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Generating Marketing Campaign Ideas

Marketing Campaign IdeasYour marketing calendar calls for three new campaigns to launch in the next 90 days. Business goals are outlined, but you’re under the gun to come up with something fresh … and effective. You’ve met with your creative team, but your marketing campaign ideas are all tired, or not very good.

If you’re a B2C marketer using an agency or dedicated creative team, give your team some examples of campaigns that you like, and ask them to use those concepts as guidance during their brainstorming.

If you’re B2B and have previously focused on pragmatic, value-driven marketing campaigns, take a look at some consumer campaigns for inspiration. The days of boring feature/benefit messages are over; B2B marketers are now leveraging the same types of creative ideas as consumer-oriented marketers in their campaigns.

A Dating Story … to Sell Software

For an example of how a B2B company used a creative B2C campaign theme, take a look at the case study for Central Desktop’s “The Breakup” campaign, courtesy of MarketingSherpa.

Central Desktop is a B2B software company with a cloud-based collaboration and project management platform. The Breakup campaign highlights a few interesting points:

    • The use of a dating story, delivered cartoon-style, to emphasize visual appeal to its target audience. The microsite is here.
    • A simple, hand-written “breakup-note” direct mailpiece.
    • Humorous, simple yet edgy email follow-up continuing the story.

This example shows that creativity, a long-time staple of B2C marketers, can be effective in B2B. This campaign yielded positive metrics as well as characters and a theme to use in future campaigns, displaying the burgeoning trend of B2C and B2B marketing convergence.

Award-Winning Marketing Campaigns

To get your creative juices flowing, here are more examples of past successful campaigns:

Brainstorming for Campaign Ideas

As you’re reviewing campaign examples, also think about campaigns you’ve run in the past. Which ones worked well? Can you modify the creative to extend their life? Can you use a similar theme?

What about your competitors? What campaigns have they run in the past that you liked?

Also think about other industries, even B2C if you’re B2B and vice versa. Then, list your marketing campaign creative ideas. Here you’re just focusing on the creative aspect.

As you’re considering your campaign concepts, think about making emotional connections with your audience, instead of making promises or filling your campaigns with product/service information or features/benefits.

Try something new … you might be surprised with the results! If you’ve been running the same old tired campaigns for years, your market might appreciate a fresh approach.

Good luck!

If you’d like additional help, we have a guided, interactive marketing campaign planning template in our marketing planning and management app. Feel free to create a free preview account to give it a try.

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How to get the most from a print ad

Use Print AdvertisingEven though all the hype has been around social media and digital marketing for the last few years, print advertising is still effective and an important part of most B2B and B2C marketing campaigns.

If you’re planning a campaign in a trade publication this summer or fall, here are a few tips to increase your response rates and results.

1.  Make sure the ad has a strong headline and call-to-action. What’s the one thing you want to convey and what do you want prospects to do next?  Make sure these two elements are strong and clear.

2.  Stir up some emotion. The most powerful buying triggers are emotional benefits.  Success and admiration can be strong motivators for business buyers.  So is fear — fear of failure, being beaten by the competition, etc.  Your messaging should focus on emotional benefits and how your product delivers them.  To achieve this goal, you really need to know your audience.

3.  Speak to your audience. Going beyond #2, design your entire ad to grab attention and appeal to your target audience.  Consider your headline, copy, photography, typeface and layout.  If your target audience is C-levels, your ad should be eye-catching and communicate the benefit in the headline or image – a C-level cares about results and is less likely to read the rest of the ad than, say, an IT manager or technician who will need some degree of detail before responding.

Also, if your product or service is new to a particular audience, pay special attention not to use jargon or industry lingo.

4.  Building on #3, don’t dump all the information about your product or service into your ad. Usually this isn’t the time to list all of your features & benefits.  Give prospects just enough information to grab attention, feel pain and identify with the problem, then contact you for your solution.

5.  Treat the other ads as competitors. The average American is exposed to 1,000+ messages per day.  And the print publication is probably full of ads and articles that are competing for the attention of your prospects.  How large are other ads?  Full color or spot color?  Photography or heavy copy?  Size up the competition and make sure your ad stands out.

6.  Make it easy for prospects to contact you and get the exact information they want. If you only provide a phone number or a generic URL, you’re going to lose valuable prospects – not everyone will be ready to pick up the phone, and it can be tough to find specific answers from your home page.  Instead, provide a URL to a unique landing page that focuses on converting prospects for this particular campaign.  Use a phone number to a specific sales rep or a group that can help on the spot.  And include an email address to a spam-protected email address.

7.  Be scrupulous with your proof. A typo or poor grammar can damage your credibility and wash your investment down the drain.  And pay special attention to your contact information – it should be large, legible and correct.  Dial the phone number directly off your ad proof – do it several times to make sure it’s correct.  Do the same with the email and URL.  A mistake here will ruin your response.

8.  Make sure your offer will generate qualified leads. You don’t want to artificially create a lot of sales appointments that will inundate the sales force with unqualified leads.  Remember, it’s not necessarily the response rate that matters – it’s the return on your investment.  Focus on driving profitable revenue, not just a long list of names for your database.

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Focus on the details of marketing execution to get great results.

Download a plan for it ... in our marketing management app.