Marketing campaigns are by their very nature a big bundle of moving parts. Your message needs to be seen in different locations, on a variety of devices and will likely be in print, video as well as digital. How successful it is at increasing sales hinges on a few key elements.
#1 Be Consistent
Your campaign needs to look, sound, and act the same across all of your different marketing and advertising channels. Sounds pretty easy, but the more channels and vendors you have, the easier it is for that messaging and styling to get wonky. Some vendors will want to tweak it to fit their format or have their production people create your ad. This is when you put on your Brand Police hat and enforce your message and style. Make sure you have final approval on all creative so you can make sure it looks and sounds like the other elements in the campaign. Colors, tone of voice, design, lighting, whatever it is that makes your campaign needs to happen across all channels.
So why is consistency important? It reinforces the message from one channel to the next. Many people “see” an ad or marketing message unconsciously. We’ve all learned to almost ignore them as we go about our internet or TV surfing. The key is ‘almost’…. so while we may not remember seeing an ad exactly, just having it in our visual space does register in the mind at some level. And the more a reader ‘sees’ a message, the more likely they will recall it and then act upon it.
A recent study by OnShare on the effects of passive and active ad exposure shows that even when someone doesn’t recall an ad they were shown, there’s still an increase in brand awareness and intent to purchase. So having a consistent message and style is critical to your campaign’s success.
#2 Be Flexible
Can a campaign be both consistent AND flexible? Yes it can and yes, it NEEDS to be. Flexible here means the design and message need to be adjustable so it can fit into all of the various sizes and formats, while still being consistent. This really starts early in the creative process. As your designers and writers begin to develop the initial creative, check to make sure the visuals and the copy can be translated well into all the channels, both in terms of layout and in how appropriate it is for that channel.
To see examples of flexible designs we’ve created, check out the campaigns for Credit Union of Georgia and Progress Bank.
#3 Target the Right Audience in the Right Channel
As you get your messaging dialed in, double check the message is the right one on each channel for the audience who’ll see it. Would be a shame to spend all of that money to have one of the channels not performing well. It could be as simple as changing a few photos on your ad to match the demographic of the magazine in which it will run. Or adjusting the copy a touch to appeal to a certain lifestyle in your social media ad.
We consider these tips to be a great foundation for any successful multi-channel campaign. And there are so many more tips available to take your campaigns to the next level! What are your favorite tips for getting a campaign to drive sales?
