Linking it all together

1. Pick your focus: 24-hour plumbing hotline
2. Pick your duration: 3 month campaign
3. Pick your headline: I came home and the dog was bald.
4. Pick your image: a bald dog (go ahead, laugh, it’s ok! But think as well, what on earth do hippopotamus or chameleons have to do with phone services?)
5. Tie your “message” into your headline “I’ve never been more surprised other than when I stepped out of bed at 2am into an inch of water.”
6. Choose your publication(s) – based on geographical reach, cash out of pocket, value add-ons, best price per point of contact.
1. Incorporate your headline and image
2. Develop several versions of the “message” tie in
3. Alternate between publications to increase your audience reach. Overlap in geographical regions is ok because of reader habits and frequency
7. You want some print materials that you can use with customers in house (or onsite) AND mail out to specific areas;
1. How’s about a greeting style card with your image of the bald dog on the front and your headline;
2. Inside right “If you think that’s surprising, just think how surprised you’d be if you got up in the middle of the night and found yourself in an inch of water!”
   NOW WHAT?!
   We just want to let you know that we’ve got you covered with our 24-hour plumbing hotline…..
   But in the meantime, can you give me a call if you’ve got any suggestions on what I can do with a bald dog?!
3. Inside left: A check-list of the things to check and when, to help prevent the inch of water scenario.
8. So now, any thoughts on what the first thing people should see during this campaign when they go to the website? Hopefully you said a bald dog!  Along with “Does anyone have any suggestions on what to do with a bald dog?!” It’s got me stumped, but I sure know what you can do during a middle of the night crisis with your plumbing!
9. Social Media is where you can have a lot of fun with this one. You keep your Facebook status or your Twitter Tweets short and sweet. Play with the bald dog situation.  Pre-plan a series of posts that lead from one to the other drawing on natural curiosity. The comments will likely get wildly out-of-control and so completely off-topic to your business and focus…. But that’s ok, because a) you’re gaining attention and interaction; b) you’ve got a plan in place that inches people towards your focus each day.  You’re creating a memorable experience for them that they will connect to your business.
10. Blogging is where you have the opportunity to give back to your consumers. Stepping out of bed into an inch of water or coming home to a bald dog are not the only surprising scenarios that people could face that leave them unsure what the next step would be.  Plumbing is an integral part of any home. So take some time and put together some pieces that will offer some light humour of surprising situations followed by some great household tips to avoid emergency situations.  Tie as many of them as you can into plumbing, but they don’t all have to focus on plumbing.  The point is to give consumers something that they want to read, that will keep them coming back. It’s developing the habit, it’s setting you up as the expert and it’s putting you at the front of their mind when it comes to your industry.

When planning a campaign, don’t forget that you personally are going to be the one MOST exposed to your marketing and messages. So if it feels like it’s a bit repetitive or a bit over the top, look to your tracking to give you feed back by asking your customers how many different times they’ve seen one of your messages; ask them if they know what to do with a “bald dog” and see if there is any comprehension.  If your customers don’t know what your current marketing campaign is, then you’re not over doing it, it just feels that way to you simply because you personally are over exposed.

Add a time line of implementation to your campaign.  If you plan a 3 month campaign, that's roughly 12 weeks.  Budget your paid marketing methods to allow for consistent, regular exposure throughout the entire 12 weeks.  Set your campaign up to build on itself (building blocks remember).  In other words, don't give it all away in your first ad or in one major website update, or in one blog article.  Do you remember the initial campaigns for Barq's rootbeer (after Coca-Cola bought them out) before it was released to the public?  For weeks on end print, radio and TV were flooded with the message "Barq's has bite" - no one had any clue what it meant, what it was referring to or why they should care.  But they did care - they were curious and they wanted the mystery revealed.  Barq's is now one of the top selling soft drinks in the market.