Creating an effective marketing campaign is every agency’s goal. Sometimes, though, whether because of the topic or another reason, a marketing campaign may be more challenging than usual. Perhaps the product itself is tricky to sell, or the target audience is difficult to pinpoint.
While such challenges may make a campaign more difficult, they can make a successful result all the more rewarding. Plus, challenging marketing projects provide insights that can be valuable for agencies in the future. We asked 12 members of Forbes Agency Council to relate a uniquely challenging campaign they’ve worked on and how they benefited from the experience.
Members of Forbes Agency Council detail lessons learned from tackling particularly challenging marketing campaigns.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. Focus On The Final Product
A client was developing an app that was going to solve a major problem for drivers. We truly believed that the app, as described to us, would do that. As our campaign took shape, many of the promised features started getting cut. By launch, the app was so diluted that our campaign didn’t match the product. Lesson: Make sure you can adjust goals based on the actual product your client delivers. – Lucas Miller, Shop Marketing and Creative Group
2. Keep Your Ears Close To The Ground
With prescriptions a necessity, women had no relationship with the leading prescription brand. At the same time, the over-the-counter category was exploding, stealing market share. To tackle the challenge, we engaged hundreds of pregnant moms to uncover category misperceptions, which became the core of our marketing approach. Rule of thumb: The more complex the challenge, the closer to the ground your ears need to be. – Joanne McKinney, Burns Group
3. Have A Disciplined Process
A few years ago a client asked us to help someone with great potential at their firm to become a thought leader. The problem was that this person really didn’t want to do it, and we found it hard to work with them. But we followed a disciplined process and hammered it out. Four years later, this person leads a key division at their firm and is a recognized thought leader. What a turnaround! – Randy Shattuck, The Shattuck Group
4. Create Authentic Content
We’ve been asked to develop influencer campaigns for some of the trickiest health-related topics, including incontinence, hair loss, rosacea, IBS, etc. Ironically, we often find that these topics are among the most successful we tackle. Audiences want authenticity, and when influencers approach awkward topics with honesty and integrity, audiences respond, resulting in high levels of engagement. – Danielle Wiley, Sway Group
5. Find Your Angle
Some of the most challenging campaigns stem from clients who have a one-of-a-kind or niche product. A few months ago we started working with a client who produces golf simulation products (not exactly an impulse purchase). With industry research and some trial-and-error, we have been able to produce an impressive return on investment. The lesson? Do your research and find your angle. There is always an angle. – Bernard May, National Positions
6. Focus On Quality Over Quantity
We developed a strategy to bring key market players to the online playing field through digital advertisement. A week into the strategy, we were able to see that our ads were bringing in great numbers but poor leads! We pivoted to a platform that supported our position while increasing our budget to bring in fewer, more qualified leads. Point taken: quality over quantity. – Evangeline Sutton, Regenerative Marketing LLC
7. Think Outside The Box
We had a client contract us to get his son into medical school. The idea was to create a public relations campaign around a device the kid had invented and then create Facebook advertisements that would target administrative staff. The campaign was wildly successful and goes to show that with the right amount of research, you can use digital marketing to truly connect your business with the right people. – Kristopher Jones, LSEO.com
8. Hire The Right People
I once worked on sites with 15 languages for 15 different countries. That was challenging. Each country has its unique nuances when it comes to search behavior and keyword search volumes. My advice regarding such campaigns would be to hire people in multiple countries so that you can manage the language barriers and make sure that the strategy is on point, no matter what country you target. – Solomon Thimothy, OneIMS
9. Focus On Giving Back
Some of the most rewarding campaigns are for companies that focus on corporate social responsibility causes in their business practice. Hyper-cost efficiency and creativity are needed in campaign management to effectively garner the awareness needed to help support a great cause and are also always worthwhile when changing lives for the better. – Jessica Hawthorne-Castro, HAWTHORNE LLC
10. Leverage Private Boards And Anonymous Q&As
We’ve done projects focused on subjects many consider “private,” like adult diapers or hearing aids. First, more people are willing to share openly on these topics than you think, particularly when they want others to experience something transformational, as they did. That said, this is where functionality like private Pinterest boards and anonymous Quora questions work well for these audiences. – Elissa Liu, Influential Executive
11. Focus On The Facts
We had a client come to us to promote an herbal supplement that helped with male “performance.” It was tricky because there are so many ways to market this incorrectly. Ultimately, we focused on the core attributes of the product—the fact that it was 100% all-natural and affordable versus the alternatives—and created a money-back guarantee promising the product’s performance. Just focus on the facts. – David Kley, Web Design and Company
12. Never Give Up
One of our clients, an HR tech company, wanted us to somehow get their outplacement solution free publicity around the Super Bowl—no small feat. Outplacement is about jobs, so we did some research and found a correlation between Super-Bowl-winning cities and unemployment rates. This PR campaign has since been covered by CNN, ESPN, CNBC and hundreds of other news outlets. The lesson is to never give up. – Scott Baradell, Idea Grove
