Launching a marketing campaign is scary. As you sit there with your finger on the button, ready to set a campaign live or send a mass email, a thousand thoughts race through your head….
“Did I make a spelling error?”
“Is this going out to the right people?”
“Did I set up the tracking properly to be able to measure success?”
“What did I forget?!”
Not only is it stressful to launch a campaign – but it can also be extremely time consuming. You have to determine your strategy, build out your creatives and structure, then check and double check and triple check…
Marketing doesn’t have to be that hard! In fact, it can be simple – and error free! What’s the secret? Systems.
What are Marketing Systems?
At Right Left Agency, we define marketing systems as the checklists and processes we have in place for each marketing initiative. For each category of marketing activity (whether it be email marketing, Facebook Advertising, web development, or blogging) we have mapped out every step we need to take to make that campaign successful.
Why Do I Need Systems?
You might be thinking – that’s fine for an agency. But why does my company need systems? Well – any good marketing strategy involves multiple touchpoints on any given channel.
For example, a good email marketing strategy consists of not one email, but many emails over time, building a narrative and staying top-of-mind for your customers. Most companies essentially start from scratch each time they write an email, even though they do it over and over again. However, if those companies were to systemize their email marketing, they would have email templates, a checklist of what to include in an email, a map of what emails go out at what time, and tools for measuring success.
What are the Components of a Good Marketing System?
There are many elements that go into a strong marketing system to make it effective and efficient. We like to include:
Templates: You should have standard templates for any creative asset you create. These can include things like Adobe Illustrator files for social media posts and ads, branded HTML email templates, outlines of the components of a blog post, text ad language, and more.
External Resources: Keep all the resources you use for that particular marketing activity in one place. For advertising, this might include things like competitor research tools, keyword list generators, and link generators. For email marketing, it might include list cleaning tools, email client preview generators, and spam folder testing tools. Whatever it is that helps you create your campaign – organize it!
Checklists: This is, perhaps, the most critical element. It is important to create checklists for each marketing activity to make sure you didn’t miss a step. Our Facebook ads checklist includes items such as “Install Facebook Conversion Pixel”, “Check image ad text percentage”, and “Check ad preview for aesthetics”. Each time you are preparing to launch a campaign, run through the checklist.
Timelines: It is critical to have a project management system in place so you can manage the preparation period, launch timeline, and review timeline. Set up dates of when each activity needs to occur in order to launch a campaign on time.
Review: Part of your timeline should include a feedback loop. Review your campaigns, note what could have been done better or where performance fell short, and determine what adjustments need to be made to the system (if any).
With systems like these in place, your marketing can run smoothly, and you can rest easy knowing you knocked it out of the park.
