- The great war strategist Sun Tzu
once wrote, every battle is won before it's ever fought.
Now he wasn't talking about marketing
but that doesn't make this lesson any less important.
Because in marketing, in business,
and pretty much anything you wanna be successful at
a little bit of preparation goes a long, long way.
And that's why in this video
we're talking about the five key steps
to planning and launching a successful marketing campaign
so you can give yourself the greatest chance of success,
right out of the gate.
Let's get to it.
(upbeat rock music)
Hey there my name is Adam Erhart,
and welcome to the Modern Marketing Show
where we help you grow your business
by making better marketing.
So if you're interested in learning
about the latest and greatest marketing strategies,
tools, tips, tricks, and tactics,
well, you may wanna consider subscribing.
Over the years as a marketing strategist,
I've spent a lot of time learning,
and experimenting, and testing, and applying
what works and what doesn't when it comes to launching
a really successful marketing campaign.
And where things get interesting
is that well, pretty much anything can work,
whether we're talking about content marketing
or email marketing, online advertising,
or even good old fashioned direct mail.
So what separates the winners from the losers
isn't the tactic then,
but the underlying strategy behind the method.
This is why it's so important
to set yourself up for success right from the start
by spending a few extra hours ahead of time
really mapping out
and planning your campaign from start to finish.
I promise, the little bit of extra effort this takes
can save you a ton of headaches, a ton of money,
and really prevent a train wreck of a marketing campaign
from even happening in the first place.
Alright so with all that said,
let's dive into the five steps
to planning and launching a successful marketing campaign.
Step number one is the why.
One of the craziest things I see,
and on a pretty regular basis too,
is the creation of a marketing campaign just because.
What I mean by that is marketing,
simply for the sake of marketing,
or in other words, random acts of marketing
where you go out there and just do some random marketing
without any clear goal, or objective behind the campaign.
It's probably not hard to believe that when this happens
you're pretty much doomed from the start.
A campaign will get launched, it'll fail,
and then the business owner will blame the tactic,
or channel, or strategy, or marketing in general.
Madness I tell you, madness.
See, in the real world,
it's rare that a campaign gets launched
and has any chance of being successful
without really clearly articulating where you want it to go
and what success would look like.
So here are some questions to ask yourself at this stage.
Why are we doing this?
What are we hoping to achieve?
What's the end goal?
How will we know if we're successful, or not?
Step number two is the what.
Alright so now that you've got your reasons all sorted out,
it's time to take a look at what you're about to promote.
One of the biggest mistakes I see people make
and one of the surest ways
to have complete marketing failure
is to market something that you want
rather than what the market wants.
Basically, at this stage, you wanna get absolutely clear
about what the best thing
to focus on promoting is right now.
If you're marketing to a brand new cold audience
who has absolutely no idea who you are,
well, then you may wanna start with something
that has a low-barrier, and high perceived value.
It'll make it easier to market and easier to sell.
If you're marketing to a warm audience of say,
people who already know you or repeat customers,
well, you can start to move further up the customer ladder
and market something maybe a little more expensive
and a little more niche down.
Regardless, some of the key questions
you want to ask yourself at this stage are
what are we trying to promote?
Is this the thing we should be promoting?
Do we think people want this?
What might they want more instead?
This takes us to step three, the who.
Okay, so you've got your why, you've got your what,
it's time to dial in the who.
It's at this stage we want to deep dive
into the what you're marketing, we'll call this your offer,
as well as the who you're marketing to,
we'll call them your customers.
The reason you wanna do this
is because you wanna find the overlap
between your offer and your customers
and find a way to match them together
in a way that uniquely solves their problems.
This part's really important
so let me say that again in a different way.
The goal at this stage is to uncover
your customers' miracles and miseries, their wants,
their dreams, their fears, their desires, their needs,
their problems, their frustrations,
whatever it is that they're going through
and then find a way that your business
or your offer uniquely solves this problem for them
and then demonstrate how you can bridge the gap
to get them from where they are to where they wanna go.
Questions to ask yourself at this stage are
who are we trying to serve?
Do we know their basic details like age,
gender, occupation, and where they live?
What about the deeper stuff
like attitudes, interests, and beliefs?
Step four is the where.
By this stage, you should have a pretty clear understanding
of why you're running your campaign,
what you're gonna be promoting,
and who you're promoting it to.
So it's in step four that we begin what most consider
the actual marketing part, because this is where
we're gonna begin actually putting your message
directly in front of your customers.
But to do that, we first need to find out
where they are so we can meet them there.
Fortunately, armed with all the information
that you've just collected
by going through the previous steps,
finding out this information is really pretty easy.
It just takes a quick Google search
on which demographics tend to be using
which social media platforms,
and you'll have a really good baseline on where to start.
Some good questions to ask yourself at this stage are
where do my customers spend their time, online and offline?
What social media networks do they use?
How do they prefer to engage with online content?
And what kind of content do they prefer?
Step five is the how.
Finally we get to the how.
Now mistakenly, this is where most people start
and it often leads to haphazard campaigns
that are built on shaky foundations
and no real strategy at all.
After all, how can you possibly know the best how
until you've clearly identified the goals,
the customer, the offer,
and where you're gonna be running the campaign?
The answer as you know is you can't,
which is why most marketing fails.
The key then is to go through the steps
that we've just covered,
and then by the time you get to this stage,
well, you just need to decide on what tactic to execute on.
As an example, let's say that you've determined
your market is on Facebook and Facebook Ads
are gonna be the best way to reach them there.
Well the how really just comes down
to then figuring out how to run Facebook ads
or finding someone that knows.
Or, if you've determined that your audience is on YouTube
and so the best way to reach them there
is a YouTube content strategy.
Well, the how then just becomes researching,
what's the best way to run a YouTube content strategy?
Or should you be running YouTube ads
to put a little gas on the fire?
In most cases, some good questions to ask yourself
at this stage are how are we gonna do this?
Should we do it ourselves or find someone to help?
What do we need to know, have, or do to make this work?
Bonus tip, the when.
No strategy that covers the why, what, who, where, and how
would be complete without at least addressing the when.
But I didn't want to include the when
in the main five parts because one of the biggest mistakes
I see businesses owners making
is putting off marketing until.
Until the business generates more revenue,
until the business declines and needs to,
until next month, until next quarter, until next year,
until we get our staffing issue sorted,
until we hire an intern, until, until, until.
And well, as you can imagine,
nothing ever ends up happening.
As the Chinese proverb says,
the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago,
the second best time is now.
So the when is now.
Alright so thanks so much for watching,
I hope you enjoyed the episode.
If so, make sure to give it a thumbs up,
subscribe to the channel,
and say hello in the comment section below.
For more great marketing strategies,
tools, tips, tricks, and tactics,
make sure to head over to adamerhart.com
which is packed full of resources of articles, videos
all designed to help you take your marketing
and your business to the next level and way beyond that.
So thanks so much for watching
and I'll catch you next time on the Modern Marketing Show.