So, what is a “campaign”? This marketing term comes from military campaigns, defined as “a series of operations intended to achieve a particular objective, confined to a particular area, or involving a specific type of fighting.” Do we really want to combative with our customers? Yet that’s how many brand managers in most industries have traditionally been trained, and how they think about marketing. We believe that the limited, short-term mentality of a campaign is a key reason so many of these campaigns don’t measurably change customer behaviors.
Isolated campaigns are an obsolete way of thinking that today’s most successful marketers have replaced with more sophisticated, effective systems-based marketing. We can use campaigns within a marketing system, but the sad truth is that most of today’s biopharma marketing campaigns, even when strung together over a series of months or years, fall far short of being a true marketing system.
What is a marketing system?
A system is a set of people and things working together. Systems are not single channels or single points in time, like campaigns. Instead, systems interconnect. Systems are organized and coordinated. Designed correctly, marketing systems can learn to predict. In sum, a marketing system is an informed, coordinated, interconnected set of capabilities that delivers the right message, to the right customer, via the right channel, at the right time in order to create desired, measurable changes in behavior.
A world-class marketing system:
- Becomes more intelligent over time
- Deepens your relationship with the customer, and
- Enhances a customer’s affinity for your brand while delivering accretive ROI
In today’s content-inundated environment, a system helps you win. It’s what your customers now require if you want to stand out and resonate with them, gain their trust, and their loyalty. Nurturing a sustained positive relationship, this approach drives incremental benefits well beyond your initial reach through positive online social influence.