The Copywriting & Design Blog

It’s an old story, familiar to most of us in marketing: A competitor surprises you with a new campaign. Or the boss insists on having an ad in a particular media vehicle. Or you’re told that the campaign now must launch three weeks earlier. Or someone with clout in the creative-development process says, gee, our ad really ought to emphasize this.

Whatever the reason, suddenly you’re scrambling, rushing to meet the urgent marcom demand that’s been thrown in your lap.  That’s when it’s easy for a copywriter, designer, or anyone to get so focused on what (they believe) needs to be done that they lose sight of the key issues: what’s the campaign’s goal, what its basic marketing message should be, and how best to deliver that message.  In other words, the campaign’s objectives, strategies,and tactics.

These three concepts are simple enough, but the challenge is using them day-to-day and in the right ways.  The following best practices might seem obvious, they are well worth reviewing and adopting:

1) Ideally, a company’s annual business plan should guide its marketing plan for the year.  Even if there is no written business plan (many smaller companies don’t have one), at minimum there should be a clear understanding between the company’s top leader(s) and its marketing team (in-house, outsourced, or both) of:

• what the company’s revenue and profit goals for the year are
• who the primary and secondary audiences are
• what products/services are (and are not) to be promoted to these audiences, at what price(s)
• the year’s budget for marketing expenses

2) Using these four points, the marketing team should take the lead in defining the company’s marketing objectives, strategies, and tactics.  In most cases, the primary marketing objective should be simply the company’s total-sales goal.  If the company sells by multiple channels (e.g., online vs. by phone vs. live salespeople), the marketing objective might be only a portion of the total-sales goal.

3) Each month, the leader(s) and the marketing team should revisit the four bullet points above.  Together they should agree on any changes in the numbers, audience definitions, and product/service definitions.

4) The marketing team also should take the lead in setting the company’s marketing strategy, first at a company-wide level and then for each marketing campaign during the year.  In both cases, “setting the strategy” means deciding what basic message(s) will motivate the audience to buy the product/service (or to take some other desired action).  The message should focus on a primary benefit to the audience, with other benefits supporting it.  The marketing team and the company’s leaders should agree on the message(s) before discussing any marketing tactics.

5) Marketing tactics is all about deciding the best way to execute the agreed-on strategy: what media vehicles to use, how much to spend on each, when to use each, which creative approach to use, and much more.  These tactical discussions should come only after the marketing strategy for the company and the campaign have been decided.  Again, the marketing team should take the lead in recommending the company’s marketing tactics to its leaders . . . and in managing the execution of those tactics.

Note the sequence of these five best practices (you might even call them ‘steps’): Objectives provide the basis for choosing a strategy.  Strategy provides the basis choosing tactics.  While all three can change over the course of a year, keeping them in this order gives the company the best chance of success.  Your copywriter and designer need to understand them just as much as the president of your company.

It’s a fair question, and one I should have addressed in the previous post: Web video is a lot like TV, so why not make your videos highly promotional, like TV commercials?

1. Because the Internet has always been, and still is, primarily an information tool—much more than TV is.  A study released May 18, 2008 by the Pew Internet & American Life Project (see summary) emphasizes that consumers use the web to learn about products and services, and then combine that learning with information from offline sources, before buying.

Jeffrey Grau, Senior Analyst at eMarketer and author of the report, “Multi-Channel Retailing” (http://www.emarketer.com/Report.aspx?code=emarketer_2000476), explained in February, “Online consumers are becoming precision shoppers. They are availing themselves of the wealth of information resources online to discover and evaluate products, compare them and find where they can be purchased.”

2. Because the web is an increasingly social place, given the rise of Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and other social-networking sites.  More than ever before, it’s about conversation and relationship-building.  On these sites and across the web in general, users are unlikely to “talk up” any company’s video if it’s blatantly self-promotional (more likely they will comment negatively on it).

3. Because your site’s content probably isn’t, um, compelling enough to justify TV-commercial style video.  No offense . . . just don’t be misled by the fact that slick TV commercials are turning up more and more beside online entertainment.  Viewers tolerate those promotional spots in order to get the premium entertainment they want, on demand and for free.  In contrast, your web site (mine too) is already one big ad for your company, so why would a visitor want to see a highly self-promotional video for it?

Given these and other realities of today\’s online environment, what should be your company’s approach to using web video?

Be useful: create videos that give your audience information they can use to solve real challenges.  If you’re a furniture store, for example, why not make a video explaining how to determine if a couch is truly well made?  It’s something most people don’t know, but presumably would like to know if they are shopping for furniture.

Yes, in the previous post I said that your video need not be directly related to your business.  That’s still true.  In general, I recommend featuring a mix of videos on your site, some directly related to (but not heavily promotional of) your business, and others that simply make visiting your site more enjoyable and/or interesting.