4 Marketing Campaign Planning Mistakes

Marketing campaign planning and delivering a successful campaign can take up a lot of time and resources. Over the last 20 years at Voodoo, we have witnessed a variety of different mistakes which have led to unsuccessful campaigns. Often, they are due to the same reasons; lack of planning, preparation and understanding.

Here you will find a summary of some of those mistakes so that you can make sure your business doesn’t fall into the same trap.

 

1. Unclear Campaign Goals

One of the first steps in the planning process of the campaign is setting clear and achievable goals for the campaign itself. It is imperative that these goals are as specific as possible as this will help you assess the success of the campaign once it has been completed.

You should use the SMART framework in order to help create objectives that you can assess performance again.

Marketing campaign planning SMART objectives are;

• Specific
• Measurable
• Actionable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

 

2. Be open to, and plan for change

Over the last 10 years, new technological developments have developed a lightning speed pace. Innovative and creative new business ideas are great, but they will fail to exist without considering your digital footprint, which many businesses don’t do. Good practice marketing campaign planning should be at the forefront of any strategy.

Music is a key example of technological change. Fewer and fewer people are purchasing CDs and CD players and Walkmans are a thing of the past. People are now able to download their music straight to their phones. Music distributor, HMV ignored several warnings about how both music downloading and distributing was changing. As a result of this in 2013, the firm went into administration. The firm was, however, bough buy a new buyer who reinvented the brand, offering customers a variety of different ways that they could access music. Sadly, at the end of 2018 HMV were yet again facing collapsing as the increase in on-demand streaming platforms hit their sales. Now is their time to find a way of getting ahead of entertainment trends to yet again because of a proactive company. Failing that they once again may find themselves at risk of going under.

In short, companies that fail to adapt to the current market trends have always failed. As a business, you need to understand how the customers have changed and plan for change to happen.

 

3. Lack of brand integration

Due to an increase in technological developments brands have a huge variety of different ways in which they can communicate with their customers. However, with each different platform used, the more important brand integration becomes. Your brand image needs to be consistent and uniform across each media platform in order to ensure that your brand’s values and messages are communicated clearly in order to ensure that your customers know they are dealing with your company, as opposed to one of your competitors.

The reason behind the importance of brand integration is because it provides authenticity and a seamless experience for the user. Ensure that there is consistency across all platforms used which in turn will lead to higher credibility.

 

4. Not completing a post-campaign review

You can only plan for the future if you learn from past mistakes. Reviewing the effectiveness of the campaign and indeed the marketing campaign planning is vital when optimising future campaigns. You need to delve into the data behind the campaign to see what you can learn moving forward.

Post-campaign reviews enable you too;

• See how the target audience responded to the campaign.
• Review the effectiveness of the campaign versus the SMART targets you set out at the beginning
• Look at which elements of the campaign worked well and which didn’t work so well
• Learn what changes you need to make for future campaigns.