What is the first step in a campaign?

When companies decide to adopt a formal campaign framework to improve their marketing performance, they quickly come to the realization that they need to follow a process. We’ve helped hundreds of companies do this. Here are the main steps to follow:

1. Goal setting. Before determining which campaigns to run, organizations must understand and agree to cross-functional business goals. The outcome of the goal-setting process is a set of vetted, prioritized goals that map to communications and revenue objectives that marketing can address. Proceeding from these goals, marketing can build the architecture for overall campaign efforts. Model suggestion: The SiriusDecisions Marketing Planning Process provides an in-depth means to thoroughly assess business goals and ensure they are coordinated with sales. A lighter-weight version of this model is the SiriusDecisions Marketing-Plan-on-a-Page Template, which helps companies document business objectives, strategy, priorities, goals and actions. Additionally, it can be used every step of this campaign implementation process.
2. Needs assessment. Companies should use buyers’ fundamental business needs to create campaign themes, rather than try to construct them around the products they want to sell. To develop these themes, identify the buying audience, its fundamental business needs and the ways that the product portfolio addresses those needs. Model suggestion: Apply the SiriusDecisions Buyer Persona Framework to build buyer personas using functional, emotive, decision process and behavioral attributes for a job role.
3. Campaign definition. Here is where you decide which campaigns to develop. Develop a hierarchy and take the first pass at allocating resources. This effort is coordinated by the campaign lead, and conducted by portfolio marketing and the communications team. External agencies are frequently brought in to assist with campaign theme development.
4. Campaign targeting. In this phase, campaigns are refined to address specific geographies, industries, growth markets, existing customers and channels. The number of campaigns might be increased to address distinct markets. The content strategy is developed to support campaign efforts across different target markets and go-to-market channels. Model suggestion: Apply the SiriusDecisions Content Strategy Turbine – a repeatable, scalable approach for developing an audience-centric content strategy that better supports business objectives.
5. Program planning. During this phase, program plans are created, and content and tactics are defined for each of four program families (demand creation, reputation, sales enablement and market intelligence). Establish program objectives that support campaign goal achievement, and determine program tactics that address obstacles and support all stages of the buyer’s journey.
6. Execution. During the execution phase, marketing must kick off campaigns in cooperation with sales, ensure that campaigns are on track and performing as expected, and gain feedback from internal constituents. This phase involves the entire marketing team.
7. Post-execution. As campaigns wind down, the campaign team should ensure that resources are still committed to ongoing pipeline acceleration activities – and maintain high-value information assets required to advance deals through the pipeline. In addition, conduct a campaign post-mortem to assess its overall performance. The results of this analysis are useful for guiding the development of future campaigns.

Campaign themes are determined by buyer needs. They include programs that span reputation, demand creation, sales enablement and market intelligence program families. They run for a long time – often years – and require collaboration across marketing teams as well as the sales and product teams. Campaigns enable companies to transform from product-centric marketing to truly focus on customer needs and distinct customer business segments.

To gain a deeper understanding of the SiriusDecisions Campaign Framework and campaign best practices, download our Global Campaign E-Book today!

Before planning a campaign, you should have an overall marketing plan for your business, which itself aligns with your business plan. Campaigns are great for focussing on a specific goal, purpose or audience segment, but there are a few things to consider before you start…

1. Set objectives

What do you want to achieve? What has triggered you to want to run a marketing campaign? Do you want to raise overall brand awareness, launch a new product into a new or an existing market, tempt customers back to your company, or lift sales in a particular demographic?

Setting campaign objectives has a key influence on what you do and how you do it. Be specific too, and include any target figures you or your Board would like to see – be realistic here, you won’t generate 300 more customer leads if the market size for your product is actually lower than that.

2. Set a campaign budget

Obvious really. Consider how long you want your campaign to run for – 12-18 months is a good length of time usually, depending on the market and the audience.

3. Profile the market, the competition, and your audience

Understanding the market context, the competition and your target audience is the key to successful campaigns. When it comes to your audience, segment them and prioritise them if needed. Talk to existing customers about why they chose your product or service and what they need. The insight gained from this step enables you to shape and differentiate your offer.

4. Shape your messaging

What words will you use in your campaign? Use simple, relevant and impactful messaging to get your offer across in a clear way. Consider how your core message may need to be adapted for each audience segment, and how you might build your messaging as the campaign develops over time (particularly for longer campaigns of 6+ months).

5. Develop a creative platform

Creative brings a campaign to life. You might have the right words, but if it’s not presented in the right way, your campaign won’t grab the attention of your audience. Your campaign creative should reflect your offer and the market insight, be in keeping with your company’s overall brand and be impactful.

6. Create a campaign plan

How are you going to get your message out to your target audience? Here, consider tactics and channels in line with your audiences’ preferences and watering holes, and your budget. Are you going to have a campaign hub, (for example a microsite) to point leads towards? Weigh up whether to take a phased approach, rolling out territories one after the other perhaps to test and learn first (depending on your resources), and switching up tactics and messaging during the campaign to build the brand story and keep the campaign fresh.

Also, look at roles and responsibilities within your team and your partners, and be sure to include training or informing sales teams or customer services if needed.

7. Implement, review and adjust

Now, simply create the campaign assets you need to deliver the plan (e-shots, direct mail, etc.), gather your data together, and roll out the campaign. Throughout the campaign, monitor and analyse what’s working and what isn’t, and make adjustments as needed. If you find that one channel is delivering a lot more results than others, it could be worth focusing your resources on that.

Get in touch if you’d like to know more about planning a b2b marketing campaign. We’ve got a bit of experience in that area…

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