Campaign Planning
I have been formulating and over-seeing campaign planning and delivery for over 6 years, and prior to that spent several years as a programme and project manager. I’m flexible in my approach to campaign planning, and can work to pre-existing methodologies, but would otherwise adopt the following approach.
Planning methodology
Proposition
Campaign planning assumes that a product or service has been developed as part of a higher level marketing or business strategy. Within Campaign Planning, the Proposition phase is all about is understanding the particular strengths that can be brought to bear within the campaign, and exactly how it is intended that this is presented.
Target market
As with Proposition, the Target Market will have been defined to some extent within the Marketing/ Business Strategy. Within Campaign Planning, this is the time to look more deeply into this target audience. Detailed market sizing, segmentation and analysis will develop the understanding of the audience, and how they may be best targeted and engaged with.
Goals
The campaign Goals should set out clearly what the campaign should deliver, and by when. There are myriad possible goals, including ABCD measures, Prospects, Leads, Sales, Income, Engagements, Retention rates, AOV and many more beside.
There should be few primary goals (one or two at most), supported by other measures or metrics. Goals should be quantifiable, else they are prone to selective interpretation.
Research
Research should have been conducted during the Marketing/ Business strategy planning, however it may still be required within campaign planning. It may be necessary to review prior research, challenge existing findings, or commission new research.
In most cases, it will be less costly and wasteful of time in the long-run to be sure of the basis on which you will proceed.
Delivery
Delivery planning will identify in detail the activities, timescales, dependencies, resource needs, durations, media, channels and costs.
It is in many ways a project plan for the Campaign.
Evaluation
The way in which a campaign will be measured/ evaluated should be determined at the outset. This should include the elements of the campaign that will be measured, how they will be measured, and what success looks like. An important part of the Evaluation is understanding what went well, and that can be scaled, as well as examining areas of under-performance.
Defining the Evaluation once a campaign has been launched has inevitable consequences.
Adjustment
In an ideal world, every campaign would over-deliver against its objectives, and leave no room for improvement. That world is rarely, if ever, found. Almost every campaign will require adjustment to one or more components, based on the learnings already acquired.
