Creatives love nothing more than coming up with novel content for your campaigns, but as fun as brainstorming the next madcap viral content idea is, a creative marketing agency should first consider a number of other key elements to ensure the success of a campaign. 

Here’s a step-by-step guide to laying the foundations of a successful and powerful advertising campaign that delivers results. 

What’s The Purpose Of The Campaign?

At the outset, it’s crucial to nail down a clear purpose and set of goals for the campaign. Sounds obvious, but it’s amazing how easily this part gets lost in the throes of creating novel campaign content.  

What are the goals of the campaign, brand retention, conversions? Ensure that you have an appropriate primary goal in front of mind throughout the process – how is everything that you enact driving towards serving your goal. 

Consider Your Audience 

With your goals in mind, consider your audience, who are they and how do they relate to you? Split your audience into groups:

Known – people you have interacted with before and want to retain.

vs

New – those that you are looking to acquire and interact with for the first time.

Converting these two groups will likely take different approaches, consider how your campaign can encompass both groups, sometimes the best value is delivered by focusing on just one. 

You will also need to figure out which channel(s) they are active on, perhaps it’s a combination, and the next level is finding their particular niches. From here you can start to figure out timings and the cadence of your content, based on audience activity. 

Collect and consider all the data you can, this data will inform future activity such as re-targeting, either during the current campaign or in the future.

Which Channel(S)? 

Your audience research should indicate which channel(s) to focus your campaign on. However, just because a portion of your audience frequents a particular channel, it doesn’t necessarily mean that’s where you should be engaging them.

Sound counter-intuitive? Bear with us – part-one in accessing the use of a channel is locating your audience, true. Part-two however, is accessing what value you can offer in the format that channel requires.

Do you have the capacity for the required content type? More to the point, does it make sense for your brand to join the conversation there, in that style? Perhaps your efforts are best saved for a more natural fit.

Once you have your channel(s) selected you will start to consider how best to use them. What are the current trends, will they last, will you prioritise your own content or speak through influencers? 

If engaging with influencers, choose wisely, they can be hugely effective but come at the risk of high costs for little output and a lack of control.

The best practice is to work with micro-influencers, who work in niches, enabling you to surgically target your audience to great effect at a lower cost.

If you can access these niches effectively without influencer support, great, you’ll maintain control of the content and your message much more effectively. 

Measurement 

Unlock the potential of your data with a clear understanding of the metrics that you are chasing. They’re the proof-points of your campaign and will provide early warning if things aren’t working. 

These metrics will be aligned with your primary purpose or goals. Are you interested in reach and impressions, or are click-throughs, sales and sign-ups more your goal? 

Ignore quick wins or vanity metrics and nail down the metrics and how you relate to them so that everyone focuses on the same proof-points, relying on them as objective feedback. 

Remember that some channels will provide more or less access to relevant data, and the waters are further muddied when operating through influencers – something to factor into your campaign approach.

Tools 

Time to set up your toolkit – the platforms you are going to use to deliver, manage and measure your campaign? This is important to set up at the outset, allowing you to control cadence and measure results with consistency. Sounds obvious but it’s amazing how often simple things are forgotten at the outset that is very hard to recover later on. 

Key examples here are to set up your analytics software and tracking (pixels etc.) for reporting and measurement purposes, as well as testing any scheduling tools you intend to use. 

There are a plethora of online platforms available, serving a variety of needs at varying levels of detail, so make sure to shop about and find the ones that can deliver your needs.

Crafting content 

Time to release the creative marketing agency on the fun bit – content! Keeping that core purpose ever-present in mind, it’s finally time to start crafting engaging content that will cut through the noise and deliver your goals. 

You now have a framework of goals, audience, channels and tools to work within, keeping your big idea on-track. If the creative concept feels stifled by this framework, just remember why it is there and embrace the challenge of moulding it to fit. 

When it comes to campaign content, here are a few things to keep in mind: 

Tone & Voice – stay true to your core brand and guidelines, it can be easily lost when chasing the latest trends or styles – stay recognisable! 

Purpose – is the content just cool or is it cool while also serving your campaign needs?

Hero, hub, hygiene – use a variety of content types, delivered tactically with big tentpole pieces supported by engaging detail and quick snackable content, maintaining the momentum and message of your campaign without flooding your audience.

Paid + Organic – it doesn’t have to be one or the other, craft engaging organic content pieces that work hard alongside your big paid moments, allowing the two approaches to complement each other.

3rd party content – does it add value to your brand and mission? If so, free content is great, but consider the journey you are sending your audience on, a partnership with 3rd parties can be more productive and allow you to retain some control. 

The journey – how does your content work together to trigger effective customer journey’s? Use your data capture to access these journeys and tie off loose ends, or head down new routes you may not have considered before. 

CTAs – have a clear call to action, you have gained their attention, don’t waste it! Remember, keep the purpose in front of mind at all times.

 

Author Bio:

Jack Shepherdson:

With a love of advertising and branding, Jack Shepherdson is uberbrand’s Digital Coordinator. Experienced across the digital landscape, Jack specialises in producing digital campaigns and projects.