Marketing Campaigns: What and Why

Let’s face it, marketing campaigns can be a pain to put together. Most people I discuss campaigns with say, “they’re a great idea, but I just need to get the project done.”

It could be true; a task, which some commonly call a “project”, can be simple to complete, but it is not a full campaign.  Let’s figure out what a marketing campaign is and why it’s important to create them before acting on completed tasks associated with a campaign.

Let’s try and add some basic bone structure to the word ‘Campaign’. This will provide you the basic concepts to build out your next marketing campaign without hesitations.

Marketing Campaigns (through story time).

Meet Jamie, a promotions manager at a large hotel chain. She has been asked by Gary, the sales director, to help increase room occupancy by 15% within 18 months to reach the companies two-year occupancy rate goal. Jamie decides to mail postcards promoting hotel room discounts to her guests that qualify for special offers. It’s been six months and she has not had any luck increasing the hotel occupancy. Jamie is getting a little worried that Gary is going to be upset that she has not pushed the revenue needle at all. So, she decides to begin sending an email each month to the same group of guests, just in case they don’t respond well to print, they will now have a second option, to respond to email. After two months of print and email, a 1.5% increase in room rates occurs. It’s eight months into the 18-month timeline and Jamie is 13.5% away from her goal. Jamie thinks to herself, “What is happening?”

Here is where developing a campaign comes into play.

Start With Data: Jamie Needs Data

There are four key elements to know when you start building your campaign.

1. What KPI’s are you trying to achieve?
2. What is your timeline?
3. Who is your target audience?
4. What is your budget plan?

Jamie needs to understand her objective to find her motivation in building the campaign. Every marketing campaign should start with your data team. They provide the details to the who and why questions.

The KPI: In the story, Jamie knows she needs to increase occupancy rates by 15%.

The Timeline: Gary, the sales director has given her 18 months to complete the objective.

The Who: By contacting the data team and asking more about the target demographic statistics, Jamie learns each guest’s age, address, hotel stay history, and length of stay. This information gives her a better idea of who she is going to target in the campaign. Age, location, and trip visits are data points she will use to determine which offers will engage each specific customer into completing an action (to buy, review, click, share). Offering a 20% discount to every guest is not a means to an end. Jamie may now offer 40% discounts to customers that are retired and live further away from her hotel, to compete with a larger competition pool. She may provide 25% discounts to customers living closer to the property, where research shows these guests do not have the time to venture too far away but still need a little motivation to take a local vacation.

The Budget: Gary, again provided a glimpse as to why Jamie needs to develop a plan. It was to increase sales by 15% within 18 months and achieve the 2-year occupancy rate goal. Knowing this and nothing else, Jamie is still at a disadvantage. Here comes the data team again to shine a light on her project. The data team can provide Jamie the previous 2 years’ occupancy rates by month and rate them by lowest to highest by occupancy. She can investigate this data deeper and analyze which months in the upcoming 18-month outlook she will have the hardest time attracting guests. Jamie can now plan her budget according to her findings and create offers and discounts based on past actual occupancy rates and the current lifecycle of this campaign.

With these new insights, she may develop small events that correlate with low-performing months to drive interest, or excitement to the property.

Develop A Game Plan: Jamie Needs Directions

People don’t tend to leave their house without knowing how to get where they are going, right? This is the same for campaigns. No matter the distance, you need to know which road will get you to the destination. This planning is done before you leave the house. Even if it’s only a two-second mental snapshot of your route, it still is done. The same thing goes for marketing campaigns. You need to understand how you are going to achieve the results you are looking for before you begin.           

Back to the story. Armed with the knowledge of what the goal is, when to achieve it, who is the targeted customer, and how to spend her budget, Jamie needs to create the directions to set up her marketing to achieve the outcome she desires.

The How: With the information provided by the data team, Jamie sits down and mulls over the details. She learns that guests in their 20’s tend to vacation overnight and not as frequently, while guests in their 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s tend to stay extended weekends. Retirees in their 60’s and older tend to stay 5-7 days if not longer. She develops three different plans, one for each target group (or persona).

1. The 20 somethings:
   1. Best months: Send an email with a simple invitation to stay at the hotel and provide a list of events nearby.
   2. Worst months: Send email and print mail offer for a 50% off second night stay.
   3. Social Media: Post to Instagram images of the exciting nightlife nearby.
2. The 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s:
   1. Best month: Send email an invitation offering free nights stay on Tuesdays and complimentary breakfasts.
   2. Worst month: Send email and print mail offering a buy 3 nights and receive the 4th night free.
   3. Social Media: Post the daytime activities that families may enjoy on Facebook and Pinterest.
3. The Retirees:
   1. Best month: Send a personalized print mail reminding them how relaxing and enjoyable the property is and offer a complimentary breakfast and free guided tour for a discounted rate.
   2. Worst month: Split into two sub-campaign options
      1. If they visited in the past 10 months: Send email and print mail offering a buy 5 nights and receive the 6th night free.
      2. If they visited in the past 3 months: Send a personalized letter thanking them for their stay and offering them a buy 3 nights and receive the 4th night free.
   3. Social Media: Post the daytime activities, food, and images of safety to reinforce friendly, fun, and safety on Facebook and Pinterest.

Provide A Schedule: Jamie Makes A Move

Now we are making progress! We know why we are doing what we are doing. We know who it is going to affect, and we just decided how we are going to achieve it. Now when does this all happen? Developing a campaign schedule is key to achieving a high response rate. You want to provide the right information at the right time. Plus, you don’t want to overinvest in the target audience. Overinvesting means spending more campaign dollars per customer than you will receive if they make a purchase.

Back to the story. With all the tools in her magic belt, Jamie sits down and starts organizing her data and her plan.

The When: Jamie has 18 months to increase her traffic by 15%. That’s her timeline. She takes out her calendar and creates a plan of attack. She notes the rank by occupancy rate on the calendar at the top. Jamie then starts planning her strategy timeline. She researches how active and what channels each demographic (20’s, 30s to 50s, and retirees) is on social media. That information will help mold the social media advertising budget and the time and days she places ads or posts information about the property or local area. Jamie schedules on the calendar what the topic of the post or ad should reflect, the demographic it is reaching, and the time it should be implemented that day. This schedule can be adjusted month-to-month, but she will try not to deviate unless necessary. Deviating from a schedule is easy to do but dangerous. The deviation may create additional work by designers, pushing back deadlines for other projects not related to your project. Deviations, or knee-jerk reactions, are based on either new opportunities or failures in your planning. New opportunities are a good thing but should not cause a deviation in current projects. But that is for another post. Back to your marketing campaign schedule. Social media is now ready to go.

Next, Jamie schedules the emails for all 3 demographics. She again researches the optimal times each demographic does (or does not) read emails. This can be done using past email open statistics in her email provider. She notes the dates and times down on the calendar as well.

Finally, she researches the print mail. These are Jamie’s postcards and letters. This is her biggest marketing cost. It contains postage, print, mail preparation, and other service fees. She decides that a mailing every two weeks is enough to reach each demographic without them losing interest or calling to be removed from the mail list. She selects a day for each mailing and schedules it on her calendar. Each date scheduled includes the demographic and the offer.

Ask For Help: Jamie Contacts Creative

KAPOW! We are now on the move. The next step is building your project. For this, you lean on the creative team. With the campaign strategy in hand, you can feel confident to answer any of their questions. Wait, the creative team shouldn’t ask questions! They are not part of the planning period. Who do they think they are, right? Wrong. This team is just as important as the data team. You need their buy-in just as much as you need your directors’ buy-in… here let me explain.

Back to the story: Jamie stands up from her desk, picks up her road map (the schedule) and proudly marches into the creative room where everyone sits with headphones on and taps Shelly, the Sr. Graphic Designer on the shoulder and says, “I have a project for your team.” Jamie is beaming from ear to ear. Shelly says ‘Cool! Tell me about it.’

The Bad Ask: Jamie blurts out “Okay! I need your team to make me social media ads, post graphics, print mailers, and a well-formatted letter.” Shelly simply replies, “Why?”. This type of ask is not great. It is not informative and does not provide buy-in from Shelly, who must ask her team to build all the motivational creative artwork that will drive customers.

These types of ‘asks’ are, unfortunately, done daily. They are not meant to be rude or demeaning but are often received that way. This ask also leaves room for further debate or discussion. Jamie’s already planned out this whole project so the “why” discussion should already be precise and complete.

The Good Ask: Jamie blurts out “Okay, so Gary says we are falling short of our 2-year occupancy goal and asked me to create a campaign. I’ve broken down our audience into three age groups and will need to design offers for each group that relate to them. This will be an 18-month long campaign, so I have planned out how to reach each group of customers and at which times. I have information for all 18 months now and what creative is needed at which times. If I give this to you, can your team design it, post it, and send creative to print using my schedule?” Shelly looks at the schedule and says “Sure, no problem.”

Selling a project to designers is simple really. Provide the information to reduce back and forth questions. Provide a realistic time frame and simply ask them… just ask them if they can help.

There is a difference between telling and asking. One is a dictatorship which creates power struggles between (and even in) departments. Asking for something is giving the other person an option to add to the cause while also giving them an option to buy into your plan.

If they do tell you they can’t complete the work in your timeline, then ask what you can do to help get the project moving forward. It will usually be something simple like “No, we don’t have the staff to post all the social media announcements.” That’s when you ask if they know anyone that can help with posting social media or accept that you will need to post that yourself. You will find resources as you move along the path. The more times you build campaigns within your company the more you will learn and the more the teams around you will know what to expect when they see you smiling towards them down the hall.

Provide A Resolution: Jamie Reviews

The 18-month marketing campaign is about to an end. You have had to make all the social media posts yourself, which has kept you busy, but you learned about a program called Hootsuite that has helped keep the task to a bare minimum effort. You have stayed in contact with the data team and have been receiving their reports that occupancy is at 17%. You’re almost there and figure by the end of the 18-months you will have hit your target. The last step is always to review what you have done, see what has worked, and remove the things that did not work.

End to the story: Jamie knocks on Gary’s door at the end of the 18-months and informs him that they reached their mark. Barely at 18.1% but it was reached. Gary has a huge smile on his face, “I never thought we would have been able to hit the mark. Honestly, I always figured it was too high but the other directors were confident we could do it. Great job.”

Learning Notes: Always make notes of the success and failures at each step to streamline the next campaign and not fall into any previous pitfalls. Remember, not all projects have a fairytale ending. That’s when you have to pick up your boots, shake the debris off your shoulders and say, “Let’s go again.”

This is just a brief overview of what a campaign is and how it is developed. It should be used to reach every KPI you try to achieve but the scope at which you do it may vary. If you ever questioned, “What is a marketing campaign?”, I hope this helped provide a little more clarity to the word.

If you liked this story let me know in the comments below.