Marketing is a mix of several disciplines. This can make it far more tricky to succeed than many realize. It’s easy to see when a campaign is successful and when it isn’t, but actually being the person behind the curtain creating these campaigns is another matter entirely.
You need to understand what marketing tactics give the best return on investment. Plus, you need to have a back-up plan for if anything were to go wrong. A company in Canada with big data marketing sent a woman who had just miscarried a marketing package for baby supplies. This obviously caused the woman great pain.
Instances like these are creating a need for stricter data privacy, making it more difficult for marketers to build effective campaigns. So how do you create a compelling advertising campaign? There are many different tips and tricks you can adopt. The following guide will highlight the best way to create successful marketing campaigns.
Improve Your Knowledge and Skills
Marketing is a combination of many different skills and disciplines. It is art, it is tech, it is psychology and sociology. It is connecting with the real world and a very complicated task that does take time to learn.
1. Consider Getting a Marketing Degree
Having an MA in marketing can help give you all the tools and skills you need to thrive. Marketing today is vastly different than it was thirty years ago. To stay relevant, many higher institutions have to stay on the cutting edge. You can vastly improve your career by going back to university. This doesn’t mean you need to take time off from work, either. You can achieve your Master of Marketing online at your own pace, giving you a crash course in marketing excellence in as little as 2 years.
2. Marketing Memberships and Subscriptions
There are many academic journals, online forums, memberships, and resources that can help you with your marketing campaign. Some of these subscriptions are valuable even if it means paying for it out of pocket. Many private companies and firms can help you stay up to date with all the newest marketing news, reports, and findings.
3. Know the “Influencers” in Marketing
Another way to keep up to date with the best of marketing is to follow the top influencers. These are the people who have consistently created the best marketing campaigns in the world. Study what they do and reach out to them for advice. You can hire some of them to create content for other marketers to learn their tips of the trade. You can find influencers online, through other reports, books, or even seminars.
4. Make Note of The Best Campaigns
Research successful marketing campaigns. Study best practices and see what may be relevant to what you need and can use. You should also see what caused a marketing campaign to fail so that you don’t repeat their mistakes. For instance, consider the many reasons why the infamous Fyre Festival flopped after its incredible but false marketing campaign.
Invest in Learning About Your Demographic
Every marketing campaign should start with market research. You will need to know:
1. Jargon and Language
From local slang to local names for institutions that aren’t generally used outside of the community, all of this can be invaluable when it comes to creating your campaign. Your audiences needs to feel that the product or service is geared specifically for them. You may need to create different versions of your ad to test its effectiveness.
2. Needs and Desires
Just as different communities have their own vernacular, they also will have different needs and desires. Conduct market research to see if there is anything they lack. You can then gain a better understanding of what that community is looking for.
3. Values
The values of a community will often be in line with their needs and desires. An affluent area will have different values than one that is not. The demographics of each community will have different priorities and spend differently. You don’t want to advertise private jets or yachts to a college neighborhood who don’t have jobs yet. Knowing a community’s values can help you cater to their needs.
How to Connect with Your Customers
Even if you have the perfect product or service, your target market will not know about it if you are not connecting with your customer properly. Our emotions play a large part in buying decisions, so it is important to connect with people emotionally. Here are some tips that can help!
1. Use Real People for Marketing
A great way to resonate with your community is to use real people that your target market can resonate with. Use real people that your target market can relate to in your advertising campaigns. If you are a beauty company, it may be more effective to have someone similar to your demographic look happy and stunning as opposed to a supermodel. Show how your brand or product can make their lives directly better.
2. Give Back to the Communities You Operate In
look at giving back to the community. Starting your own or working with an existing outreach program can help bolster your brand and increase sales. You may not see immediate results, but it is well worth the investment as it builds goodwill and invokes positive emotions in the community.
3. Give Your Customers Reasons to Develop a Relationship With You
Give your customers a reason to try your product or service. Use your website or store to give a free e-book, product, or service away in exchange for their email. Hold an event, create a blog with great content, and find other ways to attract your target market with great value. Through reciprocity you can create long-lasting relationships. Repeat customers are extremely important for long-term success.
4. Align Your Company Values with Your Demographic’s Values
Marketing is the promise that you give clients and customers for trying your product or service. Sales is fulfilling that promise. Many companies understand that communities worldwide emphasize sustainability and living a green lifestyle. Find ways that your products and services to cater to these values. If you show that you care for what they believe in, then they will be more loyal to you.
Be a Socially Responsible Company
There is a growing global emphasis on sustainability and circularity. Here are some ways you can be a socially responsible company:
1. Cut Out Plastic Packaging
If you sell products, try to cut out as much plastic packaging as possible. You can use cardboard alternatives or new innovative plastic-like products made out of potato starch or other products that decompose. Many cities are starting to ban single-use plastics. By finding alternatives now you can keep up to date with regulations and be one of the companies at the forefront of this movement.
2. Be Responsible for Your Supply Chain
You are responsible for your supply chain. Double check all of your suppliers and run audits to make sure they are socially responsible. You can work to gain the rainforest certification symbol on your product, making it easier for today’s activist consumer to choose you over your competitors.
Don’t take the companies you work with at face value. Far too often supply chains are wrought with human trafficking, modern slavery, unsafe and unhygienic working conditions, child labor, deforestation, unsafe waste disposal, and so much more. In some cases, these terrible working conditions are even sanctioned by the government, like the cotton and tobacco picking operations in Kazakhstan.
Every company needs to be held responsible for its supply chain. Not doing due diligence will only allow cost-effective, dehumanizing and environmentally damaging practices to continue. By going through the effort of ensuring that every step of your community benefits the people and the planet, you can set yourself up as a great choice for your demographic, and use your efforts in your favor in every advertising campaign.
How to Go Viral with Your Marketing
1. Focus on SEO
Regardless of what your advertising campaign is about, you must always create it with SEO in mind. SEO, or search engine optimization, is incredibly sophisticated nowadays. The words you use in a video can impact how well Google can parse through your advertisement and rank it accordingly.
This is what is thought to be behind the success of Gillette’s new advertisement. It’s voice-over covers many SEO-friendly target keywords. Targeting SEO-friendly words will help you be viral-ready.The two combined will help be a winning combination.
2. Connect Emotionally
Now that you know your demographic and how to appeal to growing trends in sustainability, you can focus on creating the campaigns themselves. To go viral you really need to hit a nerve and connect emotionally with your viewers. You need to make them feel that your product and service is very important to them. Some companies have gone viral for creating touching stories, others through outrage.
You do need to be careful when you try to connect emotionally and create content to go viral. There is no guarantee that your campaign will work and in some cases may backfire if there is unnecessary controversy.
3. Be Responsive and Manage Good and Bad PR
To manage your public relations after such a viral campaign you need to know who to turn to and what your next move will be. For example, if you plan on stirring controversy to get attention, you will then want to have a follow up plan with different potential scenarios. with a few great steps in the right direction. This way you won’t be caught off-guard.
If customers and clients see that you are responsive to their requests, their complaints, and comments, you can show that you care and are focused on improving to make things better for them. Once you make the ad people expect you to follow through. Marketing is the promise you make, sales is fulfilling that promise. It is better to under-promise and over-deliver then vice versa.
You need always to be ready to stick to your guns when making a global advertising campaign that is meant to draw a lot of attention. Don’t back down, reaffirm your values, and define yourself to the world at large. If you need to do damage control, then start first with fixing the issues that your customers had with your company. Highlight the changes you have made and what you are doing to be a great choice of company in the future.
Marketing is an art as much as it is a science. Only with the right knowledge, skills, and experience can you truly find the right stance on every campaign and launch.