Extreme Marketing: 6 Campaign Essentials For Delivering Results Now
If you're reading this and you are an advertising or marketing executive, I have some bad news. According to Gallup, Advertising (often synonymous to consumers with Marketing) has recently been ranked as one of the least trusted professions. In fact, marketers are now less trusted than used car salespeople.
A recent Gallop survey reports that "Just 8% of American adults rate the honesty and ethical standards of advertising practitioners as 'very high' (1%) or 'high' (7%)." With such poor reputations, how can we launch effective campaigns that help our organizations succeed?
I am a founder turned 18-year marketing leader who has helped countless startups grow 2x-3x each year. In a country where 90% of businesses fail, I've had to learn to market in extreme conditions. In fact, there were times in my career when I got hired as a last-ditch effort.
To survive and grow, a business MUST be able to launch campaigns capable of acquiring low cost, high value in-market buyers. In this article, I want to share with you the techniques I learned for launching campaign communications that drive growth even in the most extreme circumstances.
It is my hope that the principles I outline below will not only boost your campaign results, but also your career.
The Central Role of Trust in Campaigns
To succeed in launching effective campaign communications, we must first recognize the central role of trust in campaigns. According to a Price-Waterhouse Cooper survey of business leaders and consumers, 87% of business leaders reported that consumers highly trust their company. On the other hand, just 30% of consumers of those brands reported actually trusting the companies in question - a 57-point gap between what business leaders thought and consumer sentiment.
We must also acknowledge that consumers have been through a lot recently. From wars to environmental disasters to opioid addiction, mental health crises, political turmoil, deepfakes, privacy breaches, corporate scandals, mass layoffs, and economic uncertainty - each of these environmental factors are no doubt stoking fear and uncertainty in the marketplace. What's more, in recent years, many brands have broken trust with consumers. Companies like Facebook, which sold private consumer data without consent; Uber, which allowed employee harassment and sexual assaults; Volkswagen, which cheated on emissions tests; and FTX, which defrauded investors - these failures have added to the current climate of distrust.
According to Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs and best-selling author of 'Everybody Writes,' the role of a Marketer is to first build awareness, then build affinity, and then build trust. Trust is ultimately what we're after when we look to drive higher campaign conversions for our companies.
How do we, marketers build trust? According to Francis Frei, professor at Harvard Business School and her famous TED Talk, trust is a result of three elements that are present in our interactions:
Empathy - Listening to understand
Authenticity - Being consistent with who you really are
Logic - Making sense and adding value
Now, how can we take these building blocks and begin to impart throughout our communications with consumers?
The Six Essentials of Effective Campaigns Built on Trust
With a clearer understanding of how to build trust, let’s discuss the six essentials of effective campaign communications that work together to deliver results when it counts. They are:
The Right Source
The Right Audience
The Right Solution
The Right Message
The Right Channel
The Right Time
It is my experience that new sales opportunities, revenue, and growth can be yours by applying each of these six campaign essentials.
Before we begin defining each campaign essential, it’s important to do as Professor Frei suggested and first listen to understand. If the goal is to influence buyers, we must start with an informed approach. This means conducting primary and secondary research. To start, I recommend having one-on-one interviews with internal stakeholders and customers where you can pose specific questions like the ones I will share with you below. From there, you can leverage tools like Feedly, Perplexity.ai, and Ahrefs to glean secondary insights into the market and competitors.
The insights you gain through research will provide the foundation needed to develop successful campaign communications that are aligned with each of the six essentials below.
Essential #1: The Right Source
Source matters. The one initiating the communication is a critical factor in whether buyers trust what is being said. Authenticity is particularly important at a time of artificial intelligence and deepfakes, when it's even more difficult for consumers to determine if a communication is legitimate.
When it comes to source positioning, Steve Jobs suggested that brands be clear and impactful. He said this: "It's a very complicated and noisy world. We're not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us – no company is. We have to be really clear on what we want people to know about us." Andy Cunningham, Steve Jobs' Communications Director at Apple, who helped him launch the Macintosh in 1984, put it this way: "Consumers want to know who you are and why you matter." It is the job of the source to define these two things for consumers: Who are you, and why do you matter (to them, now)?
Here are some questions you can ask to better understand and articulate your company's authentic voice:
Which words or phrases would you use to describe the company?
How would you describe the culture and personality of the company?
What is the company known for?
What are some of the company's greatest strengths?
What is the company's superpower?
What other popular brand (in any industry) is the company most like?
Essential #2: The Right Audience
When I say the right audience, what I am referring to is your best buyers and the sphere of influence around those buyers. For most companies, their best buyers are typically those that cost less to acquire and support, spend more, remain loyal and tell others. To better determine who these people are, marketers can look at customer relationship management (CRM) data, specifically opportunity, proposal, close and renewal account information.
Once you have identified your best buyers, you want to better understand their demographics and psychographics to help better segment the audiences for individualized messages. This is where marketers often divide into personas and try to get a clearer understanding of their general motivations when it comes to finding the right solution.
It's important at this stage not only to look at the makeup of the individual but also the forces that are shaping the market and influencing buyers. Market research can help identify current trends - things like economics, social factors, technological disruptions, and other outside conditions that may move buyers in a certain direction.
Here are some questions you can ask to understand the forces motivating your audiences:
What challenges led you to look for a solution?
What would it mean for you if you were not able to work with our company?
Why does our solution matter now?
In order to add value to our audiences, next we must present the right solution to address our buyers’ problems.
Essential #3: The Right Solution
Harvard Professor Theodore Levitt famously said: "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill; they want a quarter-inch hole." Said another way, people are not motivated by the product but by what the product can do for them. Professor Clayton Christensen, also of Harvard, puts it this way: "When we buy a product, we essentially 'hire' something to get a job done. If the product does a crummy job, we 'fire' it and look around for something else we might 'hire' to solve the problem." So, as marketers, we must ask ourselves what essentially is the problem we're solving for the buyer, and does our solution uniquely solve that problem?
When it comes to evaluating their options, consumers have no choice but to compare solutions against one another in order to better understand their differences. That is why it is important to clarify for buyers what sets your solution apart. To identify your solution's differentiator, I recommend using a four-quadrant matrix and labeling the left, right, top and bottom axes with the factors that make your solution special. Add your brand to the center of the matrix. Then, plot out your competitors to see how they stack up and where they fit inside the matrix. Doing this, you will quickly see your competitors' weaknesses as compared to your strengths. Your job is to position your strengths in relation to their ability to solve your best buyers’ challenges.
Here are some questions you can ask to help you better articulate your solution:
Why did you ultimately choose to work with us?
What made you choose our solutions over other options?
What will our solution enable you to do?
Essential #4: The Right Message
Much of the perspective we've gained thus far has been leading us to craft better messages. But it's at this point that we must also consider which kind of messages best connect us with individuals and brands. These are those that express our values and our emotions.
As Simon Sinek famously said, "People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it." So, 'why' matters. This explains how Apple was able to sell technology to "The crazy ones" who "Think different." As Brooke Sellas, social media expert and author of the book, 'Conversations That Connect' says it: "Brands fail to connect in part because they communicate in clichés and facts versus feelings and opinions." In short, emotional language resonates. To connect well with buyers, we have to understand the emotions behind their actions.
Here are some questions you can ask to pinpoint the emotions motivating your audience:
What part of your work are you most passionate about?
What aspirations do you have for your work?
What positive changes would you like to see in your department?
How could our solution help you achieve those aspirations?
What does our company mean to you and your future?
What is it about our brand that most resonates with you?
What would you say to someone unsure of whether to work with us?
Presenting yourself and your solution in a way that connects emotionally with your buyer will help them understand why you matter to them now. But in a world full of noise, how exactly do we get our buyers’ attention and reach them where they are? This of course requires identifying the right channels.
Essential #5: The Right Channel
All of what we've discussed so far has been essential. But in my 18 years as a marketing leader, the thing I've found that most stands in the way of a company’s ability to get results is their lack of access to buyers and lack of high-quality channels funneling opportunities to the business.
For campaigns to be effective at driving results, particularly in environments where there is no time or money to waste, marketers must be able to access the community of influencers around their buyers. This includes considering a buyer’s inner, middle and outer circles of influence.
Some examples of a buyer's inner circle may include their coworkers, counterparts, existing partners, or vendors. Those representing the middle circle of influence may include consultants, thought leaders, community members, podcast hosts or social media connections. The outer circle of influence may be made up by sources like Google, product review sites, and associations. The key to a successful campaign is to start with the inner circle and work outward, thus increasing your odds of influencing your best buyers.
Here are some questions you can ask to identify the right channels to influence your audience:
How did you come to discover our company?
Walk me through your decision to work with us.
What sources (people, information) did you rely on to recommend solutions to the problem you were facing?
What could our company do to reach more customers like you?
Identifying the most influential channels for your buyers can help increase the likelihood of success for your campaigns. But, there is one last element to effective campaigns that we cannot neglect. That is timing.
Essential #6: The Right Time
As Shakespeare advised us, 'timing is everything.' Poor timing alone can be a reason a campaign fail.
According to sources like HubSpot and Prospecta, "Between 50 to 90% of purchase decisions are now being made before buyers interact with salespeople." This means our marketing and advertising is on the front lines and it makes our campaign communications all the more important.
To determine timing, you first have to map out your buyer journeys so you can understand when decisions are being made along the path to purchase. As an example, a buyer journey may look something like this:
Early Influence (Became Aware)
Research (Identified Options)
Consideration (Received a Demo, Compared)
Validation (Confirmed with Community)
Milestone 1: Initial Contact (Revealed Interest)
Milestone 2: Evaluation (Seriously Considered)
Milestone 3: Budget & Negotiation (Point of Friction)
Milestone 4: Purchase (Converted)
Milestone 5: First 90-Days of Use (Saw Value, Build a Habit)
Milestone 6: Renewal (Increased Loyalty, Ready to Refer)
Milestone 7: Upsell (Increased Lifetime Value)
As a marketer, I consider each of these stages above important because they not only reflect the effectiveness of your campaign communications but to the resulting revenue.
Here are some questions you can ask to identify the right timing for your campaign:
When did you first become aware of our company?
How did you know it was the right time to start researching a solution?
Is there a time of year or budget cycle when your company typically goes to market looking for solutions like ours?
At what point did you determine which company you wanted to evaluate?
How long did it take to make a final decision on which company to work with?
I hope our exploration into the six essentials of successful campaign communications has been helpful to you. Understanding these essentials and optimizing for each will not only improve the outcomes of your campaigns but also inform your marketing efforts as a whole, making you a more valuable asset to your company.
For more insights and information like this, please follow me on Linkedin and consider subscribing to my weekly newsletter, 'Business with Humans,' where I offer human-centered insights on important developments in business.
