Before you launch that campaign, are you really ready for marketing?

I know your product is live and you’ve raised the money to finance your marketing budget, but are you ready? Having spent millions of dollars running marketing campaigns for various companies like IROKOtv, Hotels.ng, Betmojo, Kindred Group, and many others across fintech, online gaming, hospitality and more, I have experienced enough lessons and wins to learn what really works. This article is my contribution to the tech ecosystem, a guide to help marketers avoid wasting their marketing spend.

Think Before You Spend

Let me start by pointing out a common disconnect between Product teams and Marketing teams in startups around the world. Some companies try to bridge this gap by hiring a Product Marketing Manager, but this often happens when the product is already “complete.” This new hire is then handed a tight deadline to ship the product into the market and is expected to work with what is available or risk appearing incompetent.

Thinking about marketing only after the product has been built is a widespread problem. I understand why. Many companies simply don’t have the resources to involve a marketer during the product creation stage, and I respect that. However, now you have a marketing lead, and the budget is loaded in the chamber, but before you shoot, are you and your product ready?

I have argued with CEOs over the need to delay marketing slightly in order to fix critical issues before going live, and in the end they all agree it was worth it.

Here are 5 questions you must answer before launching your first marketing campaign, wherever in the world you are.

1. Does your product live up to its “Unique” Selling Proposition?

In simple terms, does your product actually do what your marketing message says it does? And does it do it well? If it doesn’t, then you need to fix this because marketing a product that fails to live up to its promise is a recipe for disaster.

We’ve all seen those flashy mobile game ads that look incredible in the commercial but bear no resemblance to the actual gameplay. I downloaded one of these recently, and while it was technically a game, it looked nothing like the ad. I churned immediately and never returned. They had already spent money to acquire me as a user, but they lost me before they could even monetize me. Marketing spend flushed down the drain.

This applies not only to product functionality but also to promotional promises like discounts and bonuses.

2. Have you set up marketing activities to guide users through each step of the conversion funnel?

Do you even have a conversion funnel? I hate to be the one to break it to you, but acquiring users or getting them to sign up is just the beginning. You would be shocked to discover how many marketing campaigns are launched with no plan in place to ensure acquired users actually convert. This conversion could be a purchase, a subscription, a download, or any other action that creates financial value for your business.

Most times in a first go-to-market campaign, a large percentage of users drop off just after the registration phase. Letting these leads sit idle for weeks while you figure out what to do next diminishes the chance of conversion. The time to figure out how to convert these leads is before you launch the campaign.

You need a structured plan to engage users at every stage of the funnel and move them toward conversion. These activities do not need to be complex. They can be as simple as an SMS or a phone call from a telesales agent. The key is organization and timing, not complexity.

For those unfamiliar with conversion funnels, this photo should help.

Read more on conversion funnels here

3. How easy is it for your users to contact you for support?

We have talked about guiding users through the funnel with marketing activities, but sometimes users don’t wait for you to reach out. They want to complete the process now and need help or information immediately. By the time your follow-up email or SMS arrives, their interest may already have cooled. So, how easy is it for your users to contact you for support?

This may seem basic, but many businesses still get it wrong. As a marketer, you might assume this is the Customer Support Manager’s responsibility, but I recommend getting involved.

Here are a few things you can do to improve accessibility before your big campaign:

• Providing easy alternative channels of contact. Besides the usual email and calls, you can include social media channels and live chat. It is vital to ensure all channels are adequately manned to avoid being overwhelmed. This happened to me once.
• Place clear calls to action at key points in your website or app. An example is adding “Need help? Click to chat with us” on the account setup screen of your web tool, or “Need advice on which product is best for you? chat with an expert now”. Small prompts like this push them to reach out, as opposed to them having to find their way back to the “contact us” page on their own.
• Training the customer support staff on the various inquiries they should expect as a result of the campaign. You should also equip them with appropriate information to manage these users and push the users to convert.

4. Can you run a test marketing campaign first? Do it.

This is my favourite hack.

This section exists because it is very easy to develop a blind spot to flaws in your product or process. The easiest way to uncover these hidden issues is by running a small-scale real-world test where you acquire a few users from your target audience, treat them like normal customers, and watch how they experience your acquisition and conversion process. Take note of the friction points they encounter.

Getting these users may be tough in a few cases, but most of the time, a modest budget spent on Google, Meta, or other Social Ads can get you enough users to try out your set systems and expose its flaws. But how do you even see the flaws? This leads to the last point.

5. Do you have your marketing analytics and event tracking properly set up?

The more time I spend in marketing, the more I realise that a lot of people are shooting in the dark. How can you tell if something is working without proper tracking and analytics?

A well-implemented event tracking and analytics system will show you the various points in the conversion flow where most of your users drop off. These insights would direct you steps towards making optimisations, as opposed to blindly overhauling your entire user conversion flow. If you don’t have this set up already, make it a priority before launching your campaign.

If you have addressed all 5 of these points and ensured they are in place, then, by all means, go ahead and launch that marketing campaign.

Chidozie Amanze is a Performance Marketing Specialist with over 7 years of experience with marketing tech products across hospitality, entertainment, online gaming and fintech industries both within and outside Nigeria.