The key to any marketing campaign is having a well-thought-out strategy. This is especially true when planning a multichannel campaign because there are more moving pieces. What information do you need to build an effective campaign strategy? And what’s the best way to organize a successful campaign?

Why does starting with the right information impact success levels?

The right information is the fuel. There’s always a chance a poorly planned (or spray and pray) campaign may yield results. However, like putting regular gasoline in a diesel truck, you may think you are getting somewhere, but it’s just going to blow up in your face. 💥

Not only does starting with the right data and a plan give you a chance for success, but it also allows you to measure that success. Without a strategy, there’s no way to track or judge something’s effectiveness.

There are questions to ask yourself that give you the right information to build a campaign.

1. Who are you targeting?
2. How are you targeting them?
3. What is your message?
4. How are you tying your channels together?
5. What data are you gathering?
6. When and how are you retargeting?

Breakdown of the steps

Step 1: The Who

How do you figure who to target? The easiest way to decide who to target is to figure out what is your buyer persona. Or if you already have buyer personas, which one to use for this campaign.

Here are the questions to ask yourself to find the fundamentals of your “who.”

1. What are their basic demographics?
   What gender to they identify as? How old are they? Where do they live? What is their relationship status? Are they educated?
2. What do they do for work?
   What’s their job title and description? But more than that, are they a decision maker? What do they influence at work?
3. What are their interests?
   Do they have hobbies or interests? What do they do in their free time? Are they part of a community?
4. What do they want and why can’t they have?
   This a big thing for figuring out what you can do to help them! What are their goals and dreams? What are their pain points? Like, what keeps them up at night?
5. Why wouldn’t they buy from you?
   What’s stopping them from buying from you? What objections may they have?
6. What ways would they prefer to interact with you?
   Do they use social media? Do like a particular social media? Is a phone call the best way to reach them?

Step 2: The How

Now that you know who, you probably know what marketing channels are most effective for marketing to them. Then you just need to decide what channels to use for the campaign you are planning.

How do you decide what channels to use? The most important thing is that it what’s your target audience responds to.

Other important factors to consider:

• Your budget

• What step in the sales process is this campaign

• How many channels do you want to use

Step 3: The What

What is your message? How will you modify that message for the different channels?

The What needs to be third because Who you are talking to and How you are talking to them informs the decision about messaging. For example, if you are planning on using social media as a channel, then your tone needs to be more informal and your content to be more entertaining.

Step 4: Integration

How are you going to integrate or tie the channels you are using together? Will customers interact with channels in a specific order? What type of interacts do you want your customers to have with these channels? Is there a path you want your customers to follow?  

Step 5: Data gathering

Before your campaign starts, it’s important to know what data you want to learn from it. Do you want to learn data about your customers?

Other important data to track is what are the metrics you are going to use the rack the effectiveness of this campaign. Is this a branding play campaign and impressions are most important? Are email opens relevant data?

Step 6: Retargeting

Retargeting should not be an afterthought of your campaign. Any retargeting or (remarketing) should be planned out and integrated into your original campaign strategy.

Having a strategy for marketing campaigns is extremely important. However, actually planning the campaign doesn’t need to be overwhelming or complicated.

What questions have you found to be important to ask yourself when planning a marketing campaign?

Most people’s favorite part of building a marketing campaign are the visuals. While how your marketing looks is important, who you are sending it to, and how  you are sending it should be the first step with any marketing.  Those two things inform everyone’s favorite part of marketing: results.  

 It’s like a luxury car…looks beautiful and sure makes an impression, but if there’s no gas in the tank, it won’t go anywhere.  Going (hopefully fast) is the goal!

So, how do you know what the best fuel is for your marketing campaign?   

The right fuel is determined by who your audience is, what your campaign objectives are, and the best ways to reach your audience.  

Which comes back to the two most common questions we get asked: 

• What data do I need for marketing?  
• How do I reach my customers?  

What data do I need for marketing?  

Really the first question is: what data is available? Viant had a great illustration about the different types of marketing data.

Data Types (Explained with Cows)

First-Party Data

You own a cow. You know the cow’s name, what it eats and where it sleeps. These are your customers; you have their contact information in your CRM. They know you have their information.

Second-Party Data

You rent some cows from a friend for a fee but you don’t necessarily know the cow’s name, what it eats, or where it sleeps. You have to pay your friend each time you need some milk. Second-party data is first-party data sold to another company for a specific use. For example, say you own a company and you looking to expand into a new market. You can buy a list of first-party customer data from a company in the new market you are tapping into and market to them for an agreed-upon number of times. However, with the increased privacy and data laws using second-party data can sometimes be problematic.   

Third-Party Data

There’s a village full of cows that were bought, rented, or found. The cows with similar traits are herded together and sold to you. You don’t know where the cows came from or sometimes if this is even a real cow. Traditional list data and many digital audiences call into this category. Which is one reason it’s so important to get data from a good source! You need to be able to trust that you aren’t buying fake cows or ones that don’t match the traits you need. Another thing to remember about 3^rd party data is that it is the most impacted by the cookie and privacy laws! Relying too much on traditional 3^rd party data can set you up for failure in the future.

Looking into the future with post cookie advertising, traditional 2^nd and 3^rd party data channels are going to change. The ways to gather consumer data have already changed in a lot of ways. For example, Connected TV doesn’t support cookies and instead relies on IP targeting. This is data you can use for marketing but doesn’t have the same types of information you would get with traditional list data. You are going to get demographic data and location data but probably not names or a specific address. Using IP targeting is a great way to maintain your same flow of data-driven campaigns while still working within updated privacy laws.

This is often called people-based data. When you use people-based data you know you are reaching real people in real households.

What data do you actually need?

The data you need is based on two things: What do you know about the people you are trying to reach? What is your goal with this campaign? What you know about who you are trying to reach impacts your demographics and helps informs decisions about methods and channels. Your campaign goal also helps you figure out what channels to use as well as campaign scale and message.

Questions you can ask to help learn about your customers:

1. What are their basic demographics?
   What gender to they identify as? How old are they? Where do they live? What is their relationship status? Are they educated?
2. What do they do for work?
   What’s their job title and description? But more than that, are they a decision maker? What do they influence at work?
3. What are their interests?
   Do they have hobbies or interests? What do they do in their free time? Are they part of a community?
4. What do they want and why can’t they have?
   This a big thing for figuring out what you can do to help them! What are their goals and dreams? What are their pain points? Like, what keeps them up at night?
5. Why wouldn’t they buy from you?
   What’s stopping them from buying from you? What objections may they have?
6. What ways would they prefer to interact with you?
   Do they use social media? Do like a particular social media? Is a phone call the best way to reach them?

Learning about your customers and the best way to communicate with them is the foundation of effective marketing! Effective marketing = results!

Data, analytics, and insight is kinda our thing. However, it seems like a lot of people use those words almost interchangeably. Are they the same thing? What do they mean for your business?

Data = The Information
Analytics = The Connections
Insights = The Actions

Data is pure information. For example, data about your current customers (first party data) is information such as average age, gender, location, or occupation. Analytics are the patterns that connect those things.

That would mean that data is knowing that you sent over 20,000 emails in June 2021. Analytics are knowing that your average open rate is 22.8% and your click through rate is 0.09%. The analytics show you a clearer image of the data.

I heard a really great illustration about this recently. Thinking about data and analytics can be compared to looking at an impression painting (like this one: The Cliff of Aval Etretat by Claude Monet.) Up close, all you see are the brush strokes and colors. That’s like looking at raw data. You can see what it is made off. But if you back up a few feet and look at the painting, you can see what the image actually is. Similarly, looking at analytics gives a more complete view of your data.

What’s the advantage of Insight?

Insight is the action connected to the analytics. Taking the example of 20,000 emails, insight would taking the knowledge that you have a great open rate but a terrible CTR and doing something about it. Applying insight means changing your call to actions or link to generate a better click through rate.

What’s another way to apply insights?

Building a Buyer Persona

What is a buyer persona? In the simplest terms, a buyer persona is exemplification of all of your customers. The most common way to do this is to create a fictional person that has the most common demographics and interests of your customers. Basically, you take data, analyize it, and then use insight to act.

Ask yourself: What are your customers common denominators? (Data) What do they want? (Analytics) What are their pain points? (Analytics) Once you have this information, it can be combined into a person you can picture makes it easier to connect with the crowd. (Insights)

Jim Edwards from Funnel Scripts explains buyer personas as the main character in the story of your company’s customer journey. Although your company already has its own personality, (or brand) in order to success the narrative you’re telling haws to focus on what the customer wants and needs. You are there to help them get to where they want to go. Jim Edwards example buyer persona was for a weight loss company. Their buyer persona is a middle-aged unicorn named Fred who needs to lose weight if he wants to be successful at his quests. Fred is the main character in the story. The weight-loss company is there to help him.

What data do you need to create a buyer persona?

Like any good main character, your buyer persona needs to be well rounded. It needs to have a purpose, interests, goals, and struggles. It’s especially important to know what motivates them so you can help them.

Here’s some common buyer persona attributes.

1. What are their basic demographics?
   What gender to they identify as? How old are they? Where do they live? What is their relationship status? Are they educated?
2. What do they do for work?
   What’s their job title and description? But more than that, are they a decision maker? What do they influence at work?
3. What are their interests?
   Do they have hobbies or interests? What do they do in their free time? Are they part of a community?
4. What do they want and why can’t they have?
   This a big thing for figuring out what you can do to help them! What are their goals and dreams? What are their pain points? Like, what keeps them up at night?
5. Why wouldn’t they buy from you?
   What’s stopping them from buying from you? What objections may they have?
6. What ways would they prefer to interact with you?
   Do they use social media? Do like a particular social media? Is a phone call the best way to reach them?

Using data, analytics, and insight is essential to having a successful business. What ways to you implement data in your business?

A Buyer Persona or Avatars is one of those confusing marketing things that seems to be really important, but no one ever explains why or how you can make one. Buyer Personas are especially valuable in this digital age where you can’t see your customers. They can help make your digital presence and marketing more personal.

It’s a lot easier to market to one single person than to a crowd. We’ve talked in the past about social media (and email) feels like a personal one-on-one conversation between brand and consumer. Building a buyer persona connects with that thinking. Having a buyer persona helps you to hon in on who you are reaching and who you want to reach.

What are Buyer Personas or Avatars?

In the simplest terms, a buyer persona is exemplification of all of your customers. The most common way to do this is to create a fictional person that has the most common demographics and interests of your customers. What are your customers common denominators? What do they want? What are their pain points? Taking this information and combining it into a person you can picture makes it easier to connect with the crowd. A lot of marketers recommend giving your buyer personas names.

Jim Edwards from Funnel Scripts explains buyer personas as the main character in the story of your company’s customer journey. Although your company already has its own personality, (or brand) in order to success the narrative you’re telling haws to focus on what the customer wants and needs. You are there to help them get to where they want to go. Jim Edwards example buyer persona was for a weight loss company. Their buyer persona is a middle-aged unicorn named Fred who needs to lose weight if he wants to be successful at his quests. Fred is the main character in the story. The weight-loss company is there to help him.

What information do you need to create a buyer persona?

Like any good main character, your buyer persona needs to be well rounded. It needs to have a purpose, interests, goals, and struggles. It’s especially important to know what motivates them so you can help them.

Here’s some common buyer persona attributes.

1. What are their basic demographics?
   What gender to they identify as? How old are they? Where do they live? What is their relationship status? Are they educated?
2. What do they do for work?
   What’s their job title and description? But more than that, are they a decision maker? What do they influence at work?
3. What are their interests?
   Do they have hobbies or interests? What do they do in their free time? Are they part of a community?
4. What do they want and why can’t they have?
   This a big thing for figuring out what you can do to help them! What are their goals and dreams? What are their pain points? Like, what keeps them up at night?
5. Why wouldn’t they buy from you?
   What’s stopping them from buying from you? What objections may they have?
6. What ways would they prefer to interact with you?
   Do they use social media? Do like a particular social media? Is a phone call the best way to reach them?

Once you have that all that information, you will have a very clear image of who your customer is!

A lot of companies create multiple buyer personas. It is a very good way to segment out different sections of your business. It is also helpful to create a buyer persona for your ideal customer as well! You can take the information you’ve learned about your ideal customer and use it to go and get those customers.

Do you have a buyer persona for your business? And more importantly: what did you name them? 😜