Reviewing your marketing campaign strategy

Reviewing your marketing campaign strategy

By Sarah Gee
Kate Sanderson

SUMMARY

Free up time with a 'marketing health check' that will help you prioritise what works and gain the confidence to eliminate what doesn't. This guide is a transcript from an AMA Conference 2011 session.

Why do you need a health check?

We've been working with an associate, Alan McGregor, on developing a marketing health check which has about a hundred questions. It looks at marketing strategy and context within the organisation and the way that marketing sits within the strategic planning framework. We've developed a set of indicators around those that can be used to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of marketing operations in different types of organisations.

The problem is that lots of arts organisations still don't know which bits of their marketing campaigns are working... and which bits aren't.

They might have much of the information, but it isn't being shared within their organisations in a way that might be useful. It's especially important in this climate.

To begin with, delegates were asked to discuss these three questions in groups of 3s and 4s:

  • How do you monitor and evaluate your marketing campaigns at the moment?
  • Does it work/is it used?
  • If so, for what and by whom?

In feedback, delegates were asked 'how many of you monitor and evaluate your campaigns on a regular basis?' The majority said that they were.

Secondly, 'do you have a standard way that you collect that information?' About half said that they did.

Thirdly, 'do you have a standard way of reporting that information?' A few did.

It's interesting that lots of people are collecting the information but not everyone is reporting this information.

So what's the point of a marketing health check?

A marketing healthcheck could help you manage your budgets better:

We don't have enough resources: human, financial etc. There is also a squeeze on public spending at the moment so it's especially important to be able to justify every penny we spend. For example, at The Lowry, they:

  • measured the impact of their season brochure over several seasons
  • moved to better segmenting, producing a main brochure for most frequent attenders and a mini brochure for less frequent
  • reduced the main brochure print run from over 100,000 to around 25,000
  • saved tens of thousands of pounds without affecting sales

A marketing healthcheck could put you in control:

At Theatre Royal Plymouth:

  • the marketing department suspected that their general distribution wasn't really working
  • they tested distribution over a number of seasons to test the case, putting in different calls to action (eg. different phone numbers on different pieces of print) to measure different distribution channels
  • they have now replaced general distribution with a simple piece of print targeted at key postcode 'hotspots'
  • they are trialling this at present and will track response rates to measure ROI
  • they are saving financial resources overall

Download the transcript to read more:
Reviewing your marketing campaign strategy (PDF)

Resource type: Guide/tools | Published: 2013