Critical Success Factors for any Marketing Campaign

For the last six months, I've been involved in organizing a national campaign called Entrepreneurship Week Canada with the Impact Entrepreneurship Group. This campaign falls under the umbrella of Global Entrepreneurship Week, partnering with over 65 countries to raise awareness of entrepreneurship among youth aged 18-25.

This campaign is the largest marketing project we've ever taken on, and it hasn't been easy. Why? We're attempting to reach a huge and diverse audience, not only teaching them about a cause, but asking them to take action.

My team began the initial campaign strategy by following these steps:

We thought that was enough, until we had meetings with several stakeholders and until I joined Mezzanine for my summer internship. I then realized the importance of marketing & consulting. What did I learn? In order to run a successful campaign, I needed to:

• Conduct Market Research - Is there an entrepreneurship industry in Canada? Is youth an appropriate target market?
• Develop Objectives & Tactics - Did we and are we setting realistic objectives? What strategies are we going to use to ensure we meet those objectives? Have we set hard deadlines?
• Consider "Measurables" - How are we actually going to measure the success of this campaign? Are we actually changing the perspective of our audience? How?
• 360 Reviews - Have we sat down and reviewed every corner and angle of the campaign or project on a regular basis?

Hmph, never thought of that before!

This not only applies to organizing campaigns, or mass media product launches, it really applies to any start up or new project that an individual, organization or corporation embarks on.