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In my 15-plus years of creating and running marketing and advertising campaigns, I’ve learned that one thing is always true: Many companies don’t give campaigns enough time to be as successful as they can be. I have had many clients over the years whose strategic marketing and advertising plans have been very successful. These clients create an annual plan, roll out a budget, approve creative and work monthly to improve campaign results. These clients rarely deviate from a plan, and they especially don’t completely turn it upside down.
Here is a list of best practices to apply if you’re not seeing successful marketing and advertising results (assuming you have the Ps in place already):
1. Create a plan. Creating a plan for both your marketing and advertising campaigns has to be compulsory. You must plan! Whether you work with an agency or do your marketing internally, everything starts and stops with your plan. Plan the messaging. Plan the creative. Plan the channels. Plan how you will determine the success or failure of the campaign. Create checkpoints monthly and quarterly. Milestones are important.
2. Create a budget. This is important to stick by. If you create a plan with a budget in mind, any major changes to the budget will potentially cripple your overall campaign. Budget for the campaign as if it’s a line item for rent — a must, not a luxury. Never agree to spend more than you can afford.
3. Stick to the plan. A plan needs to be created and thought of in terms of an annual plan. You must meet monthly with your team or agency partner and decide what tweaks need to be made. Should you spend a little more or less? What have you measured? What needs to be changed inside the campaign? Do not change the campaign plan, just minor elements of it.
4. Hold monthly review meetings. When working with an agency that you don’t have a daily connection with internally, you must meet monthly at least to make sure all milestones and goals are still moving forward as planned. If you neglect these meetings, it will end up being more your fault than anyone else’s if it potentially fails. Be smart about meeting with your agency regularly. Do not neglect this time together. Remember that you agreed to milestone goals on Day One, so give them time to succeed or fail.
5. Trust your decisions. Make sure you are resolute at the onset of a campaign. Do not let a new, shiny toy distract you. There are always going to be outside forces pulling you in different directions about who is better, which products to use, etc. Remember these are salespeople, and once you have started a campaign, let it unfold properly. Trust the decisions made in creating the campaign.
6. There are no silver bullets. If something goes great at the onset, do not try to switch everything up to be more like a singular successful element of the campaign. This is a huge mistake I see a lot of companies making. And the converse works the same — the campaign has many moving parts; let them all come together.
7. Stop trying to be other companies. You must not try to mimic your competitors. If you look at a company and see they do something really well — like SEO, for example — you assume that is what you need to be successful, so you hastily make the decision to focus on SEO instead of seeing it as one element of a larger campaign. This happens far too often for company decision-makers. Many times, many factors are taken for granted. How long have they been in business? How much time and money have they spent growing their brand through advertising and marketing? What are their sales forces like? What about their processes internally? You really don’t have a way of knowing this. If you always focus on being like a competitor, you will never be anything more than a follower with marginal growth.
When To Pivot Or Make Changes To A Campaign
Did you remember to set milestones and benchmarks for success? How are things coming along? Did you say you needed to sell 1,000 widgets in Q1, and at the quarter-pole, you’re only at 200 instead of 250? This doesn’t mean you need to abandon your campaign but check all the markers you set up in your initial planning. Only abandon a campaign when you have objectively missed your sales or campaign goals by agreed set dates. A pivot can be something as simple as changing up the frequency of email blast campaigns or putting a direct response time limit change, or even changing the color of a contact button on your website. Figuratively speaking, a cog in the machine doesn’t make the machine “bad.”
The most important thing in marketing and advertising is consistent brand positioning and advertising channels. Create a plan and stick to it. Do not deviate from planning to act and acting on your plan. If so, you will find yourself becoming the definition of “insanity” very quickly.
