Plan/create a marketing campaign

PE6003 Assessment FAQ

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What are passion areas in Instagram?

These can be found within the case or via conducting your own reach on Instagram. As Instagram lends itself to certain sectors, sectors that often link well towards portraying image and video.

What makes for good quality research?

Given this assignment is a practical digital marketing campaign, then good quality research will come from a variety of sources. These sources tend to be marketing intelligence reports, previous campaigns, industry reports and credible online sources.

When completing your research on a sector then using marketing intelligence reports such as Mintel will give you a good overview of the sector in question. You may choose to overlay this with further research from industry led reports or reports on small businesses. For example, if focusing on independent coffee shops, using a source such as ‘The Grocer’ which is the professional publication related to food and groceries.

Creating your target audience using market intelligence reports e.g. Mintel etc. is a good starting point. This may be added to with further research on consumers from sources such as Acorn/Mosaic to build further credibility of the target audience. You may also undertake some of your own research through channels such as social media e.g. LinkedIn which would allow you to conduct some research on owners, founders of businesses to get closer to their lifestyles and attitudes. However, this must be supported with Primary Research. An additional source of information that helps understand local spend of customers is Barclay Insights: https://insights.uk.barclays/bli

When it comes to creating and supporting your campaign, use other, historical campaigns as a starting point e.g. WARC. Again you may link back to market intelligence and the target market identified earlier. When measuring the success of your campaign, using industry standard figures is helpful e.g. you can easily find average sector response rates to email campaigns, SEO etc.

When creating a budget for your campaign it is important to get as close as you can to real costs. You might use previous campaigns to support your spend e.g. sources such as WARC or BRAD and in addition, you may need to undertake some of you own research to get costings. For example, if you were to undertake an event in the UK, costings of the venue, staff etc. would be helpful.

What should I include within the appendix?

The appendix is used as supplementary information. This means additional information that would make it easier for the reader to be aware of. A good principal to consider is to leave content in the report that makes it easy for an external reader to follow and understand.

How about target customer, should we target a single business sector or multi-sectors?

This will be depends on the size of the sector in which you plan on focusing your campaign. My advice if its big enough then focus on a single business sector, this make it easier to create a targeted communications plan. However, if the single market is not big enough then it may be helpful to have an additional market that supplements it.

Should I include marketing tools such as PESTLE, marketing mix, 7's framework, Porter's five forces, and so on?

These are always good starting points for you collecting research, however there are no marks allocated for the inclusion of the activities My advice is use one tool e.g. PESTLE and focus on good quality research. Be mindful this might not appear in the main body of the report, however it might fit nicely into the appendix.

Are we expected to actually use Instagram?

Its not expected they you are key user of Instagram or to be a key influencer on this channel. More the assessment is asking you to create a digital and direct marketing campaign for the client of Instagram. When working on behalf of any client, you do not have to be customer or consumer of the product or service, as you can us other methods to collect your research. However, if you choose to sign up to Instagram as part of your research, this is student choice.

Are we creating the port as Instagram or as external partner?

The brief states you’re are working as a marketing consultant, so are working on behalf of Instagram. A marketing consultant is an outside advisor who works with companies to create and implement marketing strategies. A consultant helps create a detailed marketing plan, determine a business's marketing message, and identify the appropriate marketing mix to get the message out to the target market.

What’s included in the page count?

The main body off the report should include in the page count. In addition, not included within the page count are: cover page contents page and reference page.

We have been given previous example, should we use this as base for structure and content?

The short answer is no, the example has been provided for illustrative purposes. As such the problem and organisation students worked upon was completely different, so can just transfer across to you case. The example has been shared to show, what a professional report looks like and how you can respond to a practical problem.

How is the final report to be presentation?

As this is a business report, for a digital marketing problem than information can be present in variety of formats – its best to use style that demonstrates your point in the simplistic format.

An example has been provided for to have review of how other groups have presented the report. Its usual you would see both text along with other visual presentation methods for example: diagrams illustrations, tables, infographics, visual mock ups, tables etc.

Campaign Objective

What are campaign objectives?

Campaign objectives are how you measure the success of campaign. You would usual find between 3-5 campaign objectives for each campaign. For your assignment you are to create your own campaign objectives which must link to back to the overarching aim set by the client – converting 25,000 business to use Instagram Stories.

Should they be SMART?

It works best when campaign objectives are SMART, so in order to make sure show how successful you campaign can be. This allows you to make sure you can measure the success of the campaign, whilst ensure it achievable. The measurement of the campaign is important as link to the later element of KPI’s.

What do campaign objectives look like?

Campaign objective typical take of the forms of: raising branding awareness, improve reputation of a brand, increasing the engagement of particular platform or increasing sales conversation. They work best with the 3-5 campaign objectives that link together and work as funnel, that potential consumer might go on. E.g. the consumer needs to have and awareness before it engages in social channel, and prior to purchase a product or service. A good source of information/reading for campaign objectives is:

https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/how-to-set-digital-marketing-objectives/

Communications plan

What is a digital communicatons plan?

A digital communications plan takes both online and offline activities into account to inform a single key message which runs across the various media platforms. It is important that the communications plan links to the target market and attempts to meet your campaign objectives.

What is a big campaign idea?

This is the central component of a campaign plan and it is often portrayed with a slogan, # or overarching theme to your campaign. In other words it is the big idea that runs through the channels you plan to use.

What is a media plan?

It is the various media you plan to use to build your big idea and connect with your audience. It may take various different media, eg social, SEO, website, content and events. It would be helpful to show examples of what your campaign might look like on the different media and also it is important to ensure you show the different recommended timings of the media. For example a Gantt chart is a good way to show the timings of your campaign. It is also important to think about key moments of interaction with you audience which is informed by your target market.

How do I fit this all into 6 month communications plan?

Focus on the key points for your target customer, how do you plan getting them to move to the next stages. For example when creating a target market you may have found out some of the pain point of the customer, this would be key point so focus for your campaign.

As part of the digital 6 month communications plan, do we have to include a budget?

In short yes you do, as with any client you have budget that you have to managed. This budget will be used for you to show were you plan on spend in terms of creating content and media.

When creating a budget for your campaign it is important to get as close as you can to real costs. You might use previous campaigns to support your spend e.g. sources such as WARC or BRAD and in addition, you may need to undertake some of you own research to get costings. For example, if you were to undertake an event in the UK, costings of the venue, staff etc. would be helpful.