1:1 printing. Personalized URLs. Multi-channel marketing. Today’s marketing strategy is a lot to absorb. Not surprisingly, when clients are transitioning from traditional marketing to personalized, on-demand, or multi-channel strategies, one of the questions we most often get is, “How do I learn all this? How do I get started?”
First, we can help you. That’s part of our job. But if you want to delve into the learning process on your own, there are some simple steps you can take. Start by remembering than any campaign is made up of multiple elements. These elements include (but are not limited to) . . .
Business objective
List (in-house or purchased, level of demographic refinement)
Additional targeting (segmentation, personalization)
Marketing offer
Creative (graphics and copy)
Programming (if necessary)
Integration with other marketing channels (email, social, mobile, web, out of home)
Results tracking
With these elements in mind, every time you attend a trade show event, read a case study, attend a webinar, or peruse a blog post or magazine article with customer stories, do a quick mental rundown on this list. Pick out each of the elements, identify how each was handled in the campaign (whether well or poorly), and notate how the details of the implementation likely impacted the results.
Go through each case study or customer story strategically and methodically, filling out the mental checklist on each one. Think of it as a self-paced course. Even after the first dozen or so, you will start to see patterns come together and have those “Ah, ha!” moments. You will start to see how the elements synergize, where certain elements are missing, or where poorly implemented (or under-implemented) elements caused the campaign to stumble.
Try it. You might be surprised how quickly this simple exercise can pay off in spades.
