7 Golden Rules to Effective Campaigning

Ensuring Best Results from a Combined Marketing and Sales Campaign

Everyone is planning for 2020. 2020 is this infamous year when every company will have ‘digital transformation’ nailed. Sure, everything will be streamlined; technology, processes… but for those that want to get on their way to achieving the most effective sales/Marketing campaign, below is a guide to deliver an effective, collaborative & memorable campaign.

1. Start with a Plan

Identify your target segment, region, personas and messaging. Identify the resources you have available for follow-ups and set timelines. This sounds obvious but a lot of companies identify a theme and jump straight ahead into scattered marketing without the essential penetration strategy or even real prioritization based on revenue objectives. In order for your digital marketing strategy to be successful, you need to plan out what the end-to-end campaign will look like; who will do what at each stage of the campaign, what non-marketing or external resources you may need i.e. at what point do you require Sales input and what communication do they need to make? Most importantly, what is your call to action? Always have your call to action in mind. Make it effortless for your audience to contact you and easy for them to specify what the conversation would be about.

2. Get Buy-in

No marketing campaign can be successful without the buy-in and joint collaboration of Sales. Sales will have mapped out their territory plan and objectives, including strategic campaigns they will need Marketing to run on their behalf in order to generate leads in their specific targeted accounts.

For marketing-led campaigns, Marketing will need to ensure Sales are in agreement with the messaging being promoted and committed to follow up on leads in an effective & timely manner. Ensure all leads are followed up as a priority as these are the low hanging fruit before moving on to other sales activities. Nobody wants to go back over freezing cold leads from months ago.

3. Avoid Duplication

Again, this may seem obvious but duplication, or misalignment, of effort & messaging is commonplace. Why would a client buy from a company that seems unclear about what they are conveying? Ensure both teams are aligned. Always be thinking customer experience.

The key to achieve this outcome is transparency. Sales need to work with Marketing on their territory plans and what messaging they will be going to market with. Similarly, Marketing should make sales aware of their marketing calendar; including what events they will be attending, what campaigns they will be running, etc. Divide and conquer is the sweet spot. A co-ordinated campaign that has a clear message & call to action, appropriate follow ups (emails & calls) and of course buy-in from both teams will generate more leads than disparate Sales-only or Marketing-only campaigns.

This leads me to my next point; automate as much of the campaign as possible.

4. Automate the Process

Automation is one of the key drivers behind the ‘2020 vision’. This new era promises that companies will reap the benefits of automation made possible by emerging technologies. Sales & Marketing are spoiled for choice when it comes to automation tools available to them. Technologies such as Salesforce’ ‘Pardot’, Hubspot’s ‘Marketing Hub’ and even specialised campaign automation tools such as Mail Chimp & Toutapp are all aimed at efficiently increasing selling time and provide the consistency as well as transparency / sharing needed to successfully deliver a joint marketing/sales campaign.

Note: Choose an automation platform that is compatible with your CRM system. This ensures that all communication is tracked, so you can then analyse what campaigns and activities were most successful.

5. Social Selling

Social selling is a major disrupter in today’s marketing era. Sometimes companies overlook the power of social selling but look at Kylie Jenner, for example. She has built a brand empire primarily through social media.

Why not try include social selling into your campaign? Whether that’s a LinkedIn post that you follow up on all the likes/comments or it could be a Whats App text to everyone who signed up to a webinar or if your company is running a promotion. Whatever works for your company, try incorporate at least one aspect of social selling into your campaign.

6. Up-sell Through the Follow-up

My company recently launched a learning week programme. One of the sessions was ‘how to learn’. A key takeaway was to do something valuable for someone and they will feel compelled to owe you a favor. Whether that is a simple hello to your colleague, they will feel they should say ‘hi’ the next time you meet. Similarly, in a business sense, you may know that your prospect is going on vacation to Italy next month. Why not send them a travel guide or an event guide with a call to action at the end – “I saw this and thought of you- let’s chat when you are back”. Your prospect will feel like they owe you a reply.

In a campaign sense, by providing additional value with each follow-up is the smart way to imply that they “owe” you a response. This is often referred to as “lead nurturing” or simply “adding a bit more value each time you make contact”. So you might start off by campaigning with high-level / industry observations; then follow-up with more segmented, company-relevant information and then follow through with more granular, persona-driven content. On each occasion of follow-up the sense of obligation to reply increases on the part of the receiver.

7. Analyse Results

Data analytics is not only key to optimizing your campaign, but it does provide you with the insights needed to refine your process and focus on what resonates in your market. Have open and fun debrief sessions – what worked, what didn’t work?

A great sales leader I know implemented a ‘stop’, ‘start’ and ‘continue’ process. We broke into groups and outlined activities that we thought was not working (stop), was working well (continue) and also new innovative ideas that we should start doing (start). This is a great way to iterate and develop an effective Sales & Marketing campaign.

This concludes my 7 golden rules to effective campaigning. I’d like to thank Frank Healy; Marketing Manager at Openet, for his contributions to this blog. As always, please contact me if you have any specific questions or would like me to share some further examples- your feedback is always welcome.