With the memorable date of 11-11-11 upon us, here are 11 tips to make your marketing campaigns memorable:
Know your audience
Whether you’re staging a major TV ad campaign or a small targeted direct mail you must know your audience. Not just the basics either like age or sex, it also helps to understand what it is they want, what do they desire, where do they shop, how do they spend their time?
Knowing your audience will ensure you can tailor any campaign in such a way as to fit perfectly with them. What better way to make it memorable for them.
Social Media
What used to be termed ‘water cooler’ moments were those campaigns that were talked about in offices and classrooms up and down the country the day after they had gone public. However, with social media those moments are now instant. Twitter, Facebook and the rest provide instant reaction to anything and everything.
Engaging with social media to enhance, react and interact can turn your campaign from noticeable to memorable.
Eye-catching Creative
Fantastic ideas remain just that without the right execution. Creating eye-catching creative, be that design, a TV ad or direct mail piece can make the difference when it comes to grabbing and most importantly keeping attention. Sometimes direct mail pieces in particular, if designed well, can remain with their recipient long after the campaign if they are well designed.
Always go for the best and most eye-catching creative you can, it can make all the difference in the end.
Be Brave
The easiest option is always the safest, but it is so often the least memorable. Being brave with your choices is the only way to make a memorable campaign. It’s difficult to be brave, we feel safe with what we know. What we forget is that every day our customers are being bombarded with messages from our competitors and other media channels constantly changing expectations.
Striking out with a brave choice will make your campaign the memorable one.
Great Copy
In the same way that eye-catching creative will show, great copy is worth its weight in gold. Engaging, memorable and most importantly relevant copy is a fantastic way of feeding your key messages into the memory banks of your customers. It would be campaign suicide to match eye-catching creative and a brave idea with poor copy. Great copy will enhance creative and give your brave idea that edge.
Integrate
One way to make your campaign memorable is to integrate it. The more ways your campaign can be accessed the more memorable it can become. It is important for any campaign to be ‘followed through’ across all media both online and offline to maximise the return on investment. Never is this more important in creating a memorable campaign.
Instead of concentrating on one marketing channel, ensure your campaign is integrated across as many as you can.
Surprise Them
Who’d have thought a yoghurt company would advertise its product using rapping farmers. Or how about being caught up in a Vodafone flash mob, I’m sure you’d remember that. Sometimes a surprise (often requiring a brave idea) can make your campaign more memorable than you could’ve hoped. Instead of sticking to the norm, look at new ways to surprise people. Use guerrilla marketing cleverly, create an unusual ad or high-impact direct mail piece. All of these can serve to surprise customers and get your brand logged deep in their memories.
Surprises are always memorable, use different media and techniques to make something really surprising.
Make Me an Offer
You buy one, you get one free, I say… you know the rest. An offer can enhance any campaign, indeed you may even be developing your campaign around an offer. Make sure (where you can) that you include some kind of offer with a campaign. It may be a great discount, points, vouchers or even a giveaway. A good offer will serve to increase the effectiveness and memorable nature of your campaign. To go back to the example, Safestyle UK base their whole campaign on the offer.
Include an offer to make your campaign easy for your customers to benefit from. (ps. Did you know that Happy Karen went to school with Safestyle’s Buy One, Get One Free man – Jeff Brown).
Make Friends
Your best customers are your greatest sales tool, and can make or break your campaigns. Getting your customers talking about your campaign is a fantastic way to make your campaign that much more memorable. As your biggest advocates, your customers can ensure your campaign is seen by many more people. They will often add in their own benefits, gleaned from their own experience of your brand, and give your campaigns longevity. That’s why making friends is crucial, and it is where social media is particularly useful.
Your best customers are the biggest advocates you have, use them to make your campaigns memorable.
Deliver on Your Promise
As with anything, especially campaign related, the best way to create a memorable campaign is to deliver on the promises you make. Not only does this simple adage mean your campaign gets spoken about in glowing terms, it also gives subsequent campaigns a great chance of being even more successful. By delivering on your promises customers will see that they really can gain from your campaign and that is your ultimate goal.
When customers know that you deliver on your promises, you and your campaigns remain memorable to them for years to come.
Momentum
The very best campaigns maintain a crucial element, momentum. Whether they explode on to the scene in one big surprise or they slowly burn away, keeping the campaign full of energy is crucial to getting results. Maintaining momentum doesn’t mean persisting with a campaign that has served its purpose or isn’t working. Momentum is the simple act of ensuring every avenue is explored with the elements of the campaign. Just how week two or three, or the next series of posters or the next set of adverts look is all key to maintaining momentum and should be considered at the earliest stage of the campaign.
When assessing the suitability of a campaign look to the stage 2, or the next set of adverts to see if you really have a viable campaign and can maintain some great momentum.
Karen Lambert is an experienced strategic marketer and Managing Director at Happy Creative, a full service marketing agency based in Blackpool, Lancashire. To learn more or contact us please go to www.happy-creative.co.uk
