The number of media to choose from is growing more rapidly than ever before. More than a third of the world’s population is online, global internet penetration rates are growing almost daily, mobile phone adoption rates are booming and online video, pod cast, movies and blogs are exploding all over the web.
With this breadth of choice, deciding what media to use and where to communicate your message and capture and engage your audience can be tough and potentially dangerous if you get it wrong.
Having said this, despite the communication revolution, our fundamental approach to creating a marketing strategy for our clients’ businesses remains essentially the same. We still start with defining their business objectives, products and services and a thorough understanding of the audience we are targeting, both offline and online.
Given this big picture, the five points below outline the central components of all marketing strategies Brand X devises and deploys:
What are the business objectives?
First off, we sit down with the client to define a clear, workable brief which includes a firm understanding of their business objectives and then we set the parameters for how we will measure each one’s success.
As every penny of the advertising budget represents the willingness of our clients to invest in the future growth of their company, we create a clear roadmap for how we will measure each campaign’s success in terms of costs, timelines, visitor-to-lead conversion rates, lead-to-client conversion rates, and often even up to measuring the profitability of each client gained from the respective campaign.
Who is the audience?
Because we track and measure so many aspects of each campaign we run, we have accrued a lot of statistical data and industry-specific insight into the buying habits of the audiences our clients want to target. We then look at all the ways we can leverage this knowledge appropriately for each client’s business.
We invest a lot of time understanding the audiences we target: what are they looking to buy, where do they buy it and what creatives stimulate their interest most. In some campaigns we want them to click for more information, in others we want them to apply for an account or to test drive our clients’ products. Whatever actions we want the audience to take; we also want them to form a strong impression of our clients. All this combines to determine the way we build the call-to-action of the campaign, where the advert is shown and the theme for each campaign.
What is the message?
If your advertising is going to penetrate the barrage of sales messages we are all subject to offline as well as online, it must be clear, punchy and actionable.
At Brand X, we work closely with our clients to develop advertising messages that are loyal to the brand, the companies’ ambitions and that fully take into consideration the media buy we select for each campaign.
We combine our analysis of prospects’ behaviour and interests with our knowledge of which media best reaches this audience. We consider how the brand can become a natural part of this audience’s environment and how we can engage with them to develop a stronger commitment to our clients’ products and services.
Does the message match the audience?
At this point, we examine what messaging structures and styles will most appeal to each type of target audience. Next, we define the arguments and create the designs to encourage the audience to take the required action and to enter into a dialogue with our clients.
In our experience, it is rarely sufficient to deliver a message through a single advertising campaign. Our job is to capture the attention and interest of the audiences we target. This means that we examine all the applicable past performance metrics, research the audience interests and needs and then flesh out advertising ideas for a series of campaigns. Then we determine where we will achieve the biggest impact based on where our target audiences are gathering; which nowadays is predominantly online.
Does the message match the medium?
By bringing together copywriting, design, campaign management, media planning and analysis, we create series of campaigns that are cohesive and compelling. Not only must they catch our audience’s attention, convert interest into action and provide our clients with measurable results, but each part should complement the other elements of a campaign.
We make sure that everyone involved has a firm understanding of the aims, methods and results of each campaign we run. This ensures that we can continually fine tune our campaign performance to deliver higher returns on investment for our clients.
It’s only when we have reviewed these five priorities do we start working on the "Big Idea" for the campaign to help our clients continue to build and grow their businesses.