The Ultimate Guide to Marketing Campaigns

Whether it’s Coca-Cola’s “Open Happiness” or Surf Excel’s “Daag Acche Hai”, marketing campaigns have a way of sticking with us long after purchase or impression.

Did you know? Great campaigns make companies memorable. It is a method companies use to communicate with their target market to reinforce their positioning and convey a particular message. It is, in fact, a vehicle to connect with your marketplace and generate leads and sales.

There is a very fine line between an advertisement and a marketing campaign which many people tend to confuse. For example, not every advertisement you see or hear on your way to work is part of a campaign.

It is only part of a campaign when it follows a particular theme and promotes a single-focused idea. For example, if you see a paper cup ad, or a Facebook-sponsored post and receive an email promoting the same product…then you’ve just witnessed a marketing campaign.

With so many creative marketing campaigns out there, how do you know which one to choose to create maximum noise and impact?

Types of Marketing Campaigns and Outcomes

Billboards and Hoardings

A roadside billboard is a competitive advertising option. Both small, as well as large brands, have leveraged this medium to promote their product or service.  

Outcome: Visible 24/7, creative, eye-catching, encourages faster reach, allows repetition of the message and provides a guaranteed audience.

Example: Back in 2017, Zomato stirred a social media storm with its hilarious and provocative OOH campaign.

Cinema Advertising – Marketing campaigns

Cinema Ad is an effective method to promote your brand. That’s because your audience cannot change the channel, walk away or ignore your advert. If you want to convey your message to a room full of people, this is the way to go.

Outcome: Serves to a hundred people at once, gets complete attention from viewers and creates maximum impact.

Example: Ethnic wear, Manyavar and Mohey launched a series of TVCs, outdoor campaigns and cinematic ads featuring Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma, to promote their campaign #NayeRishteNayeVaade.

Paper Cup Branding – Marketing campaigns

You don’t always have to splurge to grab a consumer’s attention. Cup branding is a perfect, BTL (Below-the-line) advertising medium that proves this. Brand logos and taglines are printed on paper cups and distributed at various touch points free of cost including colleges, corporate offices, shopping malls, airlines and railways.

Outcome: Cost-effective, uncluttered medium, innovative, creative, 5 to 7 minutes exposure time and cannot be switched off, blocked or skipped.

Example: Magnum opus Baahubali chose paper cup ads as part of their marketing mix to reach out to working professionals and college students, in order to urge them to pre-book their tickets.  

Print Media

Owing to the number of people that read magazines and newspapers, print media is an effective form of advertising. If you want millions of people to read your advertisement and gain traction in your campaign, this medium is great. However, print media is non-intrusive as people can choose to see it or ignore it.  

Outcome: Wide reach, expensive, great impact and exposure, relevance and expensive

Example: Rajasthan Tourism captured the essence of the state with its creative camels to moustache print ad.   

Now that you know the prominent types of marketing campaigns that top brands are capitalising on, let’s touch on how you can figure out which marketing works better.

Choosing the right marketing channel for your brand

Before a brand can figure out which channel can produce sustainable growth for them, it may need to go through a trial and error phase.

The kind of marketing channel you choose mainly depends on your business goals and budget. So, the best practice would be to put your money on a couple of channels.

Once you find a particular channel is driving more leads than the other, you should find more ways to leverage that channel.

Also, you must look around and see what’s working for your competitors. When you test a particular channel and analyse the results it gives, you’ll know whether you’ve succeeded or failed.

In case you fail, it’s important to move on to the next channel. Halfway through the process, you’ll realise you’ve found the right marketing channel that can drive profitability for your brand.

Difference between Advertising and Sales Campaigns

Advertising and sales campaigns are usually two key components of a business. Despite being two different concepts, they are often misunderstood.

While advertising is all about expressing the qualities of a product and its unique selling proposition throughout the lifecycle of the brand, sales promotions or campaigns are all about short-term sales that are carried out during specific periods where consumer demand is likely to be higher than normal.

For example, the holiday season is seen as prime time for e-commerce giants such as Amazon and Flipkart, and thus they hold maximum sales promotions during this time.

Though marketing campaigns are not easy to execute, they’re valuable and integral to growing your business into a successful brand.

If you are looking to touch your audience in creative and exciting ways, drop an email to contact@www.gingercup.com.