March Mania: Campaign Creation to Implementation

Every year, Mudd Advertising launches a March campaign designed to create hype for dealers during one of the craziest months of the year. This year, March Mania was rolled out on February 20th, 2015. A lot of planning goes into creating a new campaign, and many creative brainstorming sessions are devoted to the creation of the logo, direct mail strategy, digital strategy, video ads and -- what could be considered the most important -- the hook. And this year, the hook was an especially good one. Mudd Advertising decided to sponsor the big prize this year, offering to pay one individual's car payments for an entire year (up to $4,800). As the manager of the team accountable for putting together new campaigns, it is my responsibility to coordinate all elements, from idea to implementation. The initial brainstorm meeting drives the main concept of the campaign, the hook and what mediums are best going to reach the target audience. Once the main incentive has been decided, the logo, email blasts, brandcasting site, conversion page, web banners, video, POP and direct mail pieces must all be created. It is crucial that all elements are cohesive and the message is clear and consistent across all channels. The campaign is then passed to the implementation stage once development is complete. It passes through video graphic’s, compliance officer’s, web developer’s, date service’s, graphic artist’s, media buyer’s, and many other team member’s hands before the campaign is sent out in a dozen different ways for your audience to see. After that, it is time for the dealer to implement. This goes back to what Vern said in Planning Pays Off. The dealer must create an atmosphere that draws buyers in, which leads to a successful sale. By utilizing our POP packages, social posts, TV spots and all the other mediums, you can create sale hype in and out of the store. The last part in creating a campaign is tracking the results. Using Mudd Advertising’s Mudd AdSuite tracking technology, we were able to collect data from the March Mania campaign. The overall campaign had 23,039 unique visitors, 8,684 PURL activations and 2,228 leads with an overall average conversion rate of 9.7%. A Ford dealership in Ohio is just one example of a dealer that took advantage of the March Mania campaign Mudd Advertising put together and it paid off. The dealership ran its first sales mailer with Mudd in over a year and had 28 cars sold off a 10,000 piece mailer – an average of 2.8 cars sold per every 1,000 mail pieces. On the brandcasting site, they had a conversion rate of 18.75% (industry-accepted standard is a 2% conversion rate). It takes a lot of time, brainpower and coffee to create and implement a campaign. Luckily, we have a great team behind the scenes to make sure the finished campaign is a successful one.