How J.O. Goes to Market
Marketing Planning and Concept Development is broken down into a four-step process entailing Research and Analysis, Strategic Planning, Design/Launch and Measurement, drawing on the various elements that are pertinent to your business. We expect many of the phases described below will overlap because initial groundwork can be laid concurrently, but guidance from the previous phase will need to be incorporated before completing subsequent phases.
Strategic Planning
From the standpoint of Strategic Planning, our focus begins with articulating your business’s goals and marketing objectives. Clear articulation of these is vital to a successful outcome. Our goals will include the broad primary outcomes that the marketing effort is meant to address: the what, not the how. Next, we will define objectives and the measurable and specific outcomes. Objectives quantify thoughts so that the strategy can be set around them.
The strategy section of the Marketing Communication Plan keys off the research conducted earlier and includes an in-depth look at what the organization offers and how it aligns with current and prospective customer wants and needs, referring clinicians’ attitudes and decision triggers and how the client can help the various groups. Once we have defined our targets and have an idea of how best to communicate with them, we can formulate a general philosophy around what, how, where and how often messaging should take place. We will build a creative brief and outline the marketing and media approaches to be taken to accomplish the objectives. These are the how, not the what. Ideally, we would incorporate all forms of target outreach (those being executed by the client as well as agency staff) to provide a complete and coordinated communications plan.
The tactics section of the Marketing Communications Plan will cover the tactical day-to-day aspects of putting our plan in action, both from the client’s and the agency’s perspective. Anything to do with the how of making your marketing strategy work, such as creative assets to be developed and media tactics to be employed, is elaborated on in this phase. Here we will recommend how to schedule and plan activities and calculate costs. At this time, we will ask for approval of the Marketing Communications Plan so we can move on to implementation.
Design/Launch
Creative concept development, testing and production as well as media buying are important aspects of this phase. During this phase, the team will create the client’s brand story, one that is compelling and differentiating. We will also put measurement systems in place and conduct any benchmarking before the launch of the campaign.
With an agreed-upon creative brief and any planned versioning for each relevant target in place, J.O. will develop creative concepts and ultimately the creative assets required for the media plan.
Concept testing will provide target response to the concepts the team has developed, leading to concept improvement and selection. Emotional response testing takes into account conclusions in marketing science (e.g. Binet & Field, The Long and The Short of It, 2012) that emotional campaigns are far more likely to achieve long-term growth than message-driven, rational ads. The more people feel, the more people act. System 1 tests show every ad (produced or storyboarded) to 150 people online, and participants use a series of faces — representing the seven basic emotions as defined by Dr. Paul Ekman — to indicate how they feel about the ad and how intensely. Also measured is second-by-second emotional response and brand fluency (how strongly and quickly they connect an ad to its brand). This is both qualitative and quantitative, and emotion becomes the engine of the predictive model for long-term, brand-building, profitable growth. A successful outcome from System 1 testing will make sure the creative will drive action.
Media purchases and creative production, approvals and trafficking will all happen during Design/Launch. Any corollary tactics would be executed in this timeframe as well, such as the brand toolkit and any brand guidelines.
Measurement
The Measurement phase monitors and manages the plan’s performance against previously agreed upon Key Performance Factors. J.O. follows the general formula of plan, implement, track and adjust, progressively refining strategies and tactics based on a continuous loop of feedback.
Cheers,
J.O.
