12 Tips to Improve Marketing Campaigns
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There have been hundreds of thousands of marketing campaigns created, launched, and seen by the world over the years. Ever since the ‘Mad Men’ era, businesses have been finding new and innovative ways of helping their audeiences – but there is no set method on how to improve a campaign.
These days, marketing campaigns come in all shapes and sizes – they can be influencer-related, audio-based, centred around SEO and search rankings or they can be in the form of good old-fashioned billboards – basically, whatever you can imagine a marketing campaign to look like, they look like it.
This multiverse of madness presents a problem for us marketers – how do we try and improve on these endless numbers of marketing campaigns?
Luckily, there is an answer (or several, in this case) to improve your next marketing campaign. In this guide, our experts will explore these ‘tips’ – although they’re more like principles that can be applied to any type of campaign – which can be applied for markedly better results.
A List of 12 Things to Live by the Next Time You Want to Create a Groundbreaking Marketing Project
Go Multi-Channel
The first tip is quite a hefty one but an essential one. Every marketing campaign you do needs to have a presence across multiple channels. The whole point of campaigns is to get the attention of people who will buy your products or services – the average Joe on the street or a marketing manager. And to get their attention you need to go where they are, which is, in most cases, everywhere.
They’ll be scrolling their social media feeds for one minute and then checking their emails, before searching for something related to what they want to purchase. Your brand, product, and campaign need to be in all those places. When deciding what or when to purchase, customers go through something called The Messy Middle – a term used to describe the staccato, uneven purchase journey that is almost universal. They could be in this middle for hours, days, even weeks, and any one thing, in any channel, could be the trigger for them to purchase, you need to make sure you’re the trigger.
Be Metronomic
Your campaigns need to be metronomic – what do we mean by that? Essentially, they need to have a rhythm to them, if your campaigns are physical – i.e. you’re sending content out to potential targets – then you need to be sending two, three, four, or five times every three to four days. Repetition, and metronomy, will be the way you stick in your target audience’s head.
Your marketing campaigns need to be built around 5-7 stages of outreach. This way, you’re in the faces (in the best, most polite way possible) of those you want to target more than your competitors. We’re still fans of the old ‘Rule of 7’ here at Embryo – this is the idea that a potential buyer needs to see something seven times before they decide to purchase it (this is a rough description) – and use it in our own marketing campaigns, be it B2B or B2C.
Experiment with New Products and Solutions
There are heaps of solutions for any number of problems out there for marketers – some are revolutionary, others are ‘revolutionary’. For every three bad solutions, there will be one that you’ll stumble on that will truly revolutionise your marketing campaigns. So, experiment with your marketing stack and don’t be afraid to add things to it that work.
Without innovation, your campaigns will wilter, at best, and fail at worst.
Our Chief Innovation Officer James Welch is, as his job title would suggest, innovates. As a result, he’s constantly showing us new tools he’s found – with our team collating a full list for keyword research, reporting and much more.
Exclusive tools, developed by the experts at Embryo
At Embryo, we’re innovative by nature. That’s why we offer our clients industry-leading tools that provide incredible insights, showing you exactly where you sit within your sector, what needs to change, and how you can move the needle – literally.
Needle
Needle is a proprietary, in-house tool that does all this and more, giving our strategies clarity on what your competition is doing to hold their position in the market – and what we can do to beat them.
Intermingle
Intermingle accurately shows you the top 10 search results for any search term, giving our team an idea of what’s on your audience’s mind – and what we should do to get you there.
To get access to these revolutionary tools and reap their insights, why not book a discovery call with a member of our team?
Set Long-Term Goals
Whether you’re setting goals for one marketing campaign, or for the overall success of your entire campaign over a period of time – set long-term goals. Why? Well, one of the main reasons is to allow you to prove how successful your campaigns have been. A long enough timeline gives you the time to prove results.
Further, campaigns, in their own way, are never-ending and reporting on them, and setting 3-month goals, for instance, isn’t long enough to yield any significant data.
When setting goals, as well as time limits, marketers should decide from the start what important KPIs they are going to use to judge ‘success’ over that period of time. Are you going to judge your campaigns based on impressions (we’d advise against that), conversions, sales, revenue generated, or a combination? These KPIs along with your time frame will provide you with the framework to determine success.
Always Keep Your Audience in Mind
I am guilty of not doing this one, I won’t lie. Everything you create marketing campaign-wise has to be with the audience at the front of your mind. No matter how amazing that idea seems, if it’s not something your audience wants to engage with, it’s dead on arrival – so make sure you ask your audience questions to get into their mindset.
To improve your campaigns you need to be super critical of ideas as they are happening. I’ve had fairly good (for me) ideas for campaigns only to realise in hindsight that while I thought they were the next big thing the audience that it was targeted at just found it confusing and maybe a bit over the top.
Most of the time the things that will work are the campaigns that aren’t the sexiest but provide the greatest value, and value doesn’t equal flashy gimmicks. That is especially true with legacy industries that respect and respond to authoritative voices, not campaigns with little substance.
ABC – Always Be Creating (Content)
This tip isn’t necessarily to do with one campaign but more a top-level approach to marketing in general, and one that will help create more campaigns. Presuming you’re reading this and you’re in marketing, be it for another agency (if so, why not come and join us instead?) or a company (if so, why not let us help you with your next digital campaigns?) then you should have, as one of your non-negotiables, the ABC rule.
Content should be being pumped out by your business every single day – blogs, social media posts, reports, videos, the lot. Draw on the talent that is around you and get them involved in creating content, this approach will yield so many more campaigns. Not only will you just have more stuff to use in campaigns, but you’ll also get into the habit of creating which makes digital marketing campaigns run far more smoothly.
I can’t count how many times I’ve taken content and repurposed it for a campaign – be it repurposing a blog and creating a longer report out of it or using a case study, turning it into assets, and using it to engage with businesses in a particular sector.
Provide Real Value and Expect Nothing in Return
This is where you get humble, and we get honest.
The results of your marketing campaigns will most likely not be what you expected. Your amazing idea for a campaign may not land. That’s the truth of it.
And while there is no real way of combating how something will be received by your target audience there is a mantra that you can live by that will soften the blow of that. For every campaign you do, try to provide as much value as possible to the person reading or engaging with it. And, when you’re giving that value, expect to receive absolutely nothing back from your target audience.
For example, if we create a report, and target an audience of 40-50 decision-makers, I work on the assumption that hearing back from 5 of them is a successful campaign. The decision-makers that matter get sent dozens of ‘groundbreaking’ pieces of content every single day, to stand out yours need to be packed with value.
Provide real insight that benefits the reader in the here and now, it has to be without conditions – in line with Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines. It’s that selflessness that will see you win and be known as the agency or business that wins.
Be Three Steps Ahead
Good campaigns have multiple steps to them. Sending one thing to a target audience is no use. Your campaign should be planned out in phases before you begin them – what does your second, third, and fourth touch point look like? See your campaigns as a multi-stage thing that has a beginning and end.
It’s all about getting your brand’s name in the faces of your target audiences at several opportunities, this tip goes back to our ‘Be Metronomic’ one. Planning and devising multiple stages is the key to creating high-quality, and crucially, effective campaigns that yield results.
Put Calls to Action Everywhere
The whole point of spending time creating stuff is so that people eventually reach out to you and enquire, buy, or convert. One of the fastest ways of doing that? Having as many calls to action as possible. You don’t want people leaving whatever content they’re engaging with and not getting in touch. It defeats the whole point.
Basically, you want to create as frictionless a contact process as possible so be sure to provide plenty of ways to get in touch.
Chatbots, QR codes, and good old-fashioned phone numbers offer them all to your target audiences. And, when you put these CTAs in there, it is essential that you respond to them within hours, or minutes, preferably. If people have taken the time to get in touch, your marketing campaign has worked, the least you can do is get in touch!
Review Your Projects and Criticise
The review stage is a crucial, but often overlooked part of the marketing process. Once the dust has settled on a campaign, book time with people to go through the whole thing, looking at what worked, and what didn’t.
Make sure you’re being super critical, and involve people from your business who had no input in the campaign and get their opinions – their fresh eyes could be important.
In your review, involve all parties – sales, for instance, will have some useful insights about how the campaign impacted their conversations with potential targets.
Martha Peters, Client Services Executive at Embryo, said, “As someone who has worked in both the delivery and client services team, I would say that collaboration across teams is vital to understanding the following:
- a) What the client’s focus areas and needs are from a commercial perspective
- b) How we can create a comprehensive marketing campaign that is going to move the needle for performance.
“Having regular performance check-ins with the team enables you to anticipate and problem-solve any potential hurdles. No marketing campaign should be a one-size-fits-all approach and you need to be flexible in your strategy to get the results that you set out to achieve for your client.”
Talk from a Position of Strength
In any campaign, make sure you’re talking with authority by leaning into subjects that you know the most about. I’ve tried creating content for campaigns on subjects I had to research or read up on – while the learning exercise was useful, I felt that everything I was creating wasn’t written with a huge amount of authority. This doesn’t create convincing, original work.
When planning your campaigns, think about your brand, what it does, and what it sells. Find the thing you feel most confident and comfortable talking about – which is most likely the products or solutions you sell given you’re talking about them all day at work – and build your content around that.
The most successful campaigns we do for Embryo as a brand are the ones where we talk about The Messy Middle, GA4, or the power of long-form content. These campaigns and pieces of content work because we know what we’re talking about and, you, the reader, have things that you can speak on. Harness that!
Your target audiences – be it B2C or B2B – are more likely to buy products or services from businesses that are experts in what they do. Campaigns fuelled with authority and knowledge are the most convincing and work.
Let Others Speak for You
Times may change, but word of mouth is still as effective as ever. Being recommended a brand by an already trusted source – a friend, family member, or colleague, is still an exceptionally powerful way of getting new business. At its core, is trust, which no amount of fancy Reels can alter.
For your next project, focus on adding testimonials, Trust Pilot ratings, and case studies – let your past success speak for itself, not only is it a more efficient method of content creation (other people have already created the message for you, for one!) but it’s effective too, it’s quite literally the best of both worlds!
Did We Miss Any Tips?
Well, there ya go, 12 things we live by here at Embryo that have improved marketing campaigns and hopefully they’ll have the same effect, if not greater!
At Embryo, we’re constantly creating and executing marketing projects be it for ourselves or for our wide range of clients. If, after reading this blog, you’ve got a few questions or want to understand better how an agency can help you with these tips then why not get in touch with us today? We’d love to chat.
