There are lots of different elements to marketing. Most people are aware that they need a brand, and that they should be communicating with customers and utilising numerous channels. But when was the last time you actually planned a proactive marketing campaign? If you’re looking to generate lots of leads, this could be exactly what you need.
When I say marketing campaign, what I’m referring to is a specific promotion. It could be driven by a change in the business, such as launching a new product or service. Or it could be more strategic in that you are offering a short term discount to try to drum up sales. Whatever it is, running a short term focused campaign can create a big spike in interest from your customers.
Deciding on the Campaign
Before you do anything else, you need to know why you want to do this, and everything needs to be sharply focused on achieving your goal here. So is this to launch a new product or service, or has business been dropping and you could do with a boost in sales, or perhaps you’re trying to get rid of that excess stock that’s clogging up the corner of your warehouse? There could be dozens of reasons as to what you want to achieve. You need to decide how a campaign could be useful for you.
The Hook
Once you know what you want to achieve, next you need to decide how you’re going to achieve it. You need something to hook in people’s interest. This is a short term campaign that needs to work alongside your longer term plans. So you still need to think about your brand and your overall messaging. This is just a catchy interim activity to give you a boost.
If you’re launching a new product, perhaps you could give the first 100 customers a discount. If you’re looking to get in more leads, perhaps you could run a competition. Short term price promotions or freebie giveaways work well. But whatever you choose, it needs to help you achieve your goals and it needs to complement your existing marketing activity. Don’t do something so random that it confuses your audience.
The Message
Once you know what you’re doing, you need to put together the content. You need a catchy title to grab attention, the right words to entice your audience, a strong call to action to end with, and lots of inspiring visuals. You need to put it all together so it feels exciting and it sends out the message that this is short term. A sense of urgency is a great thing. Playing upon that human element of ‘fear of missing out’ can work really well.
To find out more about the best way to carve out your message, please see my blog on Creating a Marketing Message.
Channels
When you’ve got all the elements together, it’s only now you think about how to send that message out there. You want to send it out in as many ways as possible, covering every possible avenue that could give you success. What to do and how to do it is a massive subject in itself, so I’ve covered that in my blog Choosing Your Channels, but the basic thing to do is spread the word far and wide.
Monitor Results
The final thing you must do is check how things are progressing. How many people have visited your website and how many people have taken advantage of your offer? Which channels worked best and which, if any, didn’t work at all? The more you learn, the more power you’ll have to tweak things in the future.
Follow Up
The last bit of advice I can give you is to follow up on your leads with your new customers. If you’ve got a lot of interested people, make sure you have a plan on how to convert them. Book a phone call, a meeting or send them information. Whatever it is, keep in touch with them. Especially if they’ve bought your discounted item. How can you get them to buy more?
This campaign might be a focused short term activity to boost lead generation or sales, but it’s time to think now how you can make all these new opportunities work more for you in the long run. In marketing, it’s important to learn from the past and think forward. If your campaign was a success, that’s great. But don’t now lose that momentum.
At Lindsay Woodward Marketing we can help you build short term focused campaigns. If you’d like more information, please get in touch.
