In 2016, companies in the United States spent a total of $595 billion on their brand activation campaigns. They invested money, time and effort in building an impressive brand activation portfolio; implementing impressive consumer promotions, digital campaigns and experiential marketing. All this to invoke more interest in their brand.
This is a clear indication of what businesses think about brand activation: it is a marketing strategy worth investing in.
Brand activation refers to the process of getting more people to know and love your brand. The primary goal of these campaigns is to get consumers to act in ways that will be beneficial for your product or service and make it stand out.
Managing Your Campaign
If it’s your first time in developing and implementing a brand activation strategy, you can follow these tips for staging a successful campaign:
1. Determine your campaign goals
Your goals should be determined by specific actions you want your target audience to take.
- Do you want them to join an online contest or share your latest content?
- Maybe you would like them to sign up for an upcoming event and share this info with others?
Whatever your objectives are, make sure they are specific and measurable. By setting quantifiable goals, you can have an easier time measuring and evaluating the success of your campaign.
2. Understand your target audience
After listing your goals for the campaign, take the time to understand your current and potential customers or clients and their differences.
Use data acquired now to determine what they find interesting and relevant and what turns them into paying consumers.
Your campaign should then focus on driving your audience to act in ways that will help you meet your goals. This means developing and running a campaign that is fully actionable.
3. Study your competition
Understanding what your competition is doing with their own brand activation campaign will help you greatly during your brainstorming and planning stages.
Keep in mind that consumers are bombarded by hundreds of messages every day. Making sure you stand out from the competition is crucial to having a successful campaign.
Do this by implementing a strategy that gives your audience experiences. Start by studying their benefits, sales messages and prices. Be on the lookout for weaknesses and gaps in the market and use them as a basis for creating standout and compelling messages.
4. Select marketing channels carefully
Consider all the options available to you that will work within your budget and timeframe. It is best to prioritize channels where you know your customers are present, and you can get the best ROI.
You can enhance customer interest and engagement by combining cross-channel efforts. Ensure these efforts are complementary to each other and always involve digital. This will ensure top of mind awareness in consumers.
When identifying your channels, ensure you focus on multi-sensory experiences so that you can reach out to your audience on an emotional level at multiple places and times in their customer journey with your product.
5. Monitor and fine-tune your campaign regularly
Before running your campaign, make sure you set up all the analytic tools you need to keep track of the campaign’s progress.
Evaluate your campaigns’ capability to encourage customer interaction and capture data.
With this data on hand, ensure that your campaign is consistently tweaked according to feedback, and amplify the results. Simple modifications in the message based on real data (as opposed to stereotypical assumptions) can assist you in reaching other segments, such as millennials, and even possible consumers both regionally and internationally.
One last important point to remember with brand activation is thinking of the long-term goals rather than solely focusing on immediate sales. As such, you will have your work cut out for you if you want to have an effective campaign in the short and long run.
To make sure that you invest your money and time well in experimenting with different strategies and channels, get help from a brand activation agency. They can help you create a campaign that is tailor-fit to your company and target market. This will enable you to achieve your goals.
Guest article written by: Tony Youssef is the co-founder and CEO of Pulsar Group. Pulsar Activation is a full-fledged hassle-free brand activation agency that has been based in the UAE for 10 years, with branches in Beirut and Cairo. Pulsar Production is the “State of the Art” manufacturing facility in the MENA region. Prior to Pulsar, Tony was Managing Director of Mobile – freshness MENA Marketing Solution Company.