What is Advertising Campaign?
Brands create advertising campaigns as a means of boosting their product sales and brand recognition. It is done over various platforms and usually carries a central strategy or theme to it. A brand may run an advertising campaign due to various reasons. It can be to market a new product, to announce restructuring of business, or to simply send a message out to its target market.
Process of Developing an Advertising Campaign
There are various aspects to strategizing an advert campaign. It is also based on the goals and the business persona of the company. These are some of the important steps in the process of developing an advertising campaign.
Market Research
The market is where the advertisement will try to fulfill its goals, and thus understanding the nuances of the market becomes primary towards developing a successful advertising campaign. Every market has its own requirements, be it age based, regional, or global. Thus, a solid market research is usually performed by analytical experts before developing a marketing or advertising campaign.
Define your Objective
Without a clear-cut goal an advertising campaign is bound to fall through. Defining one or more steady objectives is must while strategizing an advertisement campaign.
Define your Budget
An advertising campaign can be run simply on the city billboards, brochures or be aired via international media. So, understanding the budget capabilities and using resources to their maximum capabilities becomes an important part of designing an advertising campaign.
Target your Customers
The better a target you set the more chances you have of running a successful campaign. From targeted emails to sponsored social media posts, there are various technological means that can help a brand target their customers. The usage of these means can define success from defeat.
Theme of the Ad Campaign
It is always better to set a theme for the campaign as it also adds to the brand value. A mascot, or a common running theme for multiple advertisements within the same campaign helps the audience bring together the commonality of your business and also adds to your brand recognition.
Selection of Media Strategy
Not all campaigns suit all media. If the ads are to be text heavy, then they would suit traditional media such as newspapers or magazines. But a graphics heavy ad would serve best on social media platforms. So, selecting of media based on the form of the advertisement campaign is essential.
Schedule and Execute the Campaign
Advertising campaigns can run across an entire year. So, it is important to schedule your campaign and plan the execution process as well. Usually advertisement agencies have different teams set up for each type of advertisement within an entire campaign with a separate team monitoring the execution schedules.
Measure the Success
Understanding the success of your advertising campaign depends on the goals you have set and the rise in sales and brand value that your company witnessed. At times, the success of an advertising campaign can be abstract, but setting clear goals can help bring the success factors to life.
Characteristics of Effective Advertising Campaign
Most advertising campaigns can be called effective in their own rights, although they may be absolutely different from each other. Here are some common aspects of effective campaigns that succeed in meeting their goals.
Appeal to the Right of Customers
Each customer and target market have a pain point. And the most effective way to address this pain point is by letting them know how they can take care of it by themselves, and how the product being advertised will aid the process.
Draw Attention
An advertising campaign will only be successful if it is able to draw enough attention. This means high levels of graphics and content becomes an inherent part of the process. But on the other hand, minimalism is also quite capable of drawing audience attention.
Educate the Target Market
If the adverts themselves provide value, then customer trust is easily established. Thus, creating an advertising campaign that provides useful information to the target market opens a communication channel that helps in establishing value to the brand.
Trust is the Key
All successful advertising campaigns bank on establishing trust with their targeted audience. This can be done through various means such as giveaways, trial offers, etc.
Call to Action is a Must
Call to action is basically a command given to the viewer at the end of an advertisement to perform a certain task. The most usual call to action is to ask the viewer to buy the product or service.
Short and Sweet
Advertisement campaigns that drag on for too long are bound to lose mileage and the successful ones usually get the message delivered within a short time. Minimalism can pay off greatly if used by the right person.
Easy to Remember
Memorable advertising campaigns featuring mascots or themes are some of the best examples of successful ads. Creating a memorable advertisement boosts brand recognition as well as sales.
Advertising Campaign Examples
Old Spice: The man your man could smell like
This was a television advertisement launched in 2010 and became one of the most viewed advertisements at the time. They created a follow up to this ad as well that featured the same actor, who then became a sort of unofficial mascot for Old Spice. With the success of this ad multiple scripts would be created for advertisements based on the same actor. The lesson to learn here is regarding setting a brand identity and how value is established.
Proctor & Gamble: Thank you, mom
Very few ads have been able to address audience pain points like the one Proctor & Gamble released in 2012. Especially surprising for a brand belonging to the consumer goods industry, the story portrayed in the advertisement about supportive mothers won hearts across televisions everywhere. Since then, the brand has been known for making meaningful ads instead of the typical consumer goods industry ones. The lesson to learn here is that stepping out of your comfort zone can be highly rewarding at times.
