When buying a product, the consumer decision journey is anything but linear. And in today’s era, consumers aren’t just relying on brand awareness and trust to make repeat purchases and connect with the brand; they are evaluating brands on a deeper one-to-one level to build loyalty.
But how does a brand drive and communicate its values and personas to these eager and more innovative consumers in the first place?
That’s where an ideal campaign conceptualization comes in. But what is an ideal campaign?
For a brand, a happy customer is its primary goal. Hence, brand managers and marketers need to look at how they can create a memorable promotional campaign that communicates value and resonates instantly with the consumer, an ideal campaign!
If the campaign captures the imagination of the consumer or tightly projects the DNA of the brand then chances are you have also created an award-worthy campaign too!
Conceptualization and Creativity: The two main ingredients of a Promotional Campaign.
Conceptualization is when a brand steps back to understand exactly who its customers are and more importantly what their relationship is with the brand.
Creativity isn’t just about appealing to your existing consumers; it is about attracting trial from new consumers by projecting your values and benefits to audiences excitingly and proactively.
In fact, 84% of marketers in a Salesforce survey (1) said that customer expectations are changing a brand’s digital strategies. But the good news is marketers can still earn attention with the right sales promotion tips, especially when those deals are personalized.
The key is to create something powerful and campaignable that will stand out on-pack or where the competition is most fierce at the point of sale.
Competition for Customer Attention is hotter than ever.
A winning marketing plan can turn prospects into loyal customers. But in a world where market noise inevitably increases, initial consideration has emerged as marketing’s most critical battleground.
Thus, when conceptualizing a campaign, it is essential to ask questions like what are the benefits and brand values we are trying to project?
Let’s dive into the factors of building a campaignable promotion through conceptualization.
1. Creating a Unique Selling Proposition
"What makes you different from the competition?"
What are the brand values, personality, and product benefits that we need to amplify within the creative element of the campaign? What USP can we create for this campaign that fits in with your brand’s DNA?
A compelling and promotional USP should be:
- Easily identifiable: Consumers should get the impact of the message straight away.
- Focused on what customers value: “Unique” won’t count for much if it’s not something the target audience truly cares about. Therefore, it is important that it also communicates the element of added value in terms of opportunity or reward.
- Entertaining: The promotional theme should have an element of excitement, entertainment, and or humour. This could be the theme, the mechanic, or even the rewards that are associated with the campaign.
2. Determining your Target Audience
Although a brand can sell to everyone, it cannot appeal to everyone all the time.
Another important factor while conceptualizing a campaign is to understand the dominance of the customer (2). Marketers need to analyse the target audience’s needs and wants, pre-purchase and post-purchase behaviour, engagement mechanics, user journey, and digital interaction.
Creating an award-winning campaign isn’t easy. But it is possible!
Our advice? Dive into the brand’s DNA, get into the mind of the target audience, and then create something that lifts the brand creatively, whilst giving consumers something emotionally-enlightening to connect with.
3. Campaign Execution
The key to developing an ideal campaign is the ability to understand the relationship you have with your consumers in terms of brand values and personality.
Campaigns that project a brand’s personality tend to attract new consumers to try its products. The level of creative input that goes into your campaign will exponentially drive sales by capturing the imagination and excitement of your audience.
However, at the core of this relationship is the delivery of added value by blending the most relevant and synergistic rewards into the campaign. But be prepared as a brand to be judged on every part of your execution from a seamless user journey, and immediate reward redemption, to the experience your reward element provides.
Don’t just create a promotion, create something campaign-worthy!
In a nutshell, campaign conceptualization in promotional marketing should include the following:
When it comes to conceptualizing promotional USPs, we’ve delivered over 6000+ campaigns for nearly two decades. We understand how to conceptualize and build campaignable, award-winning concepts based on brand requirements.
With a comprehensive rewards suite, we understand what is right and relevant for each campaign keeping the brand objective in mind.
So why not partner with us for your next promotional campaign? Drop us a line at marketing@bigcity.in.
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