Some handy hints on how to make sure your marketing campaign delivers on your strategic goals and how Turbine Creative can help you reach your targets.
The competition for marketing impact amongst a sea of promotional content is more fierce than ever. There are more channels for delivery, more digital tools, AI insights and automated content creation tools that are vying for your customer's attention (this post is 100% human-generated, in case you were wondering 😉 ).
In order to make your marketing campaign count you need to ensure each stage of your journey is planned and then delivered intelligently and with superb execution.
STAGE ONE: CREATE MARKETING STRATEGY
This may seem like an oversimplification or clichéd truism but in the words of Benjamin Franklin "By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
– Prioritise Planning
With demand for marketing content moving at breakneck speed, it's often tempting to gloss over this strategy stage and move straight into content creation. However, if you haven't established your goals and KPIs how will you know what success looks like?
– A Roadmap for the Team
By creating a marketing strategy you should have walked through each stage of your marketing campaign journey and highlighted what needs doing when. Now you have your strategy in place you can engage other team members earlier and ensure they know what their roles are.
– Opportunity to put learning into operation
In the creation of your campaign strategy you can also implement learnings from previous campaigns. You can adjust what didn't work well and double-down on what was a success.
STAGE TWO: GET STAKEHOLDERS COMMITTED
Most of the greatest marketing campaigns were not overnight successes. They were the result of getting stakeholder buy-in (both internal and within their target demographic) over many months or even years. But we appreciate in this fast-paced world you may not have the luxury of time! So how do you fast-track stakeholder buy-in?
– Make a personal connection with your team
When chatting through your proposal, meet in person wherever possible. Make it fun, sell the 'sizzle, not the sausage' as the old phrase goes. On the whole, your staff will love hearing about new ideas so really sell it to them with enthusiasm and energy.
– Include them in the creation of your strategy.
Nothing connects stakeholders more to a campaign than creating a sense of ownership. If you have enabled your staff, customers, researchers and C-suite team to be part of the strategies creation they will feel proud, connected and invested in what is to follow.
– Commitment = Budget
If you want to deliver a powerful multi-channel marketing campaign chances are you will need to be funded for this as well! By developing stakeholder buy-in at the earliest stage you will also have demonstrated the importance of funding the project to the right people. You will also be top-of-mind as they consider what projects to allocate funding to as the time arises.
STAGE THREE: CREATE IMPACTFUL CONTENT
This is where the rubber really hits the road. If your content is powerful enough you can lift every other stage of your marketing campaign. Brilliant content increases stakeholder buy-in, creates organic distribution AND enables your KPIs to be reached more easily.
– Be Bold and Brave
Wherever possible, push your creative partner to create content that is distinctive and stands out. Conservative 'me-too' content, although re-assuring and expected, doesn't do much to portray a sense of innovation and unique positioning. Even if you are creating content that needs to feel corporate think about delivering it in a fresh new way. See our Mission 2025 case study for example:
– Consider multiple platforms
Make sure your creative theme is versatile and distinctive enough to be rolled out across all channels from digital, video, print and even experiential. If the idea is not powerful enough, or you don't have the required digital assets, it won't work across all possible channels, such as digital, video, print and even experiential. Check out our work with the NHS and Johnson and Johnson to see how our creative was used across digital, print and video. You can watch a teaser of the video content below:
– Identify the differentiating factor and focus on that
Chances are you are marketing within a highly competitive sector so you need to identify your strongest differentiator and push that (and the obvious benefits of your service) to the forefront of your marketing content. When creating a brief for your creative partner make sure they take onboard the most critical benefits of your product and highlight these in any creative work they do. Have a look at our work for IDEM Safety switches to see how we focussed on their more progressive digital network capabilities and the adaptability of their product in this promotional video which you can watch below.
STAGE FOUR: DELIVER CONTENT EFFICIENTLY
So you’ve made it this far, all there is left to do is get your marketing content out into the world. Drop it on YouTube and on your website and away we go! A viral sensation is on its way 😜. Not quite. As with each stage of this process your competition for attention and challenge will be huge and HOW you deliver your marketing message can be as critical as WHAT you deliver.
– Pay or not to Pay?
As we’re all well aware there are a huge amount of free platforms we can promote our service on. Everything from the usual social media giants to our own websites, affiliate and partner websites, e-shots and video channels. These are all obviously central to any successful multi-channel campaigns.
However, how they succeed on these open platforms depends on how many people see and engage with your content. If you have a huge following of adoring fans that’s a great start. But if you are trying to push a niche (or new) product to a less-engaged audience you may need to inject some funds into a pay-per-click Google promotion or Youtube/LinkedIn/Instagram advertising for example.
There are many ways to increase your campaigns visibility and that is a whole other subject in itself - but when engagement and views are critical to the success of your campaign it’s a question well worth asking.
– Know where your audience is
Put simply, understand what platform would be the most successful at reaching your target demographic. Gardeners over 65 would probably not be checking out TikTok for tips on what greenhouse to buy next, but they might be on Instagram or reading print adverts in Gardener's World magazine. Consider the most powerful channel to connect with your audience.
– Explore innovative channels of promotion
Consider other innovative ways to build momentum for your campaign. This doesn’t necessarily mean building a VR or AR enhanced experience of your product or creating a unique NFT to highlight the artistry and unique nature of your product (although it may do!).
It could mean getting industry PR on an interesting story related to your product, or attending an event and presenting your campaign in a creative way, speaking as a thought leader at a industry conference, creating an experiential campaign or developing a unique printed document or piece of merchandise that your customer’s can physically hold and keep visible in their working space. The opportunities for delivering your campaign content in an innovative way are almost endless.
We hope that this article has given you some food for thought and useful tips on delivering a successful multi-channel campaign. Here at Turbine Creative we are passionate about helping our customers find and communicate their full potential through multiple, different channels. Whether that be through video, animation, digital or print solutions.