5 tips showing how campaign planning prevents fires

Working in various marketing roles, I have noticed that even though we have advanced with technology to make our jobs easier, we have never been more short of time, with more jobs on our plate, and customers (internal and external) are demanding real-time updates and output work at an ever-increasing pace. When I catch up with my marketing network and ask how it’s going 'I'm fire fighting' is the common response. This article addresses the challenges of getting campaigns off the ground and gives some ideas on avoiding mistakes that I have seen in my roles and network roles over the last 9 years. We all know that integrated campaigns are the key to success, and we have all read and understood the templates that put them together. However, I found that when it was…

Ideas on integrating social media into a marketing campaign

While a campaign focused on social media can add a new dimension to a campaign, large "big bang" investments in social media within a campaign may not always be possible. But if you build in social media from the outset there will always be opportunities to integrate smaller elements of social media marketing into the framework of an existing marketing campaign that has already been approved and underway. ‘Socialising’ a marketing campaign can be an effective way of reaching new audiences and generating conversation around your brand on the back of larger-scale paid media activity.

Why use social media?

One of the first questions to ask at the outset is why social media marketing would be relevant or necessary for the campaign and how it could add value. What could social media achieve that other aspects of the campaign (advertising, PR, experiential) couldn't? Some of the…

Multiple, lightweight interactions will rule in the 'Always-on' future of marketing

The sentiment in the headline is something that we keep seeing - that marketing is rapidly evolving - look at how much people talk about content marketing now compared to only a year ago. It's worth learning from what Paul Adams is advising on this topic;  it's from a different perspective, but with a degree of bias I might add. I'm a very big fan of his recent book, Grouped, a must-read for anyone who takes the future of web-based marketing seriously, hopefully that's you! Paul was until recently, the global head of brand design at Facebook. So hugely credible if not likely a little biased. I first read an article by him in Wired magazine and have enjoyed his articles ever since. This post by Paul on his blog is about the Future…

Setting up the right process and tools to improve sales

Start up brand Tatu Couture design and manufacture luxury British lingerie which is sold through stockists in the UK, Paris and New York. Tatu Couture has a unique vision to push the boundaries of design and innovation with its trend setting luxury lingerie and designer body wear. All their goods are manufactured and hand finished in the UK.

Overview and Digital Strategy

Tonica supported Tatu Couture by creating a four stage strategy to increase digital presence. In addition to the stockist route, Tatu Couture were keen to increase their own direct sales, so we had two simple objectives for the work – to increase visits to tatucouture.com and increase sales from the site.

Social media campaign approach

Step 1 – Take Control Like many small to…

Campaign example: Tesco's  #FindtheEggs campaign

It's nearly Easter, so the perfect time for online campaign to drive footfall into stores competing for shoppers big pre-holiday shop. We thought Tesco's #FindtheEggs campaign was nicely planned and executed, so worth sharing. Here's what we liked:

1. It's a mashup with purpose -using Google Maps

2. It's personalised - you're encouraged to search by postcode.

3. It's easy - needed to encourage sale

4. It's time-limited to encourage action

5. It helps build the email list

6. It's viral

So we found it "remarkable"! It's likely not being pushed online, maybe as part of a test,…

Mapping customer needs to website content and features

I'm working on a couple of projects at the moment which involve planning for launch of a new product. These projects have reminded me about a powerful technique that can help keep communications focused on clearly explaining the features and benefits of the new service. The technique involves mapping the questions that a site visitor finding out about the project will be asking (mental model) against different types of features and content on the site to help answer these questions (content model). It's one of several techniques marketers can used explained in our 7 Step Guide to Improving Website Results. I like the technique because it's a simple, but powerful way of brainstorming or reviewing content effectiveness. Here is a generic service launch example I have created to show how the method can be used: …

Covering the 6 core components of a marketing campaign

We've created this new template to help marketers plan a campaign if they are managing it themeselves in a small business or are briefing colleagues and agencies in a larger business. Agencies may find it useful for reviewing their campaign processes. We also hope it will help prompt you to think of different ways of integrating new digital marketing approaches into your campaigns. The marketing campaign planning template can be downloaded by Expert members in Word format so you can modify it to best suit your marketing campaigns: Download planning template

Structure of campaign planning template

The stages of marketing campaigns and key issues covered are: Campaign goals and tracking. What are we trying to achieve through our campaign and how will we know when we achieve it? Target audience, customer insight and targeting.…

Creating a balance between sales optimisation and marketing

When did you last run a campaign that sought to engage a market, to really engage and inspire potential customers rather than focusing on selling to those already in buying mode? We were discussing this several months ago and talked to Imran Farooq, another Smart Insights contributor who also trains marketers. We were saying it seems that many digital marketers today, and marketers more generally, don't seem to run campaigns so much outside of what is really day-to-day optimisation and sales promotion, so prompting the questions why is that? And, are we right? When we think of campaign planning at Smart Insights, we consider campaigns to be platforms that sit on top of day-to-day marketing where the focus is sales and optimising marketing around generating sales today. The day-to-day activities are what we (and many others) call business as usual (BAU), where we're…

Here's a free webinar I'm sharing, arranged through our partners MMC Learning. Thanks if you attended, and thanks for your feedback if you dialled-in. I enjoyed the interactions through the chat box - at times it sounded like a fight - "Left-right-left" getting feedback on "Which Test One" type questions. We were pleased that hundreds of you signed up for the lunch time listen, although with some attending from The Maldives and Kuala Lumpur it was more like a late night listen. Unfortunately, the webinar gremlins struck and there was a global outage in our webinar suppliers which affected all webinars at this time including the US and Europe. So if you were affected, we're sorry about that, it's the first time it's happens - difficult to have a fallback for this. Still, we hope you find these slides inspire some ideas for positive action. As always feel free to ask…

The pinnacle event for traditional, broadcast advertising is going social, according to two of the major advertisers Mercedes Benz and Audi (of America). It's worth taking note as the Superbowl is famed for some pretty big campaigns the eventually go global - we'd have to assume there'll be some great, creative thinking. It's already appearing a competitive launch pad for new thinking, Mercedes Benz' VP of marketing, Stephen Cannon, is quoted in USA Today saying "We're using the 2011 Super Bowl as our head-long plunge into committing to social media "€¦it's our strategic leap of faith". That last comment is insightful? Mercedes are also claiming that in the next few years they plan to create cars targeting a much younger demographic, though intends to be much more social-media savvy long before that, Cannon says. Hmm - surely you create…