Today, we’re diving deep into the immense value well-planned campaigns can bring your overall strategy. We’ll explore how effective campaigns can boost brand awareness, increase customer engagement, and ultimately drive business growth. So, join me as I connect with industry expert, Ayo Abbas, who shares her insights and experiences in designing result-driven campaigns that truly make a difference!
Ayo Abbas is an award-winning built environment marketing consultant and was recently named as the overall winner for the Digital Woman of the Year Awards 2022. She has worked in B2B marketing for 21+ years’ and has worked with many of the world’s leading engineering and design firms including Arup, Mace and Ramboll working on marketing projects such as the Olympic Park transformation, the redevelopment of Birmingham New Street Station and King’s Cross Rail and Underground stations. She also led a marketing team of five at an ed-tech scale-up in 2019.
In February 2020, Ayo founded her own consultancy business, Abbas Marketing, offering marketing strategy and content creation services to a plethora of firms both large and small.
We cover:
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Ideas vs Execution
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Top tips
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Skills
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Planning tools
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Lots of examples!
Let’s dive in!
Links in this episode:
https://www.abbasmarketing.com/about
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Full Transcript (unedited)
I’m really, really super pleased to have Iowa bass on the podcast today, Iowa and I have been on another podcast called it’s a b2b, comms thing that we did for a while. And she’s a digital marketing expert. So I’m super pleased to have you on. So welcome, Iowa to the show today.
Ayo Abbas
0:19
Hello, how are you?
Emma Drake
0:20
I’m all right. I’m good. How are you? Pretty good.
Ayo Abbas
0:23
What time is it? Tuesday?
Emma Drake
0:24
Tuesday? Yeah. My youngest said to me this morning, he said, it feels like it’s the end of the week. And it’s only Tuesday, like, yeah.
Ayo Abbas
0:36
I know. I’m always like walking around thinking, what day of the week? Is it? Oh, okay. Anyway, that’s just in my life. So
Emma Drake
0:44
yeah. So we could I mean, there’s a number of things we could talk about isn’t we’ve talked about lots of things over the course of the last year, through it’s a b2b commerce thing. But today, we’re going to talk about campaigns, aren’t we, we’re going to do a bit of a deep dive into campaigns and what you know, what we think about campaigns and how they can help people listening today to the podcast. So I think we should probably start at the beginning, which is, you know, what is a campaign because some people listening will know, something that didn’t maybe work on them all the time, some people might have an idea of what they are, or maybe some people just don’t know, at all. So I Oh, what is a campaign to you? Can you
Ayo Abbas
1:22
try? So I was I was a good person. I did some research yesterday, I was like, oh, I need to think like, what’s the official definition? So I found this one by Marketo. That does email automation, isn’t it? Okay. And their definition was a campaign, a marketing campaign is a strategic sequence of steps and activities that promote your company’s product or service with a specific goal in mind. Yes, campaign efforts may involve a range of media such as radio, television, in person events, and digital media. Yeah,
Emma Drake
1:55
yeah, I guess good explanation, I think was actually the goal. But it’s really important, isn’t it? What do you think?
Ayo Abbas
2:01
Yeah, I think it’s, I think the goal, I think you’re absolutely right. It’s that whole kind of, like you, I always kind of think of it like an umbrella. So now I can umbrella that kind of sits above your content, and that forms the campaign. And then you’ve got your smaller activities that fall under it, your discrete kind of activities that fall under it, but they’re all kind of tied together. So that whole kind of having a specific goal could be your umbrella of where you’re trying to get to or what you’re trying to achieve. But actually, and then you tie in a number of activities underneath it. So yeah, I think it’s a great definition. That was probably when I was doing my research. That’s one that stood out. I thought, actually, that’s a nice, a strategic sequence of steps and activities is a really nice way of talking about it. But yes,
Emma Drake
2:41
I think I think it’s a really good explanation. I mean, campaign can mean that word itself, you know, you sort of, you know, from a political point of view means one thing doesn’t happen in a political campaigning, and there’s, there’s an ultimate goal that they want to get. That’s quite good. Yeah. There’s no ultimate goal that you want to get votes. I mean, that’s the that’s the prize isn’t it is trying to talk to as many people as possible about the same things over and over again, with the ultimate goal of winning votes
Ayo Abbas
3:06
whenever the election or election? But actually, that’s actually a really good example. Because if you think about it, I just thought, well, yes, you did really well. But if you think about a political campaign, you’ve got a finite day ends here. You know, when you’re working towards those, there’s, you’re finding different ways of spreading that message. Right, but you’ve got a common goal, at the end, you’ve got a deadline date, you know, you’re working towards it, you’ve got the key message, you know, like, what was it back ratio, whatever it was, you know, they all have their straplines and their campaigns that they’re working towards, over that period of time, and it builds up. So that’s exactly what a campaign is. So actually the like, the election and the party elections and all of that kind of stuff that all campaigns. So that’s a brilliant example. Absolutely.
Emma Drake
3:48
Yeah, is it and like you say, there’s that seed it there’s that seed of an idea. There’s the there’s a really clear goal, but but that sort of messaging, like you were talking about your umbrella. So there’s the ultimate goal, but the messaging,
Ayo Abbas
4:01
Rishi all it was, wasn’t it and stuff like that those types of campaign messages, and then everything falls under that heading. It is it works. It’s completely Yeah.
Emma Drake
4:11
Yeah, they out there? Well, we could take we could take a lot. There’s not a lot we can take from politics these days. But let’s not go there. But that they know how to do a campaign. And actually this this sort of leads into sort of, you know, what are? What are the benefits of doing that doing it that way? Why are they why do it that way? And it’s because you need this, you need this to build this momentum? Don’t you need to build a groundswell of activity over a sort of concentrated period of time. And I think if you translate that into sort of b2b, but what are your What are your thoughts on that?
Ayo Abbas
4:47
So you’re right, it’s that groundswell and I always kind of it’s like a compound effect. You know, when you talk about interest rates, and how you know, like, if you invest, I don’t generally do that. Oh, sorry. I love this stuff. I love bankers and finance as well and because, like, but when you talk about like compound interest, the idea is like, you know, if I saved like one pound every week from now until I was 80, or whatever, that, you know, I get much more because the my profits will be reinvested and they compound and I get more value back, you know what I mean? So it’s, it’s kind of that kind of you invest now, and it’s a build up. So basically, having a campaign is stronger than having a single event on its own, because you’re getting that message out multiple times. So any annual message compounds, and it amplifies. So that’s why they work. And in a b2b context is exactly that same thing is that if you’ve got your overall kind of campaign messaging figured out, and you run it over a year, six months, three years, people get used to associate associating that with you. So even like for different applications, and different kinds of mini campaigns or, or different things you do, but if you have that similar message, that all drives onto that big umbrella, then that’s what you become known for. And it’s that consistency of message, that consistency of building up to what you’re doing, and saying, I guess the same thing, again, and again and again, but in a slightly different way. And that’s the power of a campaign. So that makes sense.
Emma Drake
6:13
Yeah, absolutely. does, I think you’ve touched on a couple of things. Consistency, is one of them. And I think that’s why, you know, busy, busy team, we’ve both worked in house seven ways, we’ve both got similar background experience in having worked in house in big, bigger organisations before working freelance. And that’s consistency. It’s really important, I think, because sometimes in a in house team in particular, because some people listening today will be working in house and, you know, you get dragged into so many different things, don’t you? It can be a bit sort of that regular drumbeat of content can override everything because everyone wants their thing to be talked about. But actually taking, taking a step back and, and thinking about the audience, I think campaigns are actually really good for audiences, because it’s easier for them to digest. It’s simpler. It’s sort of more targeted. Yeah. And you can be more specific currently, rather than sort of, you know, talking about all the stuff you do, if you’re a consultancy, for example, or big, big contractual. So it’s all about all the elements of your business. It’s quite hard. But actually, it’s quite hard on the audience, isn’t it, but but
Ayo Abbas
7:29
actually doing it’s hard on the audience, it’s also it’s hard to cut through, because you’re talking about so much stuff in such a not low level, but in such a kind of, not into any depth. So if you really have pain, you can go into something into a lot more depth, because you’re talking about it, same messaging, but a different kind of attack each time. You know what I mean? It’s like, how do I say this, from this perspective? Or for this type of audience? Or how does this apply to this group? I think that’s the key is like, you can kind of apply it in different ways. But it’s still the consistent message. So as as, as a viewer, as someone experiencing that message, then I, I start, it starts to resonate with me, I start to engage with it, I start to understand it, I start to understand what your firm is known for. And I think it’s, it’s that kind of approach. And you’re right, we get so many messages every day. Don’t just think it’s hard to take stuff in now.
Emma Drake
8:24
Yeah, definitely. And I think we’re in b2b as well, there’s a sort of pressure to get quite a lot of content out the door. Still, in that sense, I think consumer company bigger. I don’t know what your view is, but maybe bigger. Like we said, we talked about political campaign, and they tend to get it right. Regardless, regardless of what else we think about that, yeah. So consumer companies, I think, perhaps have led the way, which often I know you probably agree with me here, but it’s often the way with b2b But, but actually, they they’re doing really doing really well in terms of campaigns, because they have market niches or product, and especially consumer products has been more specific where they might, you know, for Unilever, or if you’re, you have a number of products that you’re sort of shifting, you know, that their competitors, dove campaigns have been really powerful, and really audience led and really targeted. And there’s lots of other really good examples, as well. But I think
Ayo Abbas
9:22
b2b can do that. I think it’s it’s just having the framework and the model in mind. And for me, I think some ways it’s like, you know, we’re going through its planning season at the moment, isn’t it? And I think in some ways, having those overall campaigns and key messages and having them mapped out for the year. I mean, you don’t need to have them in detail, but just knowing roughly where you’re going. Because then that means that when people are bringing you ad hoc work, or this needs to go out, actually which which campaign does this fall under, how does this time we were messaging, and then what you’re putting out, you can make sure that that does fit in and align with where you’re going. And again, it’s that reinforcement, isn’t it? And then you can kind of use that as your hook. Does this work for what we’re actually trying to do overall? If it does great, then that can that can be drawn in under here. So I think it’s just giving you a framework to work with him. And
Emma Drake
10:10
strategic in that sense, then but it’s it can be, I think it can be a way of working.
Ayo Abbas
10:15
I think it’s a more strategic way of working. But yes, because I think it can, it can make sure you’re, I guess, more concise and more targeted and more focused. And I think I think that’s the power of it. It’s like, what is it we’re trying to hit? We’re trying to hit this, this is the campaigns we need under it. This is our strategy, you know, and then you can kind of drive all your efforts towards it. I think campaigns a good, a good umbrella to kind of sit, sit sit that activity over under.
Emma Drake
10:41
Yeah. And maybe for testing, testing your ideas as well, if you’re not sure if something is going to fly during a campaign, you know, very small campaign around it. I don’t know. Is that something? Yeah,
Ayo Abbas
10:53
I totally. I mean, it’s funny, because I was kind of thinking of like campaign examples I’ve done. So I had one wear surface exhibition earlier this year. So I was working as a consultant with a small, concrete manufacturing products company, and they got beautiful furniture, and they were launching some new products. And it was kind of like, you know, how do we make a splash at surface, no one’s gonna really know who they are. They’re quite a small, firm, five people that, you know, we kind of mapped out a campaign for them, they hadn’t yet we created a buzz, but which meant we did all the work beforehand. So it’s like, I had a schedule of LinkedIn, or Instagram posts that we’re going to go out, we ran, you know, we developed a press release, we made sure we connected with the organisers so they knew who we were. So we did it online. But we also spoke to them as well, we made sure that we sweat it out. And we had a look around to see all the opportunities for us to be at that show, there was like a showcase exhibition, which were actually we were too late to be to actually apply for. But we still asked, and we got into it in the last minute. So yeah, like finding all those ways in that we can kind of build our presence at the show. And the key thing was we wanted to create a buzz around our stand, that’s what we wanted. And we wanted to get leads and people onto our stand. So that’s what we wanted. But it we had that in mind, for all the work we did, we did lots of prep in terms of we had like, all the posts ready to go for Instagram, we knew what the schedule was, you know, I literally went in there probably the first night for like three hours and took some pictures, which meant I could run the social media from my house. But it was just knowing the lay of the land. But also what we did is we ran a competition, we were tweeting a lot before the exhibition using the hashtag. So it meant that we had people going, we want to go and see their stand. This is one of the five stands I want to see when I go to the show. And that was all third party content, not our own content. So we had people, architects and designers saying that, which is great. And then, and then at the show, what we did was, you know, we created little videos on Instagram of people in the queue and all this kind of stuff like quick stuff, use the hashtags, it just meant we have this kind of self professed, you know, self perpetuating cycle whereby we were posting stuff, users were posting stuff and visitors at the exhibition and posts and stuff. When people came to the stand, we had a competition, which meant that they were then tweeting, or talking about as an Instagram, which meant that, again, using the show hashtags, which meant again, more and more people were coming to stand. So it was kind of like we have we’re getting we were generating loads and loads of I guess activity online, which was then resulting in a campaign that was pushing people to come to our stand, which was what we wanted to do all along. So. And that was all like a, that was a campaign, we probably ran over six weeks. But we planned it beforehand. And we had strategy beforehand.
Emma Drake
13:40
And you know, it’s like a great example.
Ayo Abbas
13:42
Yeah, it’s brilliant. Actually, I did the review afterwards. And like, you know, we had like, literally about user generated content. I’ll share the report with you afterwards. But the amount of user generated content from third parties we had, and just everything. And I mean, the best thing for me was when my client actually turned around and said, Do you know what, for the past month and even at the show, I had all these other manufacturers come up to me going, how did you do this? How did you how did you get all these people to your stand and what you did at the show? And he just went? He didn’t? It wasn’t me. It was my marketing person. Oh,
Emma Drake
14:17
that’s what you want right there.
Ayo Abbas
14:20
Ba but that’s lovely. But it’s that whole thing of, and I always think for events, it’s actually about prep work. Like a lot of it was a lot of it was we had the press release ready to go. We made the most of the opportunities. We were like, you know, we were looking at what we’d be doing on social media. I had a couple of standard posts most days, but then I was online retweeting people and engaging with people and as people were entering our competitions and stuff like that, so we all kind of it all worked together. But it was all the same message. It was all about the new products. It was all about raising a profile. And I think that was it. So it wasn’t a hugely long campaign, but it was very, very effective. And I think that’s the kind of thing where you can go you can have Have a short campaign, when you know what your goals and objectives are and what you need to do. And it doesn’t need to cost you a fortune, because literally, I mean, all the most of social media stuff was us playing around taking pictures, and one of their sales guys on my main first morning went round just sent me a selection of shots. And that’s what I couldn’t do a video which went, you know, had hundreds of views. And then also, you know, and stuff like that. And yeah, and then, you know, using social media and interacting with the organisers, so we were helping the show, and they were helping us. So I think there’s stuff like that, that you can do, and it’s, it doesn’t take a lot. It’s just you need to sit there and kind of figure out how, and I think a campaign is a good kind of framework to use to kind of build that out.
Emma Drake
15:42
Definitely, it’s a really, really good example, and well done, you know, that’s a huge amount of work as well, I know, you’re saying, Oh, it wasn’t, it was a huge amount of work. But in the right order, you did all, you know, prep, and you did all of that great stuff. So I think that’s a really, we’ve sort of touched on something there, there’s a couple of things. The first one is making sure making sure you’re, you know, if an event can be part of your strategy, don’t just do events. And this isn’t about events today, we don’t do events in isolation, you know, that was clearly part of an overarching campaign idea that the event was at the centre of, but you know, it like you say, it didn’t become more, let’s go to the event, do the event. And then there’s some other stuff we’re doing, it was all goal, it was
Ayo Abbas
16:26
all wrapped up, even from let’s you know, setting them up on, you know, they had an email list they hadn’t used so reigniting that, and then use, you know, what I mean, and then building out a mailer light so we can start to send stuff out. So I think, yeah, so it’s integrated. And I think that’s the other thing that needs to be an integrated, so a number of different comms channels come together, again, working together to kind of reinforce, we’re going to be see you there. You know, that kind of stuff, working alongside social media, you know, having banners on your emails, so you’re going to be at the show. It all builds together. So it’s that whole integrated campaign, which I think probably the bit we haven’t touched on.
Emma Drake
17:05
Yeah, I think you’re right, actually, it’s a really important point. So there’s some essential bits isn’t there and they’ve got we’ve got, we’ve touched on having a goal, and having a really clear outcome that you’re looking to reach. But you’ve just touched on there around, you know, it’s usually multi channel, isn’t it? There’s, there’s a number of activities across a period of time through different through different all of your different channels, potentially. So it’s usually multi channel. The other thing I would the other thing, I would just ask you just on that, so the fact is multi channel, you know, what’s what’s, what skills do you need to run a campaign? Because actually, that’s, you know, if you if you, if you, I guess if we looked it up today, and we looked up other definitions, you know, the probably, and I’ve cited examples, like Unilever, you know, there’s big teams working on these things, you know, as big campaigns, you know, there’ll be a huge a huge amount of people from from just from the Online team alone. So what sort of, what sort of skills do you think are needed to run a campaign? Because it’s multi skilled? Really?
Ayo Abbas
18:13
It’s multi skilled? I mean, I’m, I’m lucky because I’m a generalist, but rush the pizza. No. But no. I think it depends on the type of campaign. So for that events campaign, it was me, the client that we did use a graphic designer who did some Instagram look and feel stuff for us. Yeah. And some layouts for their website. So we have banners. But then that was probably and then they had, they had a design, they had a kind of, you know, one of their salespeople, also InterDesign. So he just went over his phone and took a few pictures at the actual show and stuff like that. But that was probably it. So that was quite small and simple for that. We didn’t need loads more stuff. And I guess well, yeah, to set up the mailer light, we needed to we need, I needed to work with their email provider to get all the you know, the authentic vacation and all that. So doesn’t go into spam.
Emma Drake
19:09
But you really, you’ve had all the skills, but what are the skills? So you’ve got copyrights, you’ve got graphics, there’s copyright? Yeah,
Ayo Abbas
19:15
I guess it’s project management. It’s also being able to build out a campaign structure. So that strategy side is important in there. You’ve got to have that, haven’t you? Then you’ve got copywriting. You’ve got design. digital, digital, there was PR in there because we did a load of we did press releases, and we’re talking to press and then you got the social media side, haven’t you? Yeah, there Yeah. Right. But it is, yeah. And generalist like that
Emma Drake
19:47
you do all of those skills. So that’s my point. So actually, you know, it’s worth mentioning that because, I mean, you can do it arguably, you can do a PR campaign. I mean, I would class our I’ve got an example as well that Yeah, mine slightly different from yours. And I guess it was more of a PR campaign, which might be helpful for people listening. So my client at the time I was working with another consultant, it was actually her client. But the client came up with kind of came up with wacky architect practice so that they wouldn’t be called wacky, actually, but to re host the Housing Conference of 1901 that launched the Garden City movement. That was the brief. So you know, that’s
Ayo Abbas
20:26
a brilliant concept. That’s what you need. Why would you do this? Brilliant as well. Yeah.
Emma Drake
20:36
So they wanted to really what that underpinning that we sort of nailed it down to actually they wanted to, to create an initiative to challenge we, we both work in the built environment sector, don’t we, so they wanted to challenge the development sector to think, think differently about how to plan and build new places. We talk about new communities, new places. And this was a this was a PR, lead activities. So we had a symposium. The goal, the goal was the goal was to happen, we knew we needed to have an event, we needed to generate some content. And we wanted to do that with people and ideas. And we came up with really creative ways of capturing that. So we had an art an artist sketching, we had all sorts of different things going on the data capture the content. But ultimately, the outcome was we wanted to we want to be we’re working towards producing this book, because we wanted to capture these ideas, and actually have something to share afterwards. So the content that we were, we had more of a sort of PR lead goal in that we knew we needed to generate the content, but we couldn’t do it ourselves. So it’s a slightly different way of going about it. Yeah, yeah. So. So we did. And then we had a book launch, we launched the book. So it was it was much more PR focused, I would say. So skills. But there was in there even that, that so we had event management where it was their marketing team, because obviously there was we had to mail it, we had to mail everybody, we had to create the content for the mailers, you know, someone had to do that it was an email marketing for their for the use of multi skilled
Ayo Abbas
22:09
- Exactly. And to get the most out of that you’re like who you know, that’s a business development opportunity. Exactly. That, Yeah, take that out. And then you’re like, let’s have a conversation here. I think this might be of interest to you know, I think there’s that building it out into actually, as a PA, it started off as a PR idea. But then you look at it, and you go, well, it was so much stuffer. Yeah. And
Emma Drake
22:30
they they ended up creating a bid within their practice just focused on business development in this area. So you’re absolutely right, it generated a number of meetings with key potential clients, and an internal staff group was formed for this new brand service replace shapers. So, you know, the the event and the book, what the idea of the event in the book that followed actually turned into a really big business opportunity for them, which is still still ongoing. So it’s a few years old, that campaign.
Ayo Abbas
22:58
But that’s a good idea, isn’t it? And I think ideas are this got to be the crunch of a
Emma Drake
23:04
conversation before Halloween. Was it a poll you did on link? I can’t remember whether it was
Ayo Abbas
23:07
Yes, I did. It’s a good idea. Well, is it a good idea badly implemented or a bad idea? Well implemented? That’s
Emma Drake
23:17
through me. It’s true. My it’s
Ayo Abbas
23:19
really confused. You and Sure.
Emma Drake
23:21
But why would you why would you implement a bad idea? Surely it’s a bad idea. We had this whole discussion around ideas. And and if it’s if it’s well done, so that there was it it was 5050 km, wasn’t it? But I think I think I’ve kind of I’m in the camp of you know, it can’t be in a campaign context. It does have to be a good idea. It does. You know, it has to be there has to be a nub. There has to be something and I heard you on a podcast, actually, recently, you said something very similar, didn’t you?
Ayo Abbas
23:49
Yeah, I love good. I think a good idea is like worth its weight in gold. I think I you know what, but then, I mean, there’s so I, I guess I analyse everything, like I go through life, and I analyse things because of what I do. And quite often, I look at marketing campaigns. And I think how somebody’s done that, or how has that story got into the press. And I think, a good idea, you can really see, you know, like you see them rarely, though you don’t always, you know, like, when you actually go actually, that’s a really smart idea, when you break it down to its elements you go that’s really smart, and what they’re trying to do and what they’re trying to execute here. So I I’m all for good ideas, I think. But I do think a lot of bad ideas are just implemented. Well, I know, this isn’t actually that smart.
Emma Drake
24:33
I’ve heard that and from our point of view that the best the best ideas come from the best relationships with clients don’t know where you can help shape shape the idea. Like in my example, it was a great idea, but but they had literally no idea how to implement it. And you know, that’s where they needed the expertise to do that. So you know it and we fleshed it out into a number of elements.
Ayo Abbas
24:58
Exactly. And then it’s like and it’s you And what you said about that, that it’s a team effort, you start to have that conversation about this. No, no, no, that’s not gonna quite work. But how about if we did it and that that’s the joy? That’s the joy, that of what we do. And I think as well, I mean, what I love sometimes is when I get clients come to me and go, I’ve had this idea if I say to most people, they’d laugh at me, but I’m going to share it with you, because I know you won’t. That’s great. Yeah. They come to me with ideas that they don’t want to share with anyone else, because they’re like, everyone else would just go No. Yeah,
Emma Drake
25:31
yeah, no, I know, it’s, but if you can make it fly, but that’s my thing. Going back to your poll, that’s what you were kind of in the camp then of going well, actually, yeah, I can. I can take a, you know, an idea whether it’d be great or not, and, and try and make it into something. And I think that was your art, your counter argument, wasn’t it? Yeah, I
Ayo Abbas
25:49
don’t know, I really do need to turn that into a blog post. Because I think it’s really important. It really is. And it’s just one of those things where you’re like, I don’t know, because, I mean, I guess that agile thing was born out of frustration, I think, as well, because I kind of like, I get like a million ideas I always do is just That’s how my brain works the brain, busy brain, and it’s just like, stop. But like, I sometimes I sit there and think if someone implements this idea, this particular idea really, really well. Their business will fly like I can, I can literally ice in like stages. So I could, you know, I can’t give an idea. And then I’m like, This is how I would implement it in the next in three key steps. Like, that’s why mine works. And so sometimes I think, you know, like, when a client’s like, oh, I’ll just do all my own. And I’m like, You’re not gonna do this well enough to implement it in the Edo domain. And that’s probably and as a consultant, sometimes that’s where my frustration is, because you’re like, I know.
Emma Drake
26:48
It could be so much better.
Ayo Abbas
26:50
Business changing, like, literally business changing. So yeah, that’s that’s kind of where that poll came from, was that it’s like a good idea.
Emma Drake
26:59
Okay, I didn’t realise we’ve not had this conversation. But
Ayo Abbas
27:02
that is actually where it was, it was born out of that. Because as a consultant, you have to kind of step back and just go out, I’ve given them the idea. And I find that quite hard. Because like it working in house, it’s easier in that.
Emma Drake
27:15
Someone that then so I’ll give an example. That was someone else came up with an idea, and I helped them to develop it. You you, you’ve worked on a campaign where there was a there was a goal, which was kind of the the ideas kind of came around that. So what So where do ideas for campaigns come from? Let’s talk about that for a bit. So what what should people focus on? Where should the ideas come from? I’ll give you a chance to have a thing I’ll I yeah, when you go? Well, I was just thinking it just made me think really, that, you know, I was very lucky that the person who came up with this idea in this instance, it was a it was genuinely a brilliant idea. You can’t deny that it’s just like, let’s do a you know, Pat’s on motorcycles, you know, so it’s really hard, you know, not to kind of start twitching. Yeah, yeah. I think ideas. Ideas have to be grounded in something right. They have to be grounded in, in the they have to be because that the one my example of this is how to cook. We had to we had to build it into the bid, it had to become something. Because on its own, yes. Great idea. But
Ayo Abbas
28:24
actually, how can you make it work?
Emma Drake
28:27
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ayo Abbas
28:29
But the seed of the idea. So I actually sometimes I think some people will have a madcap idea. So that’s one thing, which is capsulate cycles, exactly my cup idea that one wouldn’t work. But the first one did, but like, so that’s the main idea. But then there’s also an idea born out of experience and expertise. So you know, when people come to you, and they go speak to a client, they were saying this, you know, that when people will convey back what their clients are saying to them, I think there’s tonnes of stuff and tonnes of great material that comes from that sometimes never goes anywhere. And I think it’s those types of, I mean, I kind of think it’s that observational stuff. That is probably that’s often content gold. You know, like those experiences, I’ve actually this client was saying this to me, or they were asking me this. And then those types of things, you start digging into that and you’re like, why are they asking you this? What’s their issue? You know, no, you actually. Yeah, then all of a sudden, you’re looking going, this is content, gold, this is what I need to know. And I think, you know, that’s, that’s what you want to kind of use. I mean, I kind of when people talk about the content I put out now I’m like, you know, my best content is like observationally boring, you know, I went to Tescos I hated this cast machine. I couldn’t go in and spend my money. Why was this? And that’s kind of, but you know what I mean? It’s observationally boring, but actually, we’re all having the same frustrations and experiences with how retail is going. You know, so
Emma Drake
29:57
I actually know the campaigns do come out. have bad customer experiences don’t they
Ayo Abbas
30:03
mentions these experiences as things where you’re like, you know, like when you go into a meeting you like, if this client would only do these free things, their business would be amazing like, and you see that when you go, No, you know, no matter what you do, you will see those opportunities for people. And I think that’s where you
Emma Drake
30:22
got another excuse. Maybe think of another example. Actually. You’re absolutely right. So sometimes we get feedback, don’t we? And it’s, it’s interpreting that feedback to go well, what’s, what’s the campaign that could solve that can solve that. And I remember, I was working for a modular housing, house builder, in their early days. And one of the, they had a huge long waiting list, and lots of people making lots of noise. But actually, what they had was a list full of tire kickers. They didn’t actually the conversion, when we had a discussion about conversion, it was it was low. And what what actually needed to happen was a campaign to help businesses understand exactly what they were doing, but also in the in a way that it could, it could help them because we were basically asking them to change their entire process to work with their products. So it’s like, well, how can we help them do that? So we, that was a that was ended up being a white paper Lead Campaign. Trying to understand, you know, and it was called it all stacks up, and I worked with another agency on that, actually. And that was really a deep dive into well, let’s just get the mechanics of how this how what we’re expecting people to do and how we can help them over the line. Because actually, in business is business to business. What you’re really trying to do is get people over the line, isn’t it? And convert? Yeah. So Yeah. Could you do that? So customer problems and challenges actually aware a lot of campaign ideas come from in b2b, I think, where are the blockages? Where are they what’s not happening? And cat? How can marketing, communication, you know, PR all of those things help to alleviate that.
Ayo Abbas
32:07
overcome it? Yeah, exactly. And that’s kind of what we’re here to do. And I think that whole thing of Yeah, we I mean, we’ve gone there, stay awake issues, don’t worry those things that are bugging you bugging your customers that you can kind of help them kind of overcome. And I think that, you know, campaigns that help you broach that or do that are amazing. But so yeah, I think that’s kind of where ideas will come from. But I guess the other place where ideas will come from, if you’re looking, you know, like if you’ve got research or you understand, like, we’re perceived as such and such. And actually, we want to reposition our brand to be like this. Yes. So that whole, you know, repositioning that whole understanding where it is you want to get to, and you can use that as a way and then you build campaigns that help reinforce the messages that get you to where you want to be as a brand. And I think that’s another way of looking at it. So there’s that more kind of positional reputational type of campaign to help them with that. They
Emma Drake
33:06
did that really well. A few years ago, when they had their hunt 100 year anniversary anniversary, they rebranded to WWE McAlpine. And they’ve done a lot of customer led stories and a lot of stories around the people. And actually, their whole communication changed around that time. So yeah, they can come from some opportunities like that you’re absolutely right, or mergers and acquisitions sometimes, then there’s a sort of, like you say, brand building. Yeah. campaign goal. So if people wanted to get started today, what top tips would you give them? i
Ayo Abbas
33:45
My first top tip is like we’ve been talking about come up with an idea or a thing that you’re looking to achieve some kind of goal. So I think, you know, brainstorm around some of the ideas. We said earlier about, you know, observations, you’re seeing the issues you’re seeing for your clients. So that will be my first part is developing the idea, then, I guess, looking at the kind of who your target audience are, who they are, what they need from this campaign. And again, how your how this campaign addresses one of their issues or that a couple of their issues. Then after that, I guess it’s very much about messaging, what’s your message overall for the campaign? And then it’s kind of figuring out the right channels and distribution. So what you’re going to use, what kind of multi channel approach you’re going to take, and then plotting it out in terms of an overall programme, and then I guess, creating assets and then agreeing what your kind of metrics and success looks like. That’s easy, right? Yeah.
Emma Drake
34:41
We haven’t talked about evaluation, which is a huge benefit of campaigns, isn’t it?
Ayo Abbas
34:46
Yeah, definitely. Because it basically amplifies so the impacts get bigger as you go through it. Because people start to resonate, it starts to resonate more people are looking out for it. So I
Emma Drake
34:57
think, start middle and end you can measure it much more effectively. I think as well,
Ayo Abbas
35:01
precisely, how did how did? What’s our brand at the start? What’s the end? How many of us do we have? What happened here? Did they? Do they get us in front of the right people? How many leads did we have? It’s a million ways you can kind of measure.
Emma Drake
35:14
What about planning tools in terms of tips, anything people could any sort of nuggets of things you’ve used that are really useful to help, you know, smooth things out cut corners help plan.
Ayo Abbas
35:27
I mean, for me, I mean, sometimes I literally would just write a campaign out in a mind map. So like, do like a bubble in the centre, what the campaign is, and then just literally start to build it out as a kind of what channels Am I looking at roughly with a messaging, who are my target audience, and use those headings and just build around that. So sometimes I do it that way. And then I take that onto either a Trello board or an Asana sheet or an Excel sheet and then start plotting it out in terms of activities. Because I think once you start, I always think once I start putting stuff out on a sheet, then I can kind of move stuff around. Actually, no, that needs to come before that. No, that needs to come after that. And then I can start seeing it visually. And then I build that into it. And then I build that into a written plan. That tends to be how I do.
Emma Drake
36:10
That. Sounds good. Sounds good. Well, look, I think we’ve covered quite a lot today. And it’s been an absolute delight having you on the show today. So thank you.
Ayo Abbas
36:20
No worries, finally,
Emma Drake
36:21
we got to do after two years.
Ayo Abbas
36:26
That’s not bad. I’m doing pretty well. Right.
Emma Drake
36:28
Yeah. Yeah, thanks very much for coming on. And I’ll put some links in the show notes today for people as well in terms of how to get ahold of you. And also any links to your blogs about some of this stuff as well. So I just say bye for now. Thanks a lot. Io and have a great week.
Ayo Abbas
36:49
Thank you, Emma, thanks so much. Take care you bye