The secret recipe to a successful SME marketing campaign

If you’re struggling to cook up new business, check out our list of ingredients for a Michelin-star marketing campaign…

When we launched our #WriteLikeADuck blog last year, we asked our network for topic suggestions. Since literally several of you asked us to cover marketing campaigns for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), how could we refuse? 

How to cook up a successful marketing campaign is the million-dollar question for anyone running an SME, but you shouldn’t have to spend a million dollars to find your perfect blend of herbs and spices. That said, there’s no sugar-coating the fact that a winning campaign involves lots of ingredients, from meticulous planning and targeted channel selection to unbridled creativity and content expertise. You’re also likely to need a generous dollop of luck!

So, what are the main points to remember? Here’s my rundown of the five essential steps involved in creating a Michelin-star marketing campaign for your business.

Make time for prep
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: failing to prepare is preparing to fail. It’s tempting to rush in all guns blazing, but your marketing campaigns should aim to meet at least one of the objectives of your marketing strategy (which, in turn, is aimed at meeting your business objectives). That takes time and thought.

The majority of time spent on any campaign should be devoted to planning and research, making execution the swift and (relatively) easy part. If you have time, it might also help to refresh or create more specific SWOT and gap analyses, carry out some competitor research, and make sure any data you plan to use (e.g., email addresses) is clean and GDPR compliant.

If it’s not part of your everyday role, take time to catch up and get familiar with all the channels and tools at your disposal. Social media platforms are always introducing new features, so you could utilise LinkedIn Conversation Ads if you’re a B2B business targeting decision-makers. Alternatively, if you’re a B2C business trying to increase your reach, collaborations with other accounts on TikTok and Instagram might prove helpful. It’s also a good idea to stay abreast of what is and isn’t supported. For example, LinkedIn doesn’t allow the boosting of posts with multiple images, and you can’t post a poll on Facebook in the same way you can on X. 

Cater to specific tastes
If your business has a formal marketing strategy, chances are you’ve also spent some time creating audience personas. These are key to running a successful marketing campaign. Unless you’re selling a basic necessity like groceries, your audience is not ‘everyone’. Even then, it’s fair to say B&M are targeting a different shopper than, say, Fortnum & Mason.  

So, who are you targeting? Where do they look for information, recommendations and advice? These are the channels you need to be using. It sounds obvious, but if your product or service appeals to a particular sector, why wouldn’t you run your campaign on sector-specific channels or platforms? For example, you make professional quality knives, so you run an ad and pitch a guest editorial in The Staff Canteen, or run a competition for readers.

It also matters what stage of the marketing funnel you are targeting. For instance, billboards will help with awareness by reaching a large, general audience, even if only within a limited geographical area. Social media marketing has a similar effect online. On the other hand, content marketing (in the form of in-depth information on your website) and email marketing are helpful at the consideration and conversion stages, when a potential buyer knows of your business but needs to be convinced. Don’t be afraid to combine traditional marketing with digital marketing.

Get creative
Make time and give yourself or your team permission to get creative with the theme, messaging and look of your latest campaign. You don’t have to limit yourself to a certain template or preconceived idea of what it should be.  

Not every idea will be a golden nugget, but you might find a new and exciting angle that you hadn’t previously considered. Being B2B doesn’t mean you can’t have fun or use humour. As long as it fits with your brand and tone of voice (I’m not endorsing jokes about accidents from personal injury solicitors), it can help you stand out from the crowd. This is a tactic we tried to tap into with our Duck vs Machine campaign.

Develop useful content
Here is where #TeamDuck comes in. Often, you might direct all leads from a campaign to a specially created landing page, particularly if you’ve invested a significant amount of time and budget, as you’ll want to track the results. If so, you need the copy and content on that landing page to be the best possible representation of your business.

You’ll also usually want a strong piece of anchor content, whether you’re focusing on the awareness, consideration or conversion stage of the marketing funnel.

• Awareness | We could help create an ebook highlighting a particular problem area for businesses you’re targeting, sharing vital statistics and even expert opinions on the topic.

• Consideration | We could assemble and share a factsheet comparing the different solutions available on the market (including yours, of course).

• Conversion | We could create a presentation highlighting how one of your company’s products or services solves a common problem for prospective clients, which you could then use as the basis for a webinar or virtual roundtable.

As well as the anchor content (the ebook, factsheet or presentation), we can also produce supporting content such as promotional emails, pay-per-click (PPC) ad copy, social media ads, organic social media posts, event listings, video descriptions, and so on.

Invest in your business’s future
Ultimately, whether you partner with ChattyDuck or a different organisation, enlisting the help of a professional content creator is a great way to reduce your workload. It can also help to drive consistency in key messaging and tone while ensuring your calls to action (CTAs) are coordinated. Remember, you’re asking people to trust your business on the basis of this content, so it needs to be right.

Your campaign doesn’t have to cost thousands in advertising spend, but you (and your colleagues) do need to get behind it fully, bring in outside help if needed, give it time to work, assess the results, and reiterate. Any leads you manage to attract need to be nurtured, so if you’ve brought in leads at the awareness stage (this could be new email subscribers from a competition), your next steps should focus on reinforcing that awareness or taking them to the consideration stage. This is not a one-and-done scenario.

While there’s no single tried-and-tested recipe for success, you won’t go far wrong if you start by asking yourself why customers want what you have to offer. Build a strong base with research and planning, add a dash of creativity and a soupçon of ChattyDuck’s content writing expertise, and you’ll be well on your way to creating a Michelin-star marketing campaign.

If you’d like to arrange a chat about your SME’s marketing goals (or Katy’s favourite Midlands-based eateries), get in touch by emailing info@chattyduck.com.

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