurposing content and using MVC maximises ROI as this article by The Content Marketing Institute describes.

Where possible, create your marketing campaigns so that they are automated and always-on.

By using marketing automation tools, you can focus on your day job with peace-of-mind confidence that your marketing campaign is still busy in the background helping you create leads. Many of the automated tools starting packages are excellent and available for free:

• Schedule in advance your social media posts across all platforms simultaneously by using always-on tools such as Postfity, DlvrIt, Hootsuite, etc.
• Create always-on automated email campaigns using tools such as MailChimp or MailJet.

Also, once you have correctly set up and are confident with the performance of your Google and Bing Advertising campaigns they become always-on further aiding efficient lead generation.

Videos can aid productivity too. Create and link to always-on videos on YouTube or Vimeo to explain your company, products, services and solutions. These videos can effectively support your sales process improving productivity and results. Creating a video with your mobile on a selfie-stick often creates an MVC video that will be acceptable to your prospects. These videos can come across more personal, genuine and sincere, than a typical corporately produced higher cost video, assisting in the creation of trust.

Below are 12-steps to create an agile and cost-effective marketing campaign:

1) Identify a business awareness or sales priority you want to focus on. Give your campaign a clear name and a theme that will emanate through-out everything that is built and communicated in support of achieving the aims of the campaign.

2) Define what you want to achieve; total sales, volumes, the number of new clients, the growth of existing customers, etc.

3) Once you know your target figures work back up through your marketing and sales demand generation funnel to identify the number of sales opportunities, marketing leads and enquiries you need to achieve your targets.

4) Detail the priority audience (e.g. markets, customers and decision makers) from where your success will come.

5) Consider the journey (from discovery, exploration, evaluation through to purchase) your audience will take and ensure your campaign pragmatically addresses the most important steps.

6) Detail how you will efficiently and effectively reach your audience (your marketing channels). Using your targets detail what each channel will contribute to your campaign's overall target. Example marketing channels include:

• Emails
• LinkedIn InMails
• Telemarketing
• Social Media – organic and paid
• Advertising – search and display
• Letters and Direct Mail
• Radio and Television
• Press Relations
• Trade or Consumer Shows
• Events and sponsorship
• Seminars or webinars
• Newsletters (own or others)

7) Reflect on and develop the messaging and content that will be sent through your chosen marketing channels to compel step-by-step action. Content may include such items as:

• Clear and compelling website and campaign landing pages.
• Supporting brochures and flyers whether printed or digital.
• Infographics, videos, eGuides, whitepapers, research papers, fact sheets, etc.
• A quality blog that includes images and links (internal, external & backlinks). See our SEO hints and tips.
• Create numerous emails and social media posts by extracting points and sections from within the blog. Following the engagement with one of your CTAs set up automated email nurtures on MailChimp. Research hashtag trends and include a couple relevant tags in your social posts (e.g. Twitter and LinkedIn).

8) Define what you will say and offer to encourage engagement and purchase and be clear on what actions you are looking for them to take. Create supporting CTAs (calls to action) to encourage them to take steps that build further engagement with your business. Typical CTAs can include (these are just a few examples):

• Download our free eGuide
• Check your strategies now
• Watch our explanatory video
• Download our free infographic
• Register for our newsletter
• Register for our free ‘try-before-your-buy’ offer
• Free assessment
• Use our pain or ROI calculator.

Below is an example Epitomise CTA. Following an online marketing health assessment, the participant receives their personal report. The whole process is automated improving personal productivity.

View test and get report

9) Most people who engage will not be immediately ready to purchase so your CTAs will capture and illustrate their potential interest for respectful engagement and nurturing.

10) Consider adding a sales promo/offer to encourage accelerated progression through their journey and to expedite purchases.

11) Measure, tweak and optimise your campaign constantly for the very best results. Take a ‘test frequently and fail fast’ approach to your campaign modifying, optimising or dropping elements to guide your campaign to the best ingredients to achieve the best results. Once your campaign is optimised if you are using automation you can leave it to run. Ensure you can specifically measure the impact of the campaign versus other marketing activity you may be running.

12) When reflecting upon the build of your campaign identify the 20% of activity that will give you 80% of the results and prioritise your focus on these elements to achieve depth and differentiation. You may find that the best communication channels can also be automated as described above and you can use MVC. The benefit of digital campaigns is not only the detailed transparency, that tools such as Google analytics provide, but also the ability to simply click-a-button to start or pause campaigns. Have enough leads, hit the pause button, need more leads, switch the campaigns back-on or turn-up the investment. Ensure your campaign creation processes allow you to move through the above steps quickly and enable you to create, test, execute, measure and modify with speed.