Elements of a Marketing Campaign

There are three elements required for a successful marketing campaign (and, thus, for a successful business venture): market, message, and timing.

First, you need a properly selected market. The market must be sizeable enough or have enough resources to support a business. For example, bubble gum requires billions of sales for pennies to be profitable. Jet airplanes require relatively few big-dollar sales. In between is a big range. The numbers have to work, or the business won't work. A marketing-oriented business and it's products are designed around satisfying (delighting) the target market. Understanding this opens up the company to "back end" possibilities beyond traditional businesses of its "type." For example, CPA firms who serve substantial individuals are now offering clients financial planning and financial products (mortgages, securities and life insurance) in addition to traditional tax and accounting services.

Second, the message, including the offer, must appeal to the market. Robert Collier described this as harmonizing with the thinking of the customer. You have to understand the customer enough to be able to describe the wants, fears, problems and desires of the customer and how your offering solves or satisfies them so well that the customer will swear you have been hiding under his or her kitchen table! ("How can I go home and tell my wife and kids we don't have the money for that trip to Disneyland we planned this year?") In order to get this information, you need to talk to people. It can be helpful to market to a group with which you have a common background, such as a former barber selling personal care products to other barbers.

Third, the timing of the offering is critical. The difference between salad and garbage is timing. Markets tend to go through "waves" when they are receptive to certain products and messages. Some old-timers remember the hula-hoop fad. There isn't much demand for buggy whips these days. Think of the fellow whose wife left with all of the furniture when he was at work one day. Last week, he wasn't interested in buying furniture. Now he's critically interested. If a furniture sales company has its message in his face at that moment, he will be highly receptive.

5 Elements that Prove Your Marketing Campaign Worked

Just because the client loved your most recent marketing campaign you developed doesn’t mean it was successful. Then again, is perception of success as important as success itself?

In this short piece, Consultant Alan Guinn, Managing Director of The Guinn Consultancy Group, Inc. offers anecdotal evidence which can be used to determine whether or not that great campaign you developed really did work.

Did you develop a relevant message for your Marketing? Can you define the message? After all, if you can’t, who can? Often, marketers start down a pathway without completely defining what they want to communicate. If you don’t know what you want to communicate, it’s going to be difficult to arrive at a winning campaign. What’s Your Message?
You’ve successfully altered public perception about a product, person, or service. No matter what type of Marketing you are dealing with, the practice, science and art of Marketing deals with perceived realities. It’s often easy to say that you have made a difference, but how that difference is measured often helps determine whether or not your Marketing campaign has been defined as successful. Marketing of public figures—like a leader in Congress, or an executive in a public corporation—often comes down to changing perceived realities of the electorate, or the public persona that is delivered. Did you succeed in communicating your message?
People pay lip service to the campaign. A great example of people paying lip service to the campaign is the Wendy’s Hamburger’s “Where’s the Beef?” campaign of the early 80’s. More than just a television advertisement, this campaign tied together point of purchase materials in the restaurant locations, radio ads, television ads, print media, and store level badges and specials. Customers were heard driving up to the Wendy’s Pick-Up Window and saying, “Where’s the Beef?” over the ordering system. Political candidates picked up the line and used it during debates. It became a running joke of television sit-coms for several years. It was even used in boardrooms when senior executives of companies wanted to know the substance of a position or argument. Did you achieve lip service—word of mouth?
The marketing efforts you put forth actually drive revenues from the targeted group of users. Marketing campaigns—especially those of small businesses on tight budgets– often use the “Ready, Fire, Aim!” mantra— hoping that by using a “shotgun-type” approach, they will appeal to a broad group of users—even those outside the demographic. The key question is this: Did your Marketing campaign influence enough people to drive revenue from those inside the demographic targets? Can you claim success based upon achieving success with your target market?
At least one group should become upset at your efforts. Don’t laugh. Before you think this is simply tongue-in-cheek, recognize that no matter how well you try to develop a campaign which will not be upsetting to a broad base of possible constituent users, someone will inevitably get mad at you for your effort. Someone—maybe, many “someones”– will feel as though you are creating efforts which are degrading, misleading, or skewed. How many people will you upset with your campaign?

If you know the answers to all the questions asked, you’ve probably developed a successful campaign. If you don’t know the answers, try to design your successful campaigns in the future around these five points. You’ll be simply amazed at the results.