The flood of new digital platforms, apps and technologies impacting all different industries is impressive, but it can be distracting! Amid forced and accelerated global digital transformation, it is more essential than ever to remain focused on the 3 pillars of an effective marketing campaign, regardless of what you’re including in your channel mix. With shifting consumer behaviours and budgets, staying laser-focused on these 3 things will ensure you adapt without losing sight of what matters most.
The Right Audience
Marketers often face pressure from external and internal sources. COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions certainly have changed consumer behaviours, necessitating changes in many of our routines and reactions. But the one thing that doesn’t change is the importance of knowing your target audience. This is even more critical if your budgets have been reduced, and you find yourself having to prioritize what gets funding vs. what gets cut.
As if that's not hard enough, business and sales leaders are all feeling pressure to better leverage digital and virtual tactics and methods to engage with key stakeholders and customers. In all of the turmoil, an effective marketer will repeatedly ask and confirm who the right target audience is. This determination should have sufficient detail to understand their pain points and their functional and emotional needs.
“We don't do commercials because our target market isn't sitting around watching TV.”
~ Lamborghini
Without clarity about who you’re trying to reach, all other parts of your marketing efforts are weakened. Lamborghini is said to have once declared, “We don't do commercials because our target market isn't sitting around watching TV.” While I couldn't find a specific attribution, the point is valid, and the same principle applies to ALL channels in the marketing mix. Just because other brands are using the latest social app or platform doesn’t mean your target market is also. Knowing who your target audience is is fundamental for many other important choices and decisions essential to an effective marketing campaign.
Think about it.
Without clarity about your target audience, your copy becomes ineffective. You might have the best copy and the best creatives, but if they don’t align with the audience you’re targeting, the content will fall flat! This brings me to the second important element to keep in mind.
The Right Message
During these rapidly evolving times and challenging business environments, it's essential that you clearly determine what message you want to deliver. It’s obvious that the message should align with your campaign objectives. I’ll assume those objectives are clear.
Digital transformation and new consumer engagement platforms (i.e. social media channels) are creating many so-called “content marketing experts” that will tell you all sorts of things about what is the right content for the right channel. While I agree that different channels require content in different formats and even different tones, don’t let the new-fangled tactics distract you from what should always be true: your message should be focused on delivering value to your target audience in a way that positions your brand or product as the best solution. And, assuming you’re able to successfully do that, you must also provide a clear call to action.
If you’re clear on your target audience, you should then research what channels or digital platforms they prefer. This starts giving you clear indicators for your channel mix. But before you put the cart ahead of the horse, having clarity about your message and what you’re asking from your target audience needs to be part of your channel mix decision making.
For example, some channels are better for brand awareness but not for driving a click to a website as your objective might require. Display banners, for example, are known to have an extremely low click-through rate, but they might help lift your search volume and strengthen brand awareness. Likewise, Instagram offers a strong visual platform that can be effective for industries or products where design matters a lot; the fashion industry is an example. But the platform also has significant constraints that don’t necessarily make it the most cost-effective way to drive technical messaging or complex storytelling needed to drive B2B conversions.
A common mistake I’ve seen too often is brands jumping too quickly on the latest digital bandwagon -- think Tik-tok, Instagram, or SnapChat -- without carefully asking if it’s the right channel to deliver their message or whether their target audience is even using that platform to engage with the brand. Beware of “new shiny object” syndrome.
In short, knowing the right audience and being clear on the right message is what should drive your decision making on the right channels to include in your marketing mix. The actual story you tell, what channels you’ll want to use to deliver your message and what call to action works best will look different depending on the kind of business you’re running and the industry you’re in.
As a side note, if crafting a strong message is the weak link in your marketing process or you find yourself needing to guide your business leaders in focusing your message, I’d highly recommend Don Miller’s STORY BRAND. In his framework, he suggests you include 7 ingredients for a compelling, actionable brand message. Defining these 7 ingredients will drive incredible clarity and focus, which will strengthen your marketing campaigns overall.
If you’re successful in achieving clarity and focus about who your target audience is and you’re able to drive focus around what the right message is, you’ll find it significantly easier to ensure you’re tracking the right metrics.
The Right Metrics
I’ll start with a strong warning: beware of vanity metrics lacking in objective context. Along with all the new social platforms and consumer apps come a litany of metrics that may or may not tie back to your business objectives.
Facebook and Instagram are the biggest culprits of this! They are like the crack-cocaine of marketing metrics--they can give you a high and make you feel good, but, at the end, it won’t necessarily connect back to your objectives.
Making sure you are tracking the right metrics involves connecting the dots between having the right audience, delivering the right message, and then determining how that execution results in moving the needle for your business. Otherwise, each individual social platform or marketing tactic will dazzle you with its own proprietary metrics designed to boost your ego and distract you from careful evaluation. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not against including social platforms in your channel mix! But you must understand how they work, and what to measure according to your objectives.
Just because thousands follow your page on a social media platform, it doesn’t mean your business is better for it. Are your thousands of followers actually potential customers? Or could a large percent of your social platform followers be employees or, worse, spam-bot accounts? The social platforms and the expert agencies selling you social marketing consulting will deliver what you ask of them. If you don’t require narrow focus on reaching and pursuing the right audience and delivering the right message, the metrics you’ll get back will be more about how effective the social platforms are at burning your marketing dollars than about delivering results.
Assumptions are the mother of all failed marketing campaigns. So, if you’re measuring “likes” or “followers,” ask yourself if these translate to positive brand sentiment. Will followers or more likes actually drive sales? How will you measure that and get real data? Please don’t assume. Using assumptions as a shortcut to investing in the right measurement tools is a surefire way to execute blindfolded.
Effective marketing campaign metrics are all about tradeoffs and comparisons. So, make sure you’re establishing benchmarks or defining narrow KPI that allow you to compare apples to apples between the different channels in your campaign mix. If you can’t measure business results of a tactic, you probably should not be investing in it, regardless of what the latest digital experts are telling you. The importance of moving forward on digital transformation should not excuse “me too” vanity objectives designed to show-off digital chops, but fail at delivering business results.
Marketing Campaigns That Work
Most marketing tactics are measurable and effective if you take the time and effort to clarify your target audience and deliver the right message in alignment with clear objectives. So, embrace the rapidly accelerating digital transformation, and certainly embrace the number of digital apps, channels and platforms creating a more even marketing playing field--but do so without losing sight of these 3 important marketing campaign pillars that will help you deliver measurable business results.
