So, you want to start a campaign!!

This is that time of the year when most of the western world goes on vacation breaks. Either most of the decision making on the B2B front has happened or has been postponed for a few weeks. It is not the best time chase your existing prospects. But it’s a good time to revisit some of the sales activities that have been carried out in the past few months and most importantly plan for the post vacation activities. This is the perfect time to plan new campaigns and bring them in motion just after the summer break. This article focuses on ‘campaigns’ from a point of view of B2B enterprise sales that involve complex buying cycles with multiple decision makers.

Before you embark on a campaign it is important to get the basics right. Let’s start by understanding of what a campaign is. Before we define what, a campaign is it is important to understand what it is not.??A campaign is not an event or a one-off activity. It doesn’t have one channel; it does not happen in a week; and it is not done by one team. A campaign cannot be done by just the sales or the marketing teams. Rather it is planned by sales, marketing, product teams together.??I would define a campaign as follows.

A campaign is a series of well-crafted activities targeted at a specific audience and delivered consistently over a period through multiple channels with clear objectives.?

The Objective?

First, get your?objective?right. It’s too simplistic to assume that the objective of any campaign is to generate leads or get sales.??The objectives could be to generate awareness, it could be just a call to action, or it could be a brand building. A campaign can also be a precursor to active sales engagement that you may want to begin in your target geographies. Just ask yourselves how many marketing emails have ever responded to. Or acted upon a demo request or any other call to action. However, remember that some of the email messages do remain in your mind and help create a brand recall when you are wanting to buy that kind of product or a service.?

WHO?

After you have defined the objectives take the next step and define the target audience. This is the step that I would call the?WHO?of the campaign. Do not treat everyone in the target audience the same. You can never please everyone with everything. Defining the WHO comprises both the company segments as well as job roles and seniority.??When you define the WHO also understand the psyche of the receiver. Talk to people who are in similar roles and how they would react to your campaign activity.??

WHAT?

After this the next step is to define the?WHAT?part of the campaign. This is specially the message that needs to go out to different sections of the WHO that you have defined in the earlier step. Remember that certain messaging can only appeal to a certain section of the audience. Curate different sub-campaigns for different sections of the target audience. Run independent sub-campaigns.

To cite an example – the analytics feature of your marketing automation product might appeal to the Chief Marketing Officer, but the data security feature of the same product might appeal to the security or compliance department of the same company. So, you have two WHOs with respective WHATs that would form two sub campaigns.??

The messaging is the part where things can go awry. Every department from the product development, sales, marketing, and senior management will have a view on this. It’s important to declutter the messaging and apply it as needed to the specific WHO of the target audience.??There is a propensity for campaign planners to include everything that they feel important as part of the campaign. Remember your WHAT is going to be defined by your WHO. Any campaign can have multiple WHO and WHATs with each WHAT targeted at the specific WHO.?

HOW?

Once you define the target audience (WHO) and the messaging (WHAT) it is important to plan as to?HOW?you plan to reach them. Gone are the days where campaigns were emails sent one after the other and followed by calling. Today’s campaigning must incorporate all channels – Email, Phone, LinkedIn, web, and social media platforms. Some of these channels are managed by marketing and others by Sales. Unfortunately, most campaigns do not see coordination and coherence between the sales and marketing teams. Campaigns must be led by marketing and supported by sales, product, and legal teams. Marketing must have clear control of all the company channels.??Consistency and synchronization of messaging is important.??

To cite an example, before the marketing sends out email campaigns the salespeople can ensure that they are connecting on LinkedIn to the target audience.??The salespeople can also ensure that an update put up by marketing on their company page is shared in time to appear within the feed of the target audience.??

WHEN?

The?WHEN?of a campaign is the timing of the various messages that are sent out via all channels. Do you send an email first followed by social media outreach or you do your digital marketing along with the email outreach? It is also important to plan the timings of the reach outs – month of the year, day of the week, hour of the day. A lot of factors would come in here and campaign experts would have their own views on the matter. Your WHO and WHAT will define the WHEN. To cite an example most CXOs do get their assistants to check their mails in the morning whereas that’s not the case with middle management. You need to keep these things in mind when you do the reach outs.?

WHERE?

Make sure you do different sub campaigns for different regions keeping in mind the regional customization needed and the legal requirements. Take care how you address the receiver or the contact telephone number that you include towards the end of the message. Keep in mind the email etiquettes and the legal DOs and DONTs for the countries you are including in your campaigns.?

Social media has redefined the way enterprises run their campaigns. Although B2C companies have evolved their ways and means to reach out to their target audience, B2B companies remain far behind. For companies involved in enterprise level selling it is time to adapt the new ways of reaching out to their audience with targeted and specific messaging through multiple channels. And all these to be managed coherently across various internal and external teams.?

Samrat Parasnis is the Founder of NovaVente (formerly NatunaTech- the Home of technology selling). After working in corporate sales for leading technology firms he set up NatunaTech offering Sales as a Managed Service (SaaMS) to technology firms all around the globe. Now renamed as NovaVente, the company is??now in its sixth year and offers its SaaMS model to companies across the world and??across industries. Views are personal.?

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