To start, let’s make sure we’re on the same page as to what a campaign is, and we’ll do it the quick and dirty way… Wikipedia:

“A marketing campaign is an organized and coordinated effort to promote the sale of a certain product or group of products in accordance with a particular theme, using multiple forms of media.”

Which, in keeping with our political tie-in, is remarkably similar to the definition of a political or electoral campaign:

“A political campaign is an organized effort which seeks to influence the decision making process within a specific group.”

Maybe it’s because both definitions came from Wikipedia, but the commonalities are hard to miss.

Organized effort to influence or promote.

When you review your marketing initiatives for 2009 ask yourself, are you campaigning to win?

• Start with end in mind. Get together with sales and find out what is an ”ideal lead” and work backwards from that point. Who are the best leads, where can you find them, what do they want?
• Put good measurement systems in place. As the familiar quote goes… you can’t improve what you can’t measure.
• Send targeted messages to targeted lists. “Spray and pray” is a short-term approach with long-term negative consequences.
• Use lifecycle messaging, with messages appropriate to the stages of your sales cycle. Here’s a simplified example of a message series: educational white paper> webinar> good article> product specific white paper> request free trial.
• Deliver focused, relevant, high quality content, more content, and even more content.
• Provide great offers, that are both relevant to the product, and needed by the recipient.
• Simplify each message to promote one offer (more is less, give them more choices and watch those conversion rates drop).
• Use very good copy writers. Copy is one of your best leverage points. Good copy often delivers results that are 5-10 times higher. Don’t skimp on cheap copy writers, the opportunity cost of weak copy far exceeds the nominal short-term savings.
• Review, refine, repeat.

Sound like this requires “effort and organization”? You bet! Winning campaigns take planning and time. Bosses and sales teams can get impatient and push you to hurry up with those leads, and it’s a tough cycle to break. But when you do, the results can be nothing short of stunning. After years of “spray and pray,” last year we mapped out a “winning” campaign, that generated more “ideal leads” in one month, than we had generated with the “spray and pray” approach in the entire previous year. Not bad for about one month of pre-planning and preparation, eh?