5 Reasons Why Just Enough is Not Enough for Marketing Campaigns

You’ve just had a brilliant idea for a marketing campaign and you can’t wait to get cracking. But before you rush into it… STOP! Have you established whether your campaign will achieve the desired result? If you haven’t thought through the whole marketing funnel end to end and done the requisite research and testing, your “marketing” may end up being little more than an expensive tax write-off. When it comes to effective marketing, there are no shortcuts. Campaigns that are “thrown together”  without any research or strategy behind them simply won’t work. Why? The marketplace is noisy, consumers are bombarded with messages and are becoming increasingly adept at ignoring anything deemed irrelevant or uninteresting. Think about it: how many marketing emails have you already deleted today? While it’s never been easier to reach out to potential customers, it’s also never been easier to end up unread and in the trash. Here’s how to ensure your marketing messages cut through the noise and get noticed: 1. Look at the cost per lead. When planning any marketing activity, don’t be tempted to do it too quickly, cheaply or without sufficient preparation and implementation. A “cheap” corner-cutting marketing activity that doesn’t generate any leads is absolutely a false economy. It’s better to consider your marketing spend in terms of cost per lead: A $2,000 strategic, well-planned and implemented campaign that generates 50 leads is a good investment. A $500 ad-hoc spend that generates one lead is simply a waste of money. 2. Invest in thorough research and testing. For every single marketing activity you do – from setting up a LinkedIn page to planning your content marketing or eDM – it’s vital to first invest time and/or money in strategising, planning, researching and testing your message. Optimising the campaign will optimise your spend and generate quality leads. 3. Ready, aim… then fire. When planning your marketing activity, look at who you’re targeting, what’s motivating them, how to target them, what messaging they will respond to best. Pinpoint the right technology, the right frequency and timing, the right channels, the right steps in the process to funnel them, the right design, layout, words, imagery and call to action. Think about the benefits you’re offering them and provide some valid reasons to act. Recently we had a client who rushed to just get an email out then wondered why he didn’t get the results he wanted. Whilst it would have taken more time and money, he could have greatly improved his results and ROI if he had done some of the additional marketing steps such as A/B testing the email to see which version provided the best results, sent it at the optimal time and day, had a stronger call to action, developed a targeted landing page to click through to, developed auto responder emails, etc. It may seem more expensive and time consuming to do the full marketing strategy and funnel but at the end of the day, if you rush it or cut corners and don’t get the results, isn’t that more of a waste of a money? 4. Groundwork and infrastructure Campaign preparation includes mapping out every step of the marketing funnel or campaign process as well as building systems to manage and nurture the leads as they respond to your message. According to Hubspot, nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads. Have you set up a proper landing page to funnel eDM leads through to? Can they sign up or purchase there as part of the campaign? Do you have email responders, additional offers or a process for capturing the prospects that drop off along the way? Once they purchase or become a lead, have you got the process in place to manage and deliver the service/product/offer? 5. Monitor Once your fully-optimised campaign rolls out, don’t just cross your fingers and hope for the best. Keep a close eye on your analytics; pay attention to the results you are getting and fine tune your campaign as required to continue to optimise the results. Don’t just fire once and hope it works. Plan a follow-up campaign in a timely manner. Marketing takes effort and momentum. You need to give it time and continue to review and improve your marketing activities to improve your results. The key take-away here is that with marketing, there are no short-cuts and “just enough” is never enough. Seriously consider putting in the extra time and money to make sure your strategy and implementation is right, and reap the dividends.