Taking the Cake:
Our Recipe for Moreish Marketing Campaigns
Flour, eggs, sugar, butter, water. How many sugary treats have you enjoyed that needed those ingredients? Like a cake, a marketing campaign and its supporting strategy rely on certain elements for the sweetest results – and we know the secret recipe.
We’ve all been there. After hours of baking, you invite your friends around for afternoon tea to try a slice of your spongey masterpiece. But when you all dig into the cake, for some
reason, it doesn’t quite hit the spot. It’s missing something. Not enough sugar, maybe. Or
did you put unsalted butter into the mixture when the recipe called for salted? Who knows,
but either way, your tea party’s gone down the rabbit hole and you’re left feeling mad as a
March hare.
There’s nothing worse than investing time and money in something, and it not being worthwhile, which is especially true when it comes to marketing campaigns and the strategies behind them. Just like a homemade cake, an advertising campaign can look the part, but if the planning behind it falls short, it can wind up leaving a bitter taste on the tips of your customers’ tongues. So how do you make sure they come back for seconds? We’ve been cooking up campaigns for our clients for more than 20 years. Below is our signature recipe for marketing success, and a tea party for your brand that would make the Mad Hatter himself jealous:
Preparation (Market Research)
Before you start cooking, you need to get the oven hot. In marketing terms, this means establishing your target market. Use research to learn exactly who you’re targeting. If you can, give them a name, a face and a personality, so you can ensure you’re always talking to them individually. Then find out who your main competition is and how what you’re offering to them is different from what they’re offering.
Ingredients (Mission Statement)
While the oven warms up, lay out all your ingredients, so they’re right where you need them. Write a mission statement that perfectly sums up what makes your brand tick: What you can promise to cook up for your customers that your competition can’t. Make the messaging watertight so that it couldn’t come from anyone else but you. Remember, cooking is an exact science, and you don’t want half-baked results.
Weigh Everything Up (Budget)
You don’t want to use more ingredients than you need. Weigh your financial resources in the same careful way you would flour, sugar or butter, taking care not to spill any while you’re at it. What will give you the best results without breaking the bank? What can you get away with doing in-house, and what do you need to outsource to an advertising agency? It’s the simple recipes that taste the best – so the fewer ingredients used, the better.
Read the Recipe Through and Start Cooking (Establish Goals)
Now you’ve done your research, written your mission statement, and agreed on a budget; you’re ready to start cooking and get your first advertising campaign underway.
Establish tangible goals you expect to see at each stage of the campaign: When should your cake start turning a beautiful golden color? When will it begin to rise? Key Performance Indicators allow you to do the same thing with your marketing. If your goal is to see a rise in customers, when do you expect to see more people walking through your door or clicking onto your website? Or if you want to see an increase in income, how will you measure it when it comes. KPIs can include anything from sales statistics, profit margins, or customer satisfaction surveys. Be sure to establish and stick to timelines, too – after all your hard work, you don’t ant your plan to turn to ash in the oven.
Eat! (Results)
It’s time for the best part. Now you’re done cooking; you can finally have your cake and eat it. Be sure to take the time to savor the fruits of your labor. If you’ve stuck to the recipe, you’re in for a feast. Write down what worked the best for you and what didn’t. Just like any well-used cookbook has scribbles in its margins, make notes on your marketing plan to use them later on. In the same way you ask your friends their opinion on your baking, run a survey to learn what about your campaign hit home with your customers and what didn’t. Test and analyze your findings and use them to your advantage in the future, too.
There’s nothing better than a hot pot of tea and a fresh slice of cake. The rewards of a well-planned marketing strategy can be just as satisfying. It’s fun to try and bake your own, but if you want mouthwatering results guaranteed every time, you should leave it to the Master Chefs.
To have us make something sweet for your brand, get a quote here.
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Great Perspective on this article. Love your graphics style.
Thank you Nath, we pull a lot of thought into the articles and the visual as well.