Is Your Marketing Campaign Part of the Living Dead?

There are zombies everywhere you look.

Seriously, if you take a look around you, you can find examples of things that are dead and should have been buried and forgotten long ago.

I’m not talking about your Uncle Stewie. I’m talking about marketing campaigns that companies are using that have long since stopped being useful and productive. When was the last time that those “caveman” commercials for Geico were actually funny? And what about company names based around the 800 number?  These undead campaigns are actually hurting the companies they were designed to help.

You are probably plagued with zombies, too. Why is that?

I can give you a few reasons. Marketing is hard work. It’s difficult to come up with really productive methods to carry your message. And integrating a new marketing campaign across your entire company can be expensive. But perhaps the biggest reason is this: people are attached to campaigns that were once successful and point to that past success as the reason to keep pushing on – even when the campaign is no longer working.

Every marketing campaign has a lifecycle. And that means at some point you have to retire EVERY campaign.

And that means two things:

1. You need to be creating and testing new campaigns continuously.
2. You need to constantly test and measure the results of your current and active campaigns.

The best way to do this is to form a real partnership between sales and marketing and plan from the very beginning the lifecycle of a campaign, when it will be kicked off (born), and when it will be retired (die). Marketing can drive a campaign if it has continual and real-time feedback from sales. You’ll know what’s working and be able to do more of the same. And you’ll know what’s failing and be able to try something else.

One of the worst things that can happen is to have a successful campaign become very successful, and then set it on eternal autopilot. When you turn your back and stop measuring results, stop planning new replacement campaigns, you’re destined to failure.

Your marketing program should focus on creating new campaigns on a regular basis, continually measuring their effectiveness, and actively killing off those that are no longer producing at the level you need.  You can’t get attached to anything, including your company name and logo. Take a look at the Apple logo and name across the years. They’ve had three logos and dropped “Computer” from their company name. They can be ruthless about their marketing, creating big campaigns, letting them run as long as they’re successful, and then replacing them with new ones as soon as the old ceases to be effective.  Notice that the “I’m A Mac” commercials are gone? But look at all the iPad commercials.

When was the last time you took a hard look at all of your marketing? It can be scary, but it has to be done. Your marketing is too expensive and too critical to let it remain shuffling around, killing your potential in the market. I’d be happy to join you on the hunt. Drop me an e-mail or give me a call and I’ll show up with my shotgun (OK, no firearms. I’ll bring my iPad) and we can hunt down and kill your zombies and find new life for your marketing needs.