9 Questions to Help You Develop Your Next Creative Marketing Campaign

If you’re starting from square one—or even square zero—with developing your next lead generation campaign, you’re probably familiar with the decision overload that comes with it.

Even after you and your team have brainstormed ideas for the campaigns, there are other steps you should take to ensure success with your marketing campaign.

1. What Issue or Pain Point Did You Use as the Focal Point for Your Lead Generation Campaign? 

This is usually the first step in the process of creating any campaign. Much like how your customers or clients come to your business to solve a need or pain point they have, your campaign should focus on how you can help them solve those issues.

2. Which Type of Content are You Using to Drive Leads?

When it comes to choosing content to drive a lead generation campaign, the sky isn’t even the limit. Virtually any type of content—digital or physical—could be a tool in your lead-driving arsenal.

Here are just a few of the types of content you could use, in no particular order: Whitepapers, eBooks, infographics, social media posts, public polls, live-action videos, interactive calculators, podcasts, live casts, webinars, checklists, animated video, round-table meetings, live events, print books, magazine ads, one-sheets, and so much more.

The only limits in what you can use as content during a campaign are your team’s time, your resources, and your imagination. However, there is one stipulation.

3. How is the Content Offering Value to Your Leads?

The content you offer should contain valuable, must-have information. And, it has to be good enough that they’re willing to give up their email address and potentially have a salesperson reach out to them for it.

You could potentially be offering insider information, transparent and honest predictions about next year’s needs and challenges in your industry, or a quote calculator. Whatever the case may be, it helps to provide something that your direct competitors are not, or anything else that can help your company stand out.

4. Is the Content Reflective of Your Branding?

No matter which part of the buyer’s journey your lead generation content is meant to address, it should always reflect your branding. This includes everything from brand colors to fonts to different versions of your logo that can be placed on all varieties of backgrounds, and much more.

If you have a dedicated marketing team creating your lead-generating content, they’re probably already familiar with your branding. If they’re not, it may be time to make sure they weren’t replaced with the inflatable autopilot that the movie Airplane! made famous.

Regardless of who’s creating the content, and no matter what type of content it is, it also helps to have a set of established brand guidelines that anyone can follow—from copywriters to video production.

5. Have You Considered Both Outbound and Inbound Marketing Methods?

Seeing that we’re an inbound marketing agency, we naturally love to utilize  inbound marketing in any lead generation campaign we do. Chances are, that’s why you found this post.

However, outbound marketing tactics are also critical in driving your lead generation campaigns. This doesn’t necessarily mean using the old-school favorites like billboards or mailers that don’t have much in the way of clear ROI. Instead, in the digital age, this means using tactics like targeted email, paid social media posts, and paid search and display ads.

These are by no means the only outbound marketing methods you should be using during a lead generation campaign, but when executed correctly they can bring in leads that you didn’t even know were looking for your solutions.

6. Is Your Outbound Marketing Material Truly Compelling? 

No matter what types of outbound marketing you choose for this campaign, the content you use needs to be compelling. Your copy needs to be strong, sharp, and direct about what actions you need the viewer to take.

The same rules apply to visuals. No matter what your branding is like, your visuals and video need to capture the viewer's attention to improve the chances they’ll click on your ad and eventually convert.

7. Are Your Inbound Promotional Strategies Compelling for Your Website Visitors? 

Just as with your outbound strategies and materials, your inbound promotional strategies need to encourage your website visitors to convert. Aside from having a landing page that’s transparent about visitor expectations and is designed to convert, there need to be other ways for people to see what you’re offering them with this campaign.

Although this isn’t an exhaustive list, these strategies can include everything from having strong meta descriptions, adding pop-up forms to your site, making sure your site is accessible and clear about offerings with things like alt text and a good user experience, using blog content to promote the campaign, and offering a direct line for them to convert on your site.

8. How Well Will Your Landing Page Convert Vistors Into Leads?

Running a lead generation campaign without a quality landing page that’s designed to convert visitors into leads is like trying to get someone’s attention by shouting to them through a brick wall. It’s not an effective way to do things.

You’ll need to have a landing page set up with clear instructions and expectations to guide the visitor toward their goal, along with a form that’s asking for an appropriate level of information.

I’ve seen forms with enough fields for them to look like job applications. If you’re asking for anything more than a name, an email address, and perhaps a job title or company name in exchange for an eBook, you may want to take a step back and review how much data you’re asking them to send.

9. What Processes Do You Have in Place for Lead Nurturing?

This is the last big piece of the puzzle, but it’s arguably the most important. Have a lead nurturing process in place that provides your prospects with information that’s relevant to them and answers any questions they might have about their pain points. Whether it’s automated or manual, this process should feel human to them.

One of the biggest tricks to this, if you have your sales team involved at any point, is to position them as trusted advisors rather than a sharkish salesperson who smells blood in the water. Have them approach this with problem-solving skills in mind first and foremost rather than a quota they have to meet, and it’ll bridge half of the gap while warming up your leads until they’re ready to buy.