Marketing Campaign Management Myths: Don't Fall for These 5 False Beliefs

As the world becomes more digital, marketing teams are under pressure to drive performance and generate sales. And with more responsibility comes higher expectations of the campaigns themselves. To deliver campaigns that stand out from the crowd, it’s what goes on behind the scenes that can give you an edge. How campaigns are managed can make a difference in how they perform.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of myths about how a perfect campaign is run. We’ve worked with in-house brands and agencies for years, helping them improve how they plan, measure and report. Here are five common myths we hear time and time again—and what you can do instead.

1-The report is made at the end

Reporting is often perceived as the last thing you do after a campaign. This makes sense when traditional advertising such as out of home or TV is involved, because once it’s live, it’s harder to make adjustments.

However, with most digital marketing campaigns, you can make changes mid-campaign. This goes for seasonal or product-specific campaigns. Many companies also run always-on campaigns that don't have a beginning and end date.To ensure you get the most out of your digital marketing campaigns, you should be launching, testing and optimizing them throughout. Mid-campaign reporting is key to this process.
From a process and people perspective, it doesn’t make sense to report on results last. As marketer or advertiser, you are constantly being asked how you’re generating results. By presenting your results early – or if you work for an agency, showing clients their results early – you will show that you have campaigns under control and justify your investments.

When you create reports, you might think it takes too much time to do it during a campaign. Well, it doesn’t have to be that hard or time consuming. By using marketing software like Mediatool you can generate reports in seconds and spot opportunities to improve campaigns, future plans and keep those you’re reporting to happy.

2- A marketing strategy is a one-and-done task

It can take time to see whether marketing strategies are effective, so it’s important not to abandon them after a couple of weeks. However, audiences like consistent messaging and branding from companies, so it’s not a good idea to keep changing everything about your marketing all the time.

If you want your digital marketing campaigns to give you the best results, you need to split test elements, review data regularly and learn from it. You should then use these insights to inform the next stage of your strategy. There’s no set time frame for how often you should change things up and it is different for different companies, industries and team setups.

3- The more marketing analytics tools the better

Trying to track performance data from numerous channels and platforms at once can get complicated. It’s a real struggle for many companies trying to automate the process and reduce the workload on teams. Many have an oversaturated martech stack that only adds to their stress, rather than helping them improve performance. Just because you can access so much data now doesn’t mean you need to swap between so many platforms to do it.

Pick marketing platforms that integrate with your other channels, so you can keep everything in one place. By merging all of your top-level data into one platform, it’s easier to get a comprehensive view of campaign performance.

4- Conversions are all that matter

While conversions and sales are important metrics, you’d be doing yourself a disservice to focus on that one metric. Measuring the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns isn’t always easy, especially if you’re not seeing a high conversion rate.

You should consider factors such as consumer trends and current events that could capture your audience’s attention.

To figure out which metrics to focus on, you need as much data at your fingertips as possible. That's where a tool like the one we develop can help you understand customer behavior and spot other metrics that might be telling you something important.

5- If a campaign has performed poorly it was a waste of time

There will be times when your campaign just isn’t performing as you’d like. You’ve reviewed the data, iterated, and improved it and still aren’t hitting the mark. To think it was a waste of time would be your biggest mistake.

When your campaigns don't go to plan, you learn the most. That's why we measure results and create reports: to help us improve our strategies. When things don't work out, go back to your strategy and rethink some areas where you could refine it.

Start by making a plan for your marketing campaign.

Every marketer will tell you that you don't need a workflow plan, but we disagree. When managing multiple campaigns, there are so many moving parts that the more you automate some of your manual tasks and improve your processes, the easier it will be to reach your goals. Cubik is our web-based solution for augmenting your media planning and eCommerce initiatives powered by Artificial Intelligence.

From briefing to reports, optimize your processes so you can spend more time focused on reaching your marketing goals. Contact us today and learn more about our tool!