7 of the Most Important Things I’ve Learned Doing Marketing Campaigns for a Marketing Company

I’ve been working as a Content & Marketing Executive for a year after moving from Embryo’s client-facing Content Team to become team member number 2 of our Marketing Department. I loved my Content Executive role but felt like I needed a new challenge and the new role in the Marketing team was perfect timing.

The role is varied, to say the least, but one of the main things we do is create marketing campaigns that can help attract leads and generally get Embryo’s brand name in front of key decision makers and people who may want digital marketing services from an SEO agency such as us.

These campaigns are varied and target different industries, and we’ve done a fair few of them over the last 12 months – some more successful than others. During that time, I like to think I’ve learned a few things about how to do them and do them well.

I thought I’d share some of those things. Hopefully, everything listed here will apply to any marketing campaigns you do in the future, regardless of type or the targeted industry.

7 Things You Need To Consider If You Want Successful Marketing Campaigns

1. Never Underestimate Handwritten Content

When was the last time you read something that was hand-written and directed at you? Discount birthday and Christmas and the answer is probably a very long time ago.

The same applies to the people that you’re targeting with your marketing campaigns, which is why you should always include a handwritten element to your touchpoints. In my experience, the impact of receiving a handwritten note far outweighs any clever slogans or nifty branding.

Don’t overthink the hand-written element just be sure to include a note, a letter, even, that is personal, names the person you’re targeting and is endearing, ideally.

The ROI of this is multi-fold: You humanise your business, offer something that your competitor isn’t, and you suddenly create something that is more authentic that anything they’ll have received in the past.

2. Go Big or Go Home

When people think of marketing campaigns they immediately picture something online, delivered in an email, or sent via a LinkedIn message.

The problem with the above is that it the what everyone else does – online-only digital marketing campaigns don’t break through the noise. You need to, in the words of Olivia Newton-John, get physical.

Not only should you create something physical that you can send to your targets, but you should also make it big! A good rule of thumb is that you should send something that multiple people in an office have to get involved in unpacking/revealing. We sent a potential client a giant cardboard cutout of Gareth Southgate (as part of a much wider marketing campaign) during last year’s European championship, several people in the office got involved, unravelled it, and before you know it pictures of it were on the company social.

While a cutout of England’s manager may not always be the right option it’s allegorical as to the importance of creating campaigns that are tactile and physical.

3. Don’t Take Shortcuts; Make Everything on Brand

So many marketing campaigns fail at the final hurdle because they miss opportunities to brand up those 3rd, 4th, and 5th touchpoints. Successful marketing campaigns reflect your brand from start to finish, they need to tell the story of your brand in order for it to be convincing enough for a key decision-maker to take action (i.e. ring your company or email).

We had a campaign a few months back where we took famous game covers and changed them so that they were ‘Embryo-fied’, they still sorta looked like the original game covers but they were just slightly different. To ensure everything was on brand, we tweaked the whole cover, including changing the small print on the back to tell the story of Embryo and how it was founded. It’s this holistic approach to a campaign that will make them look their best, and impress the people that matter.

4. Tailor Things to People

People like to be noticed and made to feel special. Whether they say they do or not, they do. This want is a golden opportunity to appeal to their human side by creating as much tailored, bespoke content for them as possible. Things such as the aforementioned handwritten note, a competitor report that is tailored to them and their competitors, or a 10-point plan of things you would do – with your product and service – that would benefit them specifically.

The more you tailor your campaigns the more they’ll be under the impression that you’re the only person they are speaking to. Tailoring content is harder and takes longer but the value of it is far, far greater.

5. Know What Size of Campaign It Should Be

It can be tempting to try and take on the world and attempt to bring in hundreds of leads from an industry or do something that is bespoke and takes months to create. And sure, it might be, but equally, it might not be.

The purpose of your campaign needs to be outlined from the start, doing so will help you figure out how big it should be. Some top-of-the-funnel campaigns might focus on volume, whereas some might be very small, targeting specific individuals from certain companies.

Knowing what size campaign you’ve got will ensure you’re spending your time in the most effective way possible. It will also allow you to plan for the next steps and your follow-ups.

6. Campaigns Are Only as Good as a Follow-Up

Speaking of follow-up, your marketing campaigns where you attract leads are only as good as what happens after that initial touch point – it’s as simple as that. You can send out the coolest thing in the world to 20 target businesses who you want to open up conversations with but if you or your sales team aren’t following up every few days or weeks at least 4 times, you’re going to achieve the square root of 0 with them.

Step one of a digital marketing campaign is just that – the first step. What really matters is how you nurture that lead and do touchpoints 2, 3, and 4 as well as you did touch point 1.

7. Review 

Learning from campaigns is the only sure-fire way to improve on the next one. Put real-time into creating a proper review process, use the strengths and put them into the next campaign, learn from the weaknesses and ensure they don’t happen again.

At the heart of a review is data so make sure your campaigns are set up to capture data at all junctures. QR codes are a very handy way of getting people onto specific landing pages where you can capture their data. Another way is to invest in a programme that can track visitors, sessions, and the companies they work for. By tracking both the qualitative and quantitative data you can discover the named individuals that have willingly given their information and the people that have casually visited certain pages but not completed the desired action. You can then target these people further, in different ways, keeping those warm(ish) leads, warm.

There you go, seven of the most important things to consider if you want successful marketing campaigns, regardless of industry, or what product or service you sell (which, presumably, you do). They’re not easy, but they are one of the most effective ways of proactively bringing in leads.

Don’t fancy doing it? No worries, get in touch with our team and we can create effective marketing campaigns for you, leaving you to focus on other things.