You have a big marketing campaign coming up and you really need to make a splash with this one. So how do you do that?
The secret lies in the past.
Data from your past marketing efforts is the roadmap you need to ensure that your next campaign does better than all the rest.
What the Data Tells You
There’s a reason we’ve become so analytics-centric in the business world. Data and information give us valuable insight about our brands.
Consider what the world was like when television commercials and newspaper advertisements were the marketing tools du jour. While you could make estimates about how many people saw your ad, you couldn’t track how many actually gave you business as a result of seeing it.
Let’s not go back to that world, okay?
Now we can measure the actions of our audience down to the click of a link in a tweet. While this might seem to be micro analytics, it’s actually instrumental to know what people are responding to in what you’re doing via email, social media and on your website.
Look at Your Last Three Campaigns
I’m going to give you some homework, so feel free to save this article to return to later. I’d like you to look at the last three marketing campaigns you had. Answer these questions:
- Which channels did we promote on?
- How much interaction (clicks, shares, likes) did we get from each channel?
- Which sent the most traffic or participation?
- Which sent the least?
Once you answer these questions for each campaign, compare answers. Likely you’ll see similarities, like Facebook was your best channel for sending traffic to your landing page for each campaign. Use this data to shape what you do next (as well as what you don’t do).
Now for That New Campaign
Building on the success of your previous marketing campaigns, you’ll want to use the tactics and channels that were successful in helping you achieve results in the past. You also don’t want to use those tactics and channels that didn’t get good results. So you’re probably left with some amalgam of what you did in the past, with a little room to grow.
Here’s where you want to exhibit some self-restraint. There might be five new tactics you’re dying to try, but hold your horses. Instead, add one new component to the mix. I know; it’s killing you to do just one, but let me explain why it’s a good thing: when you change one thing at a time, you can better gauge how that single change impacted your campaign.
Let’s say you decide to add Instagram to the mix and create a hashtag for the contest you’re holding. The only way you’ll know if that works is if you do just that, and don’t also take out ads for your Instagram campaign, or promote it through other new channels.
Once that new tactic does its job, feel free to add in additional strategies.
The success of future marketing campaigns lies in examining your marketing history. Use it to make smart decisions about where to chart your course next.
Images via Pixabay: 1, 2, 3