An influence campaign is a coordinated effort to influence a specific target audience (TA) to take an action. This could be buying the product, recommending the product to others, talking about the product, lobbying government officials and representatives to change laws or regulations in a way that will benefit people who want to buy and use the product, or any other positive action.
Here are the steps to conducting an influence campaign:
Step 1. Identify marketing objectives. This could be increasing awareness of the product, or building the brand image, or increasing visits to a physical or online storefront. There must always be a direction for the marketing objective, such as “increase awareness”, “cultivate an image”, “increase visits to the website”, etc. The marketing objective is in “{verb} {object phrase}” format, completing the sentence “we need to… {verb} {object-phrase}”.
Step 2. Identify the call to action. This is a specific action someone can take that would contribute to the marketing objective. This could be “read the article”, “watch the video”, “listen to this podcast”, “visit our store”, “buy now”, “contact us”, etc. The action must be measurable. That is, you must be able to directly or indirectly observe the action being taken by the target audience. Make a plan for how you’ll measure the effectiveness of the campaign. The call to action is in “{verb} {object}” format, completing the sentence “TA will … {verb} {object}”.
Step 3. Identify target audiences. For each marketing objective and call to action, identify one or more audiences who can take that action. A target audience can be defined very broadly like “adults age 40-60” or more narrowly like “young adult women searching for old-fashioned socks online”. Each target audience will be addressed with a different message. Make a list of potential target audiences, then narrow it down to the few who would have the most impact.
Step 4. Research target audiences. Learn more about each target audience to understand their needs and drives. See empathetic assessment. You might learn that a target audience you selected is not suitable to achieve the marketing objective, or that a call to action isn’t suitable for the target audience. You can refine your marketing objectives, call to action, and target audiences based on your research.
Step 5. Develop a message. The message is expressed as one or two sentences that would influence the target audience to answer the call to action. This is the essence of the advertisement or promotion, not the final version. Test the message with a few people from the target audience to make sure you’re on track. It’s easier to refine the message now, while it’s still some text in a draft document, than it is to make any change to it once you’ve spent the time and money to develop and deliver the finished assets, in addition to confusion that may arise in the target audience when the message is changed. A message can be in a format like “I need to {action} because {reason}” or “To avoid {perilous situation}, I need to {action}” or “To prevent {bad outcome}, I need to {action}”. Other formats are possible.
Step 6. Identify the medium. Thinking about the target audience, where do they get information? Do they read magazines, watch television, browse the Internet, or talk with neighbors?
Step 7. Develop the assets. An asset is an article, video, podcast, sign, web page, postcard, letter, search ad, radio ad, television ad, magazine ad, etc. that delivers the message. For example, an article could be two pages long and the message could be the main point, or a 60-second television ad could be a little story and the message is the moral or punchline. Choose an asset type that matches the way the target audience receives information. Test the asset with people from the target audience to check that the message is being received accurately and that it’s persuasive. Adjust and re-test until it works. Before finalizing, review the asset with a diverse panel of people outside the target audience to check that it’s not unintentionally offensive or controversial. Keep an archive of all the assets you develop. You may want to reuse some of the work for future assets, or you may need to refer to them when writing lessons learned for this campaign or reviewing lessons learned from a past campaign.
Step 8. Deliver the assets. Post the article or video, put up the signs, publish the website, buy the radio ad spot, etc. An asset must be continuously delivered to people in the target audience over a specific time period. Keep an archive of which asset was delivered, through what channel, the start date, and the end date.
Step 9. Measure results. Make a plan to directly or indirectly observe the action being taken by the target audience. If the action is visiting the website, and the asset is a search ad, you can measure how many people saw the ad (impressions) and how many people clicked on the ad (clicks) and that’s a direct measurement of the ad’s effectiveness. If the action is to call their representative and speak their mind about a proposed law, you won’t be able to measure those phone calls directly but you can indirectly observe if the campaign had any effect by watching the news for statements by the representative or stories about the campaign. Other ways to indirectly measure effectiveness are by conducting surveys.
Step 10. Lessons learned. Always take time to summarize what you learned about the target audience, the message, the call to action, or the specific assets that were developed, so you can leverage that knowledge in future campaigns. Also, remember that the world is always changing so something that was learned and true one year may not be the same after some time, so always document the campaign (steps 1-9) for context on the lessons.
Advanced Influence Campaigns
Sometimes the target audience you need to influence is not accessible to you. For example, you might need a parent to buy your product, but parents are busy and there are many of them all over the population and delivering mass-market messages is expensive. You could take another approach of reaching your target audience indirectly. In this advanced approach, you develop one or more supporting influence campaigns, each of which is directed at a secondary target audience that can influence your primary target audience to take action. For example, you might attempt to influence teachers to recommend your product to parents. There are fewer teachers than parents, and teachers are professionals so there are various publications specifically for teachers that you can use to deliver your message. Another example, you might attempt to influence pediatricians to recommend your product to parents. Or another example, you might influence one or more recreational businesses to deliver your message to parents, like places where parents take their kids to dance, learn music, do sports, etc.
When the secondary target audience size is very small compared to the primary target audience size, such as school principals, religious leaders, mayors, coaches, etc. the secondary target audience is sometimes called “key communicators”.
When you conduct advanced influence campaigns:
Steps 1-5 of the primary campaign (identify the marketing objectives to develop the message).
Steps 6-8 of the primary campaign are where you develop, execute, and measure each of the supporting supporting influence campaigns separately (steps 1-10 for each supporting influence campaign). The target audience of each supporting influence campaign is a medium for the primary campaign.
Step 9. Measure the combined effects of the supporting influence campaign, directly or indirectly.
Step 10. Lessons learned for the advanced influence campaign.
Compass
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