What Are One-Off Campaigns and Do They Work?
Are You Capitalizing on Your Marketing Efforts or Simply Running Meaningless Campaigns?
If you work in marketing you aspire to develop well-though campaigns that have a clear persona and goal attached to them and ultimately… ensure revenue. But how real is that? How many marketing departments have started with a well-developed plan and have stick to it till the end?
It is not uncommon for marketing departments to be reactionary, to get overwhelmed with requests from sales, customer success, and other departments. This is only natural as Marketing’s responsibilities go beyond finding new leads. Marketing prospects raise brand awareness, advocates customer success and loyalty, and it also answers many other ad-hoc tasks. This often leads to marketing plans put in the backburner to open the way for opportunistic initiatives that result in one-off campaigns. In some cases, one after the other.
What are one-off campaigns?
One-off campaigns are the ones that serve one purpose and have no continuity or clear place in the marketing plan. These initiatives could fit anytime, most of the time. The best example is a celebratory day where you may run an event, webinar, email push, or social media initiative around a day that is relevant for your business such as Autism awareness day, for a care company.
Don’t get me wrong, many of these campaigns are great as they leverage common awareness on a topic, but they can become meaningless.
Recently for International Women’s day on Monday 8th of March, businesses across the world jumped on social media with posts, quotes, and posters on diversity in the workplace; women’s achievements, and other related buzz words. The noise soon stopped once the day was finished. Although the push to discuss company diversity or raising women’s profile to C-suite roles is relevant in today’s society, a one-off campaign can do more harm than good by diluting ongoing efforts to address these topics with planned campaigns that focus on real change and measurable results.
One-off vs planned campaigns. Who wins?
In many of my past roles, I’ve seen well-designed campaigns and marketing plans get a “‘pat in the back” and never see the light of day and in many cases because there isn’t the time to focus on this in-between one-offs. One-offs can be the “make it or break it” of a quarter-end and a great way to drive those numbers, but when reverting to one-offs how much of your long-term goals and strategies could you be compromising?
When deciding on whether to choose a one-off vs a planned strategic campaign don’t forget the long-term goals, even though your one-off might be focusing on immediate goals. Are these in alignment? What is the compromise?
Sales discount campaigns are a flagrant example. These are often designed to achieve quarter deadline goals (immediate goals). Although this could be a great way to ensure revenue in a limited time, it is important to understand how will this affect long-term strategies. Ask yourself: Is there a better time to run this campaign? Would another time yield better results? And can the business afford to gain new customers out of a discount and still ensure these become loyal in the future?
Understanding the implications is not just a “good to know”, but a “must-know”.
Assess your marketing efforts and resources
One other key aspect is to assess if your marketing efforts and resources are being used properly and not just for vanity. Nowadays technology can really improve your productivity, but your resources go beyond the tools you use, these are your people, your people’s time, and your people’s attention to detail in a limited time action.
When setting up a plan there is a lot of thought as to when/how and how much of your resources will be used, based on ongoing needs. Ensuring that you maximize your resources is a great strategy to ensure ROI and often straining your resources to a vanity project may not result in the type of ROI you expect.
This is why you mustn’t think of one-off as what they are: a strategy limited in time. Instead, think about how these one-offs can become part of your plan in the long run. You might have run a last-minute webinar on workplace diversity for Women's day. Think about how this same content can be repurposed, what learnings did you got from it that are worth sharing, and ultimately, if the effort yields the desired outcomes or not. This will offer great insight into next year’s planning.
Address the costs and the outcomes. Even ask unpleasant questions and ensure that you and your teams’ efforts are focused and driven into what you wish to achieve. Not everything needs to be planned but everything you do can feed into next year’s plan… and budget.