Join the dots! A marketer’s guide to the complete campaign lifecycle

In most businesses, ‘marketing’ (the department, or the person) is under pressure to add value to the business.

By Leon Calverley, Door4.

Theoretically, this should be to support the full customer lifecycle, and drive measurable commercial outcomes.

In reality, and certainly in smaller businesses, marketing is often weighted towards the ‘advertising’ end. This can adversely affect lead and customer engagement, in favour of ‘brand awareness’. Lots of website traffic isn’t difficult to achieve, but it doesn’t always equate to lots of new customers.

This traffic is vital - but is only part of the challenge. To convert this into customers and sales, it is crucial that the leads are pushed down the ‘funnel’.

This process can be broken down into three distinct components: Engage, Convert and Nurture!

Engage – We must provide quality, relevant content that piques the lead’s interest, and convinces them that our product/service is the right fit for their needs. Video, case studies, testimonials, product imagery, ‘how-to’ and other quality content are essential.

Convert – We must provide effortless, natural ways for the lead to identify themselves - to make themselves ‘marketable’ (rather than anonymous). Typically, this consists of a form of some kind - beyond the traditional ‘contact us to speak to sales’ variety. We must find innovative ways to exchange contact details for valuable content.

Nurture – We must deliver a relevant campaign, over a period of time, directing them towards an outcome (eg a meeting or a sale). Email remains our trusty friend, here - but we do also have mobile apps and SMS to help us. This can be combined with an intelligent remarketing campaign, displaying creative ads around the web to previous website visitors. The marketer has a huge variety of tools at their disposal nowadays, which make implementing the processes above more straightforward. These allow the professional to spend much more time on devising relevant and striking communications campaigns, leaving the delivery to a well-oiled machine!

www.door4.com