3.1 Campaign objectives

Setting goals for the campaign should be the starting point when undertaking media planning. The goals should be SMART and there should be one main focus in order to make the overall campaign more effective. 

The specificity of a marketing goal needs to address the focus areas of the campaign itself. by having a specific goal, the campaign can be a solution to a precise business pain point, or leverage a business opportunity. For a goal to be easily measurable, they need to be quantitative. Qualitative goals can be measured as well, however, they are more likely to be harder to measure due to the subjective nature of the goal (Bullock, L., 2021). Looking at quantitative goals can allow the business to extract metrics that they can use to monitor the campaigns performance. With an achievable goal there is the opportunity to take actions in order to direct the campaign in the desired direction.  Keeping a relevant campaign goal is crucial in order to avoid wasting resources. When the campaign goals are irrelevant to the business goals, there is a disconnect in aligning the vision of the company. A SWOT analysis is usually done to Identify the areas of relevance that inform the campaign goals. Finally the T in SMART stands for Time-bound, a timeline for the campaign is developed to make sure all the resources and efforts are used accordingly, and through careful planning. This can take the form of campaign milestones, used to track the performance of the campaign and determine if everything is going according to plan.

The advertising campaign by Studio A will focus on growing the company's digital reach by 200%, to potentially gain new leads and land a minimum of 20 active new clients throughout the duration of the campaign. 

The metrics used to track performance include the number of subscribers, number of likes, and views. The advantage with digital marketing is that Studio A has access to analytics tools that make it easy to collect such data as well as target the audience better based on web browsing activities. A good example is Google Analytics and SEO, this helps ads appear to our target audience. In the United States, a research was conducted indicating that 35.8% of marketers use Marketing analytics tools.

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3.2 Campaign overview

Linked In, Facebook, Twitter, Google Ads. In the tech industry, these media streams are commonly used, making them very relevant platforms to run the advertising campaign on. OOH or also known as outdoor advertising as well as radio ads will be used. OOH advertising would be targeted at specific locations, including public transports (train stations, bus stops, inbus signage) There are approximately 3,9 million public transport commuters. The 2,5 million taxi commuters account for over 63 percent of public transport work trips, bus services account for another 22 percent of public transport commuters and the balance are carried to work by train (ArriveAlive, 2021). LinkedIn As a platform was chosen for its ability to promote organic content, and it’s overall user demographic consisting of working professionals and entrepreneurs. This makes it the ideal place to reach Studio A’s target audience. Facebook was chosen due to its size and potential outreach. 

To achieve the campaign goal of gaining new clients and creating awareness around the brand and it’s services, Studio A will use a cross-platform media plan for optimal reach. Campaign elements will include short motion graphic videos that showcase 4 themes highlighting the common mistakes made by businesses and how Studio A’s services can help overcome them. These videos will be alternated with 4 similar themes but focused on the process of solving the mistakes to encourage an audience to engage with the teaching content that can be subscribed to. The short videos are most suited to be shared on Facebook Watch and LinkedIn. These are ideal choices as they are used most frequently by the target audience for staying updated with news and current affairs. LinkedIn is particularly ideal since it’s focussed on creating a professional network, which is important to the target audience. In addition, Twitter is often used to stay up-to-date with current developments and news in the technology industry, making it an effective platform to reach the desired audience. Tweets will be formulated to direct the target audience to the video content on LinkedIn, where further engagement is encouraged. 

Further, traditional media platforms such as radio and print media will also be used. 15 second voice overs describing the 4 themes in marketing mistakes will be placed twice per day during prime listening times for portions of the campaign. This would be the morning hours of 6 am - 9 am and 4 pm - 7pm, since these are the hours the target audience is ideally commuting. Printed posters and decals with graphic depictions of Studio A’s offering would be placed in buses, bus stops and stations to appeal to entrepreneurs making use of public transport since it is considered more environmentally friendly. 

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3.3 Campaign timeline

When planning the duration of a marketing campaign, there are several factors to consider, this includes the different media and platforms the campaign will be running on and the main goal of the campaign. Studio A is planning on launching a campaign with 5 different touchpoints, with the main goal of reaching brand awareness within the target audience to increase potential client uptake. Shorter marketing campaigns are usually more expensive, because there is little time to allow the content to reach the intended audience in an organic way; paid ads are sometimes used to accelerate the process and reach the audience directly (Wagstaff, D., 2019). It is a good practice to use methods that offer immediate results, preferably with a call to action that drives conversions. Longer durations of advertising are mostly useful when trying to build brand awareness, or promoting a core product or service that a business offers (Wagstaff, D., 2019). The longer duration of the campaign also allows studio A to gather more useful data, however, it is more challenging when coming up with a strategy as there are more variables that could potentially alter the course of the campaign (Bullock, L., 2021). This means constant analysis and supervision will be required to ensure success. 

The duration of the campaign will be 3 months, it will be an organic campaign as opposed to automated, allowing Studio A to adapt and refine the campaign as it progresses. (refer to Appendix A) Notably, shorter campaigns are easier to manage, and often lead to quicker results. Throughout the 12 weeks of the campaign, the different milestones will be placed to divide the campaign into 4 different quarters, enabling Studio A to tweak the social media ads as the data is being collected. OOH advertising will stay the same throughout the duration of the campaign as it could be more expensive to print different billboard and bus stop signs. The long term strategy is to have manageable campaigns occurring more frequently. 

3.4 Budget and resources

Each campaign has running costs, this can include the staff that will be working on the design content and copywriting as well as the budget to run ads. Services like Google ads charge based on the number of clicks throughs, in that regards a budget needs to be allocated to cover this cost. The budget allocated for Google Advertisement will be 6300 ZAR over the duration of the campaign with an estimated click through rate at 10-20 clicks a day. For the radio platform, stations charge on a weekly basis and the rates fluctuate based on the size of the audience, the bigger the audience, the more expensive the weekly fee is. The running time of the ad as well as the time of day also affects the costs. In South Africa a 30second ad costs roughly 600 ZAR and during prime time this figure goes up to 2000 ZAR. Considering the audience size, the biggest station in South Africa is a national station called Ukhozi FM with an estimate of 7 670 000 weekly listeners. (Businesstech. 2021) Studio A will be running their radio ad during primetime on Metro FM, audience size of roughly 4 372 000. Metro FM was chosen due to its popularity in the urban cities, thus making it more relevant for our target audience. To minimize the costs the Radio ad will only run for 8 weeks in the campaign . Altogether the budget for the radio ad will be 9 000 ZAR. Out of home advertising will have a dedicated budget of 20 000 ZAR throughout the entire 12 weeks of the campaign runtime. Using dynamic billboards and signage instead of static ones will allow Studio A to save costs, the shared nature of these spaces allows businesses to pay slightly less. The last cost factors to consider will be the production costs: designing, creating and producing the various materials, 35 000 ZAR. Altogether the campaign budget will be at 70 000 ZAR.

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3.5 Challenges

Ad fatigue happens when a viewer is tired of looking at the same adverts repeatedly, this challenge is particularly relevant for Studio A because a large part of the campaign is based on social media. Effective frequency, how many times the audience will need to  be exposed to the ad to understand what is being advertised. For a positive frequency rate, the audience needs to be exposed to the media content for an adequate period of time.

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3.6 COVID-19 strategies

Overcoming the challenges of Covid 19 involves saving costs and using resources in the most optimised way possible, Studio A will run shorter durations campaigns, allowing them to have campaigns more frequently and be able to tailor it to the target audience as they go. Another way to overcome the challenges of COVID-19 is to open up to an international audience, the shift to remote working and digital collaboration enabled the idea of working with remote clients more accessible.