The evolution of the Direct Response campaign kick-off meeting
Back in the day, and by back in the day I mean five years ago, campaign kick-off meetings were a fairly predictable procedure.
Of course there were your account people, who explained the product or service, presented the creative brief and gave an overview of the challenges and opportunities within the marketplace. Then you had your creative team, who was being challenged to come up with a campaign concept that built both brand and response. You had your media team who was looking at years of relevant data and consumer research to increase the odds of executing a successful media test and rollout. The web folks were sitting right next to the creative team, trying to build a brand- and campaign-consistent website that converted at a high rate. And let’s not forget the agency producer who was busy telling you that whatever idea you might come up with was way outside of our budget.
Oh, and the operations team. But they probably didn’t show up to your kick-off meeting, as they were busy training call center employees, all while finalizing the RFP process to select the perfect fulfillment partner.
These same sets that we’ve all come to know still play an important part in a successful campaign launch today—but they’re sitting next to some new faces. Considering that 41 percent of consumers research products and services online before making a purchase decision, it comes as no surprise that a number of these folks carry the word “web” in their titles.
Once online, 80 percent of Internet traffic begins at search engines. Our search engine marketing team presents us with the clients’ current search presence via relevant keyword analysis, and what it will take in the short-run (paid search) and long-run (organic search) to achieve high search engine ranking , in turn driving the consumers interested in our products and services to the site.
More and more people are basing their purchase decisions on social commerce channels, such as Amazon reviews, Yahoo Answers, blog reviews and shopping engines. Our social media teams are giving us an overview of what people are saying about our products—they are informing us of what questions are being asked, and what concerns are being raised. This level of knowledge gives great insight to our creative team, as they’re tasked with explaining product features and benefits. Also, our operations team (currently en route to Ajjampura) uses this information to train call center and customer service employees.
Last but not least, there’s the newest member of the social media department—online PR. The PR person has identified the most influential industry players (bloggers, journalists, frequent posters in forums), who will be contacted prior to launch to review our products and give feedback. This can result in a lot of positive buzz around our products and brand, which oftentimes is the foundation for a successful campaign launch.
While properly planning a successful direct response campaign has become more complex, a multilateral approach usually uncovers a lot of opportunities that can grow to become major tools and acquisition channels for the smart DR marketer.
And where is our operations team? No one seems to know.
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