The Side Note

Your marketing planning for 2010 is probably well underway by now. Budgets are finalized or about to be finalized, new campaigns are getting started and marketing directors have visions of beautiful creative dancing through their heads. What a glorious year we hope it will be.

So I thought that during this time of planning, we should dedicate some space to reminding you of a few essentials for preparing your campaigns, collateral, ads and outreach plans. I have overseen a variety of communication awards programs, and I believe the easiest way to talk about best planning practices is to discuss how the best campaigns win awards.

Following is a breakdown of the categories that many communication awards programs use to judge submissions:

Start with good planning

All communication competitions want to know how you planned your campaign. What was the original idea behind it? What problem are you trying to solve? What was the original issue that caused a need for the program? How much money do you have to spend on the program and how many man-hours can you dedicate to it?

Research is the key component of planning. It helps you better understand what tactics will influence your audience in order to get them to behave in the manner you desire. Even if you can’t implement a full research program, there has to be a plan set in place to help you justify why you are developing something and determine what you intend to get out of it. And don’t underestimate the importance of low-budget research. There is a lot of research you can do that doesn’t cost a lot and doesn’t take a lot of time. The key thing is to remember that good planning is essential to have an effective program.

Goals

OK, so you figured out what you want to do, what the concerns are, what problems need to be solved and how much money you have to spend. Now you need to get a target into place. How are you going to measure your success? What will you consider a success? Remember to use benchmarks, not just final goals, so you can adjust the campaign while it’s in progress if you are falling short in certain areas.

Over and over again I have heard, “We have never done this before, so we don’t know what to expect.” That’s not good enough. You have to expect something, you have to strive to reach something so that you can measure the return on investment and justify the work you are doing.

Implementation

When preparing write-ups for campaigns, you always need to describe how you implemented the campaign. But even while you are in the process of planning, you need to consider all the elements of how you will implement the campaign. Be sure to question every execution, every message and every medium to make sure you are placing the right message in the right place. Things to consider:

• Where is my target audience?
• Are they in the right mindset for this message?
• Is there a better place?
• Is the message motivating with a clear call to action?
• Does the visual component speak to my audience?
• Is there something more innovative I can implement?
• Is the creative thinking strong enough or are we missing ideas?

Don’t forget that sometimes complex campaigns with a variety of messages for a variety of audiences is key to get the action you want. And other times, simplicity is essential.

Overall Quality

This is rather self-explanatory. Just don’t forget that good design and great copy writing are key in any successful execution.

Results

Once the campaign has run its course, or even while it is still in progress, be sure to start collecting results. The key here is to remember that results come in many shapes and sizes. I was recently in a meeting where we were discussing how to quantify the results of a recruiting campaign. The “number cruncher” insisted that we had to have a direct link from the online message to the application process. While this is an ideal result, it may not be practical. But we can evaluate the campaign based on a number of different, more qualitative, results, such as:

• Did the cost of recruiting decrease overall while the numbers of qualified applicants increased?
• Did we fill more positions in a shorter period of time?
• Did we increase employee referrals?
• Did we increase Web site hits?

The key idea in results is to make sure that you have measured your campaign from a variety of different angles. But don’t forget about the goals you put in place originally. Did you solve the problem? Did you hit your benchmarks and your overall target? And remember the campaign is not a failure if you hit most of your benchmarks and fell short of your ultimate goal. It just means you have changes to make next time.

I hope these communication awards essentials will help as you prepare your 2010 marketing campaign. Just remember, it all starts with good planning.