“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

Henry Ford

Change the way you approach marketing and growth

Campaigns are not a new concept. Marketing campaigns have been around for decades with businesses regularly using them on social media or to run seasonal promotions or offers. But what we see commonly, is mistakenly assuming that executing marketing tactics is the same thing as running a ‘campaign’.

Campaigns are a considered approach to achieving a defined goal.  They are a systematic way of working that: delivers consistency; facilitate lean sprints; promote seamless step-by-step execution; ensure cycles of learning and valuable insights that can be invested directly back into the business and built upon.

Business as usual marketing campaigns

 There are two missteps that businesses frequently make when it comes to marketing. Firstly, there is the misstep of just ‘doing’ marketing – jumping straight into the busy work of getting online, getting that brochure or flyer produced, getting on social media because it’s something you know a business needs to ‘do’. We are all familiar with the scenario of rushing to execute marketing activity such as ‘we need to get a blog out there’ without understanding why, for who, and what you want your audience to do as a result of reading it. It can end up falling flat: you feel like you should be doing it but if it makes no impact and leaves you with a sense of moving nowhere fast, what’s the point?

The second misstep is focussing on repetitive promotional offers or sales… and doing nothing else. This leads to frequent bursts of marketing activity followed by complete silence. We all dream of big, exciting promotions, launches or offers that use great creative and are well considered in terms of targeting and messaging. But what happens next? In reality, the attention to detail isn’t seen through to completion and, without a thought for the next steps, the energy and impact drop into the twilight zone. There’s no follow-up, reporting, learning or improvements. It may feel like it was a good idea at the time but confidence often dwindles as you question: did it work and was it worth it?

Both can result in disillusion and confusion when it comes to marketing. And for this reason alone, developing a campaign methodology and mindset can be the simple but powerful discipline change that can unlock growth for your marketing and business. But the campaign mindset also delivers much, much more.

Understand and implement the foundations that work every time.

The beauty of the campaign methodology is that it is just that: a systematic methodological approach to doing strategic and tactical marketing. Whether you use it on a large scale, whole business campaigns, or apply it to small product-specific campaigns, the core building blocks are the same every time. Whatever happens within your market, regardless of challenges, changes or sideswiping chaos in the global or economic climate, the fundamentals never change and never cease to be valuable.

Whether you are a new and growing business or a long-standing, weighty and complex organisation, the campaign blocks are scalable and repeatable. Understanding the why, how, what and who, establishing targets, budgets, resources, understanding the audience, tailoring your messages, setting up performance measures and reporting and having a timeline: whatever size or stage you’re at, these steps will get you the answers you need and set out the activity that will work for your business.

The fact that the campaign mindset is systematic also means that it’s not a one-off quick fix, but that there is discipline to be applied. Every time you develop campaigns, you will build more resources and insights for your business and market.

“There is no defining moment and no lucky break to deliver success. It’s like operating a fly wheel.  You work hard, pushing with great effort to get the flywheel going until you create one entire turn.  Don’t stop at that point, keep pushing, your momentum increases more and more until a breakthrough and unstoppable momentum.”

 Jim Collins

Create consistency that builds strength & momentum

Another defining factor and benefit of the campaign methodology is that it follows essential building blocks that have to be applied consistently. And with this consistency comes strength and momentum. It means that wherever your business is at, you can start in the right place, follow a process and grow from it. It helps to develop efficient practices – savvy commercial processes become embedded within your organisation, develop skills and resource and enable learning through robust reporting and insights that will be used again and again.

Learning cycles that create more growth

What’s more, the campaign approach generates insights, data, and product and target audience know how that can take most businesses years to achieve. The methodology is an investment in itself. Knowledge and insight are some of the most valuable assets businesses own. Competitors can sell the same product or service as you, but they simply cannot replicate the understanding you have of your audience, your operations and your market. This insight doesn’t happen overnight and using the discipline of campaign methodology can not only drive creative and commercially impactful marketing but can help uncover more and more insights and learnings that come from working both in and on your business – campaign cycles that create, inform, adapt and evolve so your growth can accelerate faster and in the right direction.

In a recent interview bestselling Author, Ultra-Athlete & Podcast Icon Rich Roll spoke to British Physician & Author, Dr Chatterjee and summed up the power of consistency, great practice and development to deliver true transformation.

“The quick fix, kind of hack your life mentality… is a close cousin to the clickbait soundbite media culture, we all want it now, we want it immediately… we want to read this book or do this one thing and fix everything overnight, and it just doesn’t work that way. I don’t believe in any of that and I think even if you were given the opportunity to snap your fingers…you’re still robbing yourself of what’s most valuable about that transformation.”

The campaign mindset and methodology is much more than great marketing practice and used well it can be a blueprint for business growth and development – no doing for the sake of doing, no hacks or quick fixes but essential building blocks that always add value and drive your business forward.