Creating sales and marketing campaigns that work
Tying everything together to create a successful campaign
In this blog, we will show you how to create a successful campaign plan.
A successful campaign should:
a) Find the prospects you’re most likely to convert.
b) Help move those ready to buy through to their purchasing decision with as little friction as possible.
c) For prospects that are not yet ready to commit, position your organization as experts in the field, so that they will want to work with you when they are ready. Highlight topical subjects such as the competitive advantages gained by changing from the way things are done now.
If you’ve been following our previous blog posts and have already put together an Ideal Customer Profile (those customers most likely to buy from you) and your Key Messaging Document (describing the business pains of these customers along with how you can help them), you’re already in great shape to think about running effective campaigns that drive new business.
Start with the customer journey
At each stage of the customer journey, multiple stakeholders will often be involved. Each will have questions that need answering before the project can move forward.
While the questions each persona asks will be dependent on who is asking the question, which industry they’re from, and where they are on their journey, the questions a prospect has can be usually broken down into the following topics:
Embryonic (Awareness Stage)
1. What problems are we trying to solve (alternatively, what competitive benefits do we want to gain)?
2. Who else in our industry has addressed this?
Why change (Interest Stage)
3. Why do we need to change?
4. How urgent is it we implement this change?
5. What will happen/keep happening if we don’t change?
Which vendors should we engage with (Consideration & Engagement Stages)
6. Who in the market provides potential solutions?
7. How do industry analysts and other customers rate the different vendors in this space?
8. Which of these potential options offer the best fit and greatest advantage for our requirements?
9. How can we prove which solutions will work for us?
Internal discussions (Decision stage)
10. Which champions support and who opposes the different options?
11. What benefits will we see? What is the expected ROI and how quickly will we see it?
12. What are the risks of failure?
This list isn’t meant to be exhaustive and you should talk to your customers to understand what questions they have at each stage of their journey, along with what type of content would satisfy the questions they have most easily.
Building an effective campaign plan
Remember the pain points (and benefits) might be different from one stakeholder to another (i.e. the Head of Manufacturing might be measured on operational efficiency, whereas the CFO will be concerned about the knock-on impact manufacturing efficiency is having on profitability).
For a campaign to be successful, you need to help your prospects answer the questions each have at every stage of their journey. An effective campaign plan takes a structured approach to communicating with the differing people within your prospects based on:
Who the prospect is and their typical pain points.
Where they are on their journey (this can be most likely calculated based on the most recent interactions you’ve had with them e.g. have they just clicked on a LinkedIn advert or are they requesting specific information from your website?).
Who you’re speaking to within that customer and their individual pain points.
The typical questions they are trying to address at that stage of their journey.
1. Set Clear Goals
A successful marketing campaign starts with clear, measurable goals. Define what you want to achieve, and ensure your goals are:
Specific: Clearly define what you want to accomplish, such as increasing website traffic, generating leads, or accelerating the sales cycle.
Measurable: Establish quantifiable metrics to track progress, such as a 20% increase in website traffic.
Achievable: Ensure your objectives are realistic and aligned with your resources and budget.
Relevant: Align your objectives with your overall business strategy and goals.
Time-bound: Establish a specific timeline for achieving your objectives.
2. Describe your Unique Value Proposition
You need to be able to differentiate your offerings from competitors. Make sure you have a unique value proposition (see ‘Why your Key Messaging is vital’) that clearly communicates why your customers should choose you over your competitors:
Identify your unique strengths: Highlight your strengths, such as fast-time-to-value, exceptional customer service, or industry expertise.
Understand your competitors: Analyze your competitors' strengths and weaknesses to identify areas for differentiation.
Craft a compelling message: Develop a clear, concise message that communicates your unique value proposition that resonates with your target audience.
3. Choose the right marketing channels/media for your audience
Find out from your customers where they go to gather information.
Use your ideal customer profile and the personas from your key messaging document to define your targeting criteria. With a solid understanding of your target market, their goals, and your value proposition, you need to choose the most effective marketing channels to reach and engage with your audience including:
Social media: Use social media platforms to build brand awareness, engage with your audience, and drive website traffic.
Email marketing: Build targeted email lists and craft compelling campaigns that nurture leads and drive conversions.
Paid advertising: Utilize targeted online advertising, such as Google Ads or LinkedIn Ads, to reach your target audience and drive conversions.
Event marketing: Host webinars, conferences, or trade shows to build brand awareness, and generate leads.
4. Define what you need to do at each stage of your customers’ journey
At this point, you’ll know the typical questions being asked by the different personas within your customer base and can figure out roughly where they are in their journey based on the interactions you’ve had with them.
High-value sales are seldom as simple as a customer viewing an advert on LinkedIn, clicking on it to go to a landing page to get more information, and then proceeding to purchase (although you might find this approach useful alongside your other campaign activities when ‘Lighting Fires’).
This will help you define a flow diagram of how you plan to support your prospects’ journey along with the content you need to create to move them forward (see a generic example below):
An example campaign plan
In this flow diagram, customers can enter the funnel through more than one channel (in this case: LinkedIn, Google and banner ads, supported by press activities). Through retargeting, once they have shown a level of interest, they can be shown additional ads to make your business stand out and remain top-of-mind.
Once they have engaged with you, it’s a matter of supporting them throughout their buying process. The keys are to make sure they understand the need to change, the cost to them of not changing and that you’re willing to work with them in a way that supports their buying process while getting them to a point they are seeing business value faster than your competitors.
5. Create Engaging Content
Content is a cornerstone of a successful campaign. Develop content that resonates with your target audience, addresses their questions, and communicates your value proposition. Consider the following options:
Blog posts: Develop informative, well-researched blog posts that address the needs and pain points of your target audience.
Case studies: Create detailed case studies that highlight the successes and challenges of your customers.
Whitepapers: Develop in-depth, informative whitepapers that provide valuable insights and expertise.
ROI studies: Detail the typical return on investment your customers have seen under different scenarios.
Videos: Create engaging, informative videos that showcase your products, services, or expertise.
6. Measure
To ensure the success of your marketing campaign, it's essential to track, measure, and optimize your results. Consider the following:
Establish key performance indicators (KPIs): User metrics such as website traffic, cost per click, conversion rates, and number of touch points per sale.
Utilize analytics tools: Leverage tools such as Google Analytics to track and measure your campaign's performance.
Conduct regular campaign analysis: Analyze your campaign's performance, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions to optimize your strategy.
Don’t be afraid to learn by doing: Experiment using a/b testing to find which finely tuned messages work best. However, until they are proven, limit their budget!
Conclusion
A structured approach benefits both you and your customers. By focusing on the most profitable customers that are easiest to win, you invest far less effort on those that aren’t easy to convert and, ultimately, buy.
By the same token, focusing on helping your prospects get to their destination as quickly as possible, the faster they will see business value from your product and the quicker they will buy.
By definition, you know these are your best customers, most likely to convert, so you know it’s worth investing to build the relationship with them.