Campaigns vs. continuous promotion

A client asked today how long should their campaign run. I am more and more of the opinion that forever is the correct answer in most cases. In the old days when buying media was expensive, you had to go all out to get the desired frequency and reach.

Now, using search advertising and social media, you do not have to spend your resources all at once. Instead you’ll be constantly visible to more targeted audience. In the campaign world you get a lot of misses by reaching people who are not interested – the shot gun effect. In the campaign era you also missed the people who had interest between the campaigns. If your campaign failed, it failed big.

Today you can be

• more precise in your targeting,
• spend less money and
• be visible all the time (to people who are looking).

In this approach you have to monitor your spending and results so that the ROI would be positive. If something isn’t working change it. If needed switch the products, message, channels or budget but do go on.

Build continuous improvement and testing into your marketing.

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Image credit: Svilen Milev