At the virtual  2020 PM Forum conference, Sharon Collins of BDO talked us through how to create an award-winning marketing campaign. The research suggested 82% of business decision-makers are influenced by awards when buying products and services for their business and 67% of companies that score in the top quartile of the Cannes Lions Awards have above-average organic revenue growth. So if your campaigns are winning awards, they are also probably winning you business!

For those who were not able to attend the session, Sharon said Relevance, Boldness and Timeliness are the key characteristics of a great campaign and she also shared her top tips for creating award-winning campaigns. 

1 - Makes sure you have a clear objective linked to overall business goals and clear KPIs. 

2 - It is important to have a well researched and clearly defined target audience. What are their key challenges and pain points?  Sharon suggested one of the easiest ways to find this out is to ask them through client consultation or informal conversations. It's also good to keep an eye on the industry news. Hyper-Targeting or client mapping is a great exercise to highlight who the key people/ key decision-makers you want to reach and the best channels to reach them.

3 - Create amazing content - It needs to be timely relevant and engaging. Make sure your campaign is memorable (for the right reasons). Sometimes you've got to be bold - a good example of this is KFC when they had a chicken shortage. The usual way of dealing with thing would be to put out a corporate statement, instead, they shared ads, with profanity printed on a KFC bucket and an apology. 

4- Continue the conversation - Make sure you have a plan in place for follow-ups and ensure they are done. There was a question from the audience on how to market on a budget and this was a point that Sharon highlighted as not costing anything but can go a long way

5 - Measure  - The goal is to turn data into information and information into insights. Has the campaign hit the mark? Has it done what it intents to do? Has it achieved a good ROI? This will be something that award judges are very hot on! 

It's important to measure regularly as you go along, this allows you to tweak and modify as you go. Assess what people are engaging with, and switch off stuff that's not working. During the campaign, if you regularly monitor it you will start to get a good understanding of what resonates with your target audience.