How to Document New Campaigns?
Following the discussion on general documentation principles, we now focus on the crucial steps for documenting a new campaign, emphasizing pre-launch preparation and post-campaign analysis.
This thorough documentation process enriches the organizational knowledge base, facilitating the reuse of successful ideas, and avoiding invalidated hypotheses in future.
Defining the Purpose Clearly Beforehand:
Clearly articulating the campaign's goals at the outset is essential. Specify whether the campaign targets the top, middle, or bottom of the sales funnel.
Irrespective of the campaign type, it is important to explicitly state what is the primary objective, what does success look like (with respect to benchmarks), and how will its measurement take place, to avoid ambiguity.
This early clarity helps align the team’s efforts with goals and provides a clear metric for success.
Defining the How Clearly Beforehand:
Document how the campaign is expected to achieve its objectives. This includes detailing the creative and audience insights that drive the campaign's design, explaining why these approaches are predicted to outperform the baseline, and how benchmarks for success have been established.
This level of detail ensures that the campaign's strategic foundation is well-understood and agreed upon before launch, setting a baseline for later evaluation.
Documenting the Post-Mortem for Future Reference:
Once the campaign concludes, it’s crucial to document the results comprehensively.
Note any deviations from the initial targets, specifically whether these occurred at the CRM, CTR, or ECR stages of the funnel. Discuss and document consensus opinions on why these deviations occurred, providing a detailed analysis that can inform future campaigns.
This post-mortem is vital for capturing lessons learned and guiding future campaign strategies.
Takeaway:
Effective documentation of new campaigns involves setting clear objectives and detailed methodologies upfront to guide campaign execution and benchmarking success. After the campaign, a thorough analysis of results and deviations provides insights for adjustments and future planning.
These steps ensure each campaign contributes to a deeper understanding and refinement of marketing strategies.