Why Invest in a Pilot Campaign?

In the marketing world, very rarely the end result matches the original concept. Marketers have a habit of jumping into campaigns without any backing. If you really want to embed your presence in a client’s mind, your campaign needs to be pretty darn good. That’s really not something that can happen overnight.

It takes a whole lot of planning and testing to make sure your campaign is well-conceived by the real world. Despite your belief in your product or service idea, target market or marketing proposition, it is always better to run a pilot campaign. It’s a sure-shot way to test your new idea without breaking the bank.

A pilot campaign is referred to a small-scale campaign that is initiated to check the viability of a particular marketing medium before its full scale launch.

During the pilot phase, it’s always good to roll out several different versions of the same ad with different CTAs. By executing a pilot campaign, you can easily measure the effectiveness of an advertisement. It’s also a great way to validate an idea and generate leads at the same time. Running an ad campaign without any testing can lead to unimpressive results.

Tips to Run a Successful Pilot Campaign

The main idea of doing a pilot campaign is to avoid wasting resources and use insights from it to make your campaign ready for prime time.

To ensure you ‘Do It Right the First Time’, follow these tips:

• Define what you’re testing: Early in your pilot phase, define what you’re testing. Instead of putting your money on one expensive marketing medium, how about testing few smaller mediums? By doing this, you can outdo your competitors and at the end of it choose the medium that was appreciated the most by your target group.
• Give it time: To make sure your pilot is thoroughly tested, you need to give it time. Depending on your industry, a suitable time-frame is eight to twelve weeks.
• Do not change goals: Once your experiment is in-flight, it can be quite tempting to change certain elements. However, avoid doing this as it can make it harder to deduce any key learnings.
• Do it if necessary: If your pilot campaign is causing any damage to your brand, it’s alright to abort the plan. Review the loopholes and re-launch.
• Accept failure: Always enter a pilot testing phase with the mind-set – ‘It’s OK if I fail’. Starting out with a positive attitude will make it easier to overcome the failure.
• Run A/B tests: Your pilot is a chance to experiment. Running a series of A/B tests can facilitate better decision making when considering scaling.

Thus, if you’re in two minds whether to run a pilot campaign or not, we’d say ‘go for it’. When you test your ideas, you’ll be more confident that you are spending your money on advertising that will perform.

Indian budget hotel aggregator, OYO Rooms ran a pilot paper cup branding campaign before deciding to incorporate the medium on a much larger scale.

Does paper cup branding sound like a relatively new medium to you? How about running a pilot campaign before your entry onto the grand stage?    

To get a whiff of how these mini-billboards can be beneficial for your brand, visit www.gingercup.com or call us on +91 990 247 8800.