Most campaigns end with a report nobody asked for: lots of figures, few decisions. Turn it around. Write the report before the campaign starts.

One page, before the first euro

Take a blank page and write down what you want to be able to tell your management in three months. Not “we had a lot of reach” but: this many new contacts, this many conversations, this much cost per conversation, and this is what we are adjusting. If that doesn’t fit in ten lines, the campaign isn’t a campaign yet but a collection of actions.

What that page decides

  • The audience: a figure for “conversations” forces you to say who you want those conversations with.
  • The channels: a channel that doesn’t contribute to a figure on the page drops out. That is usually half of them.
  • The budget: whoever knows what a conversation may cost also knows what the campaign may cost.
  • The message per stage: someone who doesn’t know you yet asks for something different from someone who has already read two emails.

Why this is the same in marketing as in AI

With an AI pilot we first ask which decision it has to support, and only then which tool. With a campaign, the report is that decision: what do we want to know, and what will we do with the answer. In both cases the tool or the channel is the last choice, not the first. That is why a campaign at March83 starts with a strategy and a plan that already contain that report, and not with a media budget.

What you can do tomorrow

Take the campaign that is running now. Write, in ten lines, the report you want to present at the end. Every figure you can’t measure, every channel you can’t link to a figure, is work that still has to happen today.