Often while making a marketing strategy
people often go wrong. And they go wrong for all the wrong reasons. People who
are in traditional marketing get it wrong as they think its to easy and
measurable so lets just adapt what we have on the offline marketing here. And this is where most marketers go wrong
with Digital marketing.
To make the task of making a Digital
marketing strategy easier, we would propose that you keep the following
information handy.
1.
Objective
Why are you making a digital marketing
strategy? Now this question seems so easy and even naïve to think of here in
the list that too the first one. But its this very question which sets us to
fail. Now you would say why would I think
that you do not know the objective or why for your strategy?
The reason is simple most people know what
they are looking at from their digital marketing strategy but they are unable
to pin point the exact outcome they want? For e.g. say you want to run a
marketing campaign on digital to promote a new mobile phone. Now you would argue that see the objective is
“to promote” the mobile phone. And I would say that’s the starting of the
objective. Yes you want to promote the
mobile phone but why? Is it that you are looking for people to know about the
mobile phone(branding) or are you targeting to reach an X number of potential
buyers from the campaign.
Yes, that’s the question you need to be
asking are you looking at a specific number of people being reached or sales
achieved in other words a performance campaign. Or are you simply looking at
reaching some eyeballs for recall or in other words it’s a branding campaign.
How would a strategy be made for each one
of them will differ considerably. In our subsequent write ups, we will also
take up which objective to choose and why?
2.
Evaluation
criteria
Now the second most criteria is how will
you evaluate the campaign. Now this
would definitely be answered by the objective you have.
If your objective is performance than the
evaluation criteria will be either number of leads you have got from the
campaign or number of sales achieved.
On the other hand if your objective is
branding than the evaluation criteria can be number of people reached. However
this will be the most misleading criteria as these people might not be really
you TG(no matter how specific your campaign was). The other criteria can be
number of clicks or number of likes and shares(on social media only).
Its important that you know your evaluation
criteria and keep it in mind while making your strategy as it will define the
way the media you buy and the way you negotiate you media buying.
3.
Time Lines
Now time lines are generally specific but
often we have campaigns which are going to be ongoing or last for a long
time(more than 5 months). In campaigns where you have a specific time line its
easier to plan and strategize. However for campaigns which are longer or
ongoing it becomes important that you put in smaller timelines. This will help
you in defining the campaign better and adapting it for things not working
out
Moreover while planning for timelines
always know that it takes time for a campaign to pick up on digital. Its not a
print/radio/TV you fix the slots ans its done.
Here it depends on your ad rank, other ads running at the same time and
if you are running a performance campaign then a lot of publishers will not go
full throttle before testing the waters.
Also keep time in your timeline for testing and adapting otherwise you
might just waste your budget before getting any results.
4.
Analytical tools
Now this might sound a bit out of place
here. You would wonder “won’t agencies have their own analytical tools?” Well
you would be surprised how many times this will be overlooked or implemented
late. Most of the agencies have a focus
of getting your money spent as they make their money when you spend that. And
in doing so, they want the campaign to start asap and would implement only
basic analytical tool or depend on the publisher report.
Its your campaign and one of the ways you
can always be incharge and know how your money is being spent is by putting
your analytical tools in place.
Now here the tools might still be the same
irrespective of the objective of the campaign but what you look forward to is
important. What I mean is say you choose Google Analytics as your tool, then it
will tell you both the eye balls as well as visitors. But when you look for a
performance campaign, you will set-up goals for conversion.
While in a branding campaign you would
focus more on visits, time spent and bounce rate.
Choose the analytical tool which you need,
spend some budget here if required as it will also help you to cross check
publisher reports and identify any discrepancies thereby saving a lot more than
you spent.
5.
Success
Now, this one seems to be the easiest one
but just like the objective this is a tricky one. Success criteria cannot be vague as it will
define the campaign, its media, timeline everything. Success of the campaign will define have you
achieved what you desired from the campaign?
Knowing what will be the criteria which
proves the campaign to be a success, will also help your agency/publisher to
plan better. It will give them a clear idea as why a campaign is being planned
and how will they also prove it to be successful.
Put a number to success criteria whether
it’s a branding campaign where success can be number of visitors or page views
to the campaign. In case of performance this can be number of leads or sales.
Having a success criteria will also make it
easier for monitoring the progress of the campaign and making tweaks/amendments
if needed.
Armed with these 5, you can plan a digital
marketing campaign and ensure better success rates and value for money.
