Planning, collaborating and delivering successful marketing campaigns
We know you’re not new to the marketing industry. You might have even been in the business for years. So who are we to tell you how to do your job?
Well, that’s just it: we’re not telling you how to run your marketing team, or which audience to target, or why your product/brand/service is unique in the market. That’s your job, and you know it better than us.
Instead, Mediatool is here to help you deliver the best marketing campaign results possible. The process to launch a successful campaign starts long before you send your first insertion order, or even compile the media budget. It begins with useful insights gleaned from good data, which inform smart business decisions and optimise marketing campaign ROI.
Here’s how it’s done.
Step 1: Plan
Globally, the marketing industry is in a constant state of flux as it continues to expand. There are more media, advertising and promotional opportunities available than ever before, and competition for consumer attention is at an all-time high. So your organisation’s marketing dollars need to work harder to reach your audience. And that means meticulous planning before you launch a campaign.
Set clear KPIs
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are the measurable, meaningful goalposts for any media campaign. They are informed by – and in turn support – business growth goals. Almost every activity flows from the KPIs, so it’s vitally important for your campaign that your team gets them right.
Read more: Practical tools and tips for setting and measuring marketing KPIs, including overall campaign goals and incremental goals.
The “team” in this case should include decision-makers outside your immediate sphere of influence:
- C-Suite
- Upper management
- Client
- Product developers
- Frontline and sales staff
If marketing KPIs align with business goals, you will start to see a clear picture of the cyclical beneficial relationship between business growth, bottom line, and the marketing budget.
Collaborate openly
We can’t stress this enough: the best marketing campaigns are, without exception, a collaborative effort. Whether you’ve been in the industry for 1 year or 10, you are likely aware that nothing gets done without the team working together.
Collaboration is not only important in the sense of many hands making light work. It also promotes an early intervention approach to potentially misguided campaign management. Getting everyone’s input ensures a more rounded and cohesive media campaign.
However, collaboration has traditionally been tricky when working in geographically dispersed teams, or across the agency-client divide. There is no reason that should still be the case in 2020: technology, and in some cases circumstance, is opening up new avenues enabling teams to work together regardless of time zone, location, or team size. Mediatool has baked-in collaboration tools that globally diverse teams, and brands working with agencies, use to break down silos and work more productively together.
Step 2: Track
Once your campaign has launched, you can forget about it entirely because there’s nothing more to be done until it wraps up. Wait…that’s not right at all.
Marketing campaigns are nebulous and dynamic by nature. Put simply, they are responsive. Often you are required to make mid-campaign adjustments like decreasing spend on an underperforming asset and re-allocating it to a more effective channel. To do that, you need to have a clear picture of how every asset is performing in real-time.
Streamline data feeds
Tracking performance data during a multi-channel campaign can be a nightmare. There are different metrics on each platform, presented in different ways, with different user interfaces. So much data can make your head spin.
That’s where a marketing dashboard is crucial. Not only do you get a holistic overview of your entire campaign at a glance but you can also drill down on specific markets/assets/creative (or any parameter you need) to find out what’s working. And a good marketing dashboard will give you all that information in real-time, so you can pull reports quickly and make informed decisions without waiting for drip-fed data.
- The benefits of a marketing dashboard like Mediatool
- Compiles all data feeds into a single source of truth
- Tracks performance data in real-time
- Translates data into a unified language (that you define)
- Gives you budget control
- Visually appealing and easy to digest
- Offers insights and comparisons you can’t get from raw data alone
- Shows how campaign performance is pacing against targets
You can put all of those benefits together into the “elevator pitch” for a clever marketing dashboard: it creates a streamlined, comprehensive overview of media and marketing activity in order to optimise campaign delivery.
Read more: Find out what else you could be doing with your dashboard.
Step 3: Report
Reporting used to be the last thing you did for a media or marketing campaign. You all got together in the boardroom with a series of charts and spreadsheets – and usually a PowerPoint deck – to discuss what worked, what didn’t, and hopefully celebrate a successful strategy.
But the reality today is much different. The diversification of marketing channels and increased pressure to prove ROI means you might be reporting every week, or even every day. Whether you call it a “report” or an “update”, whether it’s formal or informal, you have probably experienced late nights compiling data for a report due the next morning.
Translate results to reports faster
Following on from the time-saving benefits of a marketing campaign dashboard, one of the biggest benefits of an all-in-one campaign management tool is the ability to generate reports instantly.
By setting up your dashboard based on the most relevant data, you essentially have a ready-made reporting tool. There is no need to translate information from several spreadsheets in order to meet reporting deadlines if the data is right in front of you, updated in real-time, and available for instant export.
Use reports to optimise future campaigns
And with that, we’ve come full circle! Just like a reliable data feed allows you to make mid-campaign adjustments, the right reporting tool will provide useful insights to deliver better campaigns in the future.
Once again, it all comes down to data. This is something that truly cannot be stressed enough: good data makes for good decisions. Good decisions make for more effective campaigns. More effective campaigns deliver ROI on a tight budget and make an impact on the business’ bottom line.
So instead of thinking of reporting as the stasis point at the end of your marketing campaign, consider it an opportunity to optimise – whether immediately or for the next campaign. Keep hold of previous reports and learn from them, and make sure your reporting shows a clear, accurate, and honest picture.
The ‘special sauce’ your campaigns might be missing
Find a marketer who doesn’t want to do things a little better, and we’ll show you someone who has given up. There is always a better, faster, more impactful way to do things – especially as technology races to catch up with our demands for more productivity and efficiency within marketing teams. But finding the solution starts with being honest about the identifying problems that are holding your team back from doing great things.
And here’s where we can help. Mediatool works with leading media and creative agencies, and big name global brands to:
- Discover untapped productivity potential for our users
- Implement user-friendly collaboration
- Set up consolidated real-time data feeds for a holistic campaign overview
- Streamline and tighten marketing team workflows
Put simply, Mediatool is a single source of truth, and a pre-packaged solution for better marketing campaigns.
A 30-minute marketing management consultation with the Mediatool team – completely free and with no obligations – can help you to identify areas for improvement, and unlock incredible productivity at work. Our team are experts at identifying the bottlenecks and double-handling steps slowing down the way you work. We see the trees when you’re lost in the forest, so to speak.
Then it’s over to you to implement real change at work.
The end-to-end SaaS solution for marketers and media managers
Mediatool has been designed to solve marketers’ problems with a single integrated system that supports your team through planning, delivery, tracking, reporting and optimising marketing campaigns.
Mediatool is more than a productivity tool. Every feature has been designed with the flexibility and latitude to solve problems, to deliver the best marketing campaign results. Rather than playing whack-a-mole with marketing campaign problems, Mediatool enables you to leap ahead at every stage of the campaign.
PS: If you’ve already taken our marketing effectiveness quiz then you might have some ideas of the intricate steps you can take to streamline your next campaign. If not, we strongly advise you to take the free 5-minute quiz before spending another dollar on ineffectual marketing campaigns.
