10 Things Marketing and Comms strategists use to build campaigns

Whenever we meet with potential clients, there are several questions we use to figure out how to build a marketing and communications strategy and tactical campaign program. You may find many strategy firms have a questionaire enabled in their online forms. We’ve previously posted about what to consider when flushing out a PR and Marketing strategy. But you also need to know what your strategists consider (there is overlap) when vetting clients and building your strategy.

This helps set a precedent for what companies should be thinking about when hiring a consulting firm. It also helps the consulting firm weed out those who either haven’t thought seriously about their goals and objectives (opened human and financial resources to support their goals) or who don’t have the budget to hire the firm in the first place (using pitch solicitation to get free advice or a plan).

Here are some of the things a marketing and communications strategist will want to know:

1. Understanding targets and objectives for the company. This is VERY IMPORTANT to the success of a campaign.

• Is this brand-driven, product-driven or driven by the existing public interest/profile of the executives and/or investors?

• If brand or product-driven, who is the target audience: end-user, customer (not always the same), investors or other businesses/government entities?

• If investors are the target, how long is your runway and do you have an investor relations strategy in place? Is your company READY for investment?

• Is it ego-driven? RED FLAG. It’s one thing to leverage the influence of high-profile executives and use your brand name investors as validation, and to build traction. But these things need to support your greater purpose, not the other way around.

2. Purpose. Establishing the purpose you serve to targets (angle and messaging) is critical to campaign development. These are your known market opportunities. If you need help with this, THAT’S OKAY. You just have to be clear that this is an area you want covered under the consulting agreement.

3. CRM. Related to point 2, have you built a Customer Relationship Management process, or more simply put, a list of people and demographic groups who would be receptive to the messaging and/or who need your product/service? What market research and data do you have to support this? If you aren’t currently tracking the relationship-building/retention process, you’re leaving valuable data, such as sales, brand affinity and partner cycles on the table (i.e. how long it takes from 1st contact to sale). The strategist uses this to understand whether their time will go into business development or establishing processes.

4. Competitors. Who are your current competitors? What are the possible threats to market entry and growth? What are your strengths and weaknesses as they relate to your competitor? To your markets? Everyone has a competitor. Whether this is an entity with a similar product/service or an area of industry where folks currently place their eyeballs and purchases (or where they DON’T place their eyeballs and purchases), establishing where you fit into the market and, importantly, where you don’t fit into the market, compared to real or perceived competitors, is very important to the development of market entry and growth initiatives.

Next, we take a look at market channels: Owned, Paid, Earned.

• Owned channels are defined as your OWN assets. This can include your site, your product and online service, readership (newsletters, mailing lists, CRM), social media handles… essentially anything you have full control over.

• Paid channels are activations you PAY to gain visibility, loyalty and brand/product advocates, whether through advertising, keyword acquisition, tradeshow or industry/consumer event sponsorship and attendance, giveaways, endcap positioning at retail (or higher visibility within an online marketplace).

• Earned channels are visibility and validation you EARN through media, word of mouth and other non-paid brand and reputation activities. Make no mistake, however, earned does not always mean free. You may need to engage in-house team (salary, in-house budget, the team’s time), external firms/consultants (managed by someone in-house with budget for fees and materials), product trials and giveaways (influencer kits, discounts or free products/ services offered to gain advocates, users and inevitably customers), newswire fees, travel, logistics, production and other expenses.

Then, we look at building the Marketing and Communications strategy, tactics for the campaigns

5. Client + Market data. The strategist will then leverage market knowledge, the client’s objectives/goals and resources (human, financial, other) to identify the biggest opportunities on behalf of the client, supported by the channel activations (and tasks) most likely to create and/or capture those opportunities efficiently and effectively.

6. Multi-channel activations. Your strategy will either center solely on one big channel bet or, more likely, take a multi-channel approach, incorporating elements and activations (and tools) across paid and earned media. How it is formulated depends on the resources needed vs. the resources available. Your owned media will ALWAYS be a significant part of every campaign. A tangible multi-channel campaign example could include PR/media relations, mixed with high value event sponsorships and a product trial campaign. It could also be keyword capture campaigns, end-cap or check-out retail activations and influencer engagement.

7. Momentum. Once the campaign begins, each small win will roll into bigger wins to establish momentum. Having a strategy in place to build on momentum is as critical to success as the activations themselves. A lot of young companies make the mistake of doing stunts for attention. While this can be effective, stunts without strategy are squandered opportunities.

8. Adaptation. No matter how similar a campaign feels, and what best practices are implemented, each client is different and small shifts or variations in markets can lead a successful campaign for one company to yield significantly different results in another. Adaptability and iteration are key here. Using market research, feedback and monitoring current events, combined with agility to adapt to opportunities that present themselves, lead to greater campaign successes.

9. Tracking. Establishing Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) with initiatives tagged by Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) help your consultants and teams monitor the progress, successes and failures of individual initiatives, as well as the health and successes of the overall campaigns. OKRs and KPIs are established and measured by all parties involved in managing and executing campaigns.

10. Alignment. One of the largest determining factors of a campaign’s success, other than resources and timeliness, is the alignment between the client, the strategist, the campaign and the market. The client and strategist must communicate openly and honestly, trusting each other to do their respective roles effectively. If there is misalignment in goals, timelines, workflow and/or vision, it’s important to correct this early, monitor closely, leave room for improvement, or failing all of that, know when to call it off gracefully.

Now that you know how all of this works, why not reach out to us to craft and execute your g2m and growth strategy! You can count on straightforward input, creative strategy and diligent execution. We look forward to elevating your market potential.