Meltwater

EBook

C A M PA I G N P L A N _ V 0 1

Strategy and Planning

All You Need to Know

www.meltwater.com © 2019 Meltwater. All rights reserved.

 Introduction
In today’s globalised market – where opinion can
spread like wildfire across the internet – it’s never been
more important to plan ahead and put strategies in
place for success.

Marketing and communications professionals in

particular must be agile, nimble and creative in their
approach to integrated projects – especially if they
want to stay up-to-date with the latest trends, build
lasting relationships with consumers, clients and other
stakeholders, sell products and keep their brands at
the fore of industry news.

One of the best ways to prepare a strategy is to

understand the environment you’re operating in,
using data and insights from the activity of your
target audience, competitors and media online.
With the right information and insights, you
can define objectives that matter to you – and
to your organisation – and build marketing and
communications strategies that work from the outset.
At Meltwater, we help PR professionals,
marketing executives and business leaders
monitor and analyse the media, including
social media to gather insights that drive
engagement on and offline.

In this guide, we’ll take you through marketing

and communications strategy and planning
best-practice – from goal setting and key
message development, to research and media
monitoring, campaign planning and reporting,
and even tactical approaches to driving leads,
increasing share-of-voice, as well as brand
presence on and offline. We’ll explore how
insights from media and social media can
influence strategy and drive results, and share
our top tips for engaging with consumers,
influencers and the media.

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APAC | Strategy and Planning: All You Need To Know | www.meltwater.com © 2019 Meltwater. All rights reserved.
 Contents

Part 1: Approach
• Define objectives
• Think about your target audience
• Align objectives with business strategy
• Take an integrated approach
• Gain support

Part 2: Research
• Understand your audience
• Understand your media landscape
• Find influencers
• Understand your competitors
Downloadable template: Target Audience Profile

Part 3: Theory vs Practice

• Contigency planning
• Be prepared to evolve
Downloadable template: Contigency Plan

Part 4: Implementation
• Choose your tactical approach
• Finalise your key messages and unique selling points
• Create a media relations strategy
• Develop a social media and digital marketing plan
• Create a timeline
• Look for opportunities
• Create your campaign proposal
Downloadable template: Marketing and Communications Campaign Proposal

Part 5: Measure
• Demonstrate value and report results
• Gather insights

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 Part 1: Approach
Before you launch a marketing and communications campaign, approach the media, or
contact an influencer, you need to define your objectives, identify your key audiences and
gain support from the C-suite. Consider what you want to achieve and why, what you want
to say, and who you want to say it to.

Ask yourself

o What are my organisation’s goal(s) for the next month, quarter, or year?

o Which key messages, unique selling points, calls-to-action and/or digital content has been
successful in the past?

o Is there a particular audience – existing or emerging – that you want to target over the next year?

o What are my KPIs? Consider brand awareness, perception change, lead generation, and sales.

o What does success look like to the C-suite? How does it differ to how I see success?

o What are my competitors doing? What can I learn from them?

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 Define objectives

Success begins with appropriate goal-setting, backed by benchmarking, tracking, analysis and
reporting. In defining your objectives, remember to be S.M.A.R.T.

Each objective should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.

SPECIFIC
Each goal should be well defined with an anticipated, specific result.

MEASURABLE
Measurement is the best way to report on results. Try benchmarking or
tracking changes over time.

ACHIEVABLE
Can you achieve your goals in the time you’ve allocated?

REALISTIC
Are your goals feasible? Is 100,000 views in the first day possible for a
new video?

TIMELY
Set yourself a beginning and an end date. This will give you a valid time
frame for comparison to previous benchmarks. Set milestones during
your campaign to monitor progress.

TIP
Try to keep goals and objectives short –
too many can cloud the output, targeting
and reporting of a campaign.

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 Research your target audience

Do your objectives have meaning for the members of your target audience? Everything you do must tie
back to your target audience and potential or existing customers – especially if you want to prove the
value of your work to the C-suite.

When you’re setting your objectives, consider your audience’s needs and desires.

o What type of content do they want to read or see on social media and in print?

o Where and when do they consume most of their media and information?

o Are they active on social media, or passive?

o What social channels do they use the most and at what time of day?

o Do they respond well to digital ads and sponsored content?

Group your target audiences into different profiles to understand more about who they are, what they
do and how you can reach them directly or indirectly through the media and/or influencers, or other
marketing channels.

Audience Insights HELP

Meltwater’s Audience Insights Reports

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 Meltwater’s Audience Insight Reports offer an in-
depth and interactive audience profiling solution -
making it easier to understand your audience and the
topics they care about. With full access to the Twitter
firehose, and data enriched by IBM Watson, you
can take a deep dive into your different community
segments. Truly understand what resonates with them
by discovering their demographics and consumer
habits, as well as the individuals and media outlets
that are influential over each group.
Align objectives with
your business strategy
A company’s marketing and communications
activities will affect other parts of the organisation:
from advertising, to customer service, internal
communications, product development, and
recruiting. As a result, it can also affect the HR, IT,
finance and operations departments.
Before implementing strategies to achieve your
goals, you need to align your organisation and
coordinate your efforts to create a unified set of
desired outcomes. People, processes and platforms
must be in place to identify, engage and rapidly
respond to opportunities, issues and crises through
the media and online, as well as reporting on results.
Once you know where your objectives sit within the
larger context of your organisation, you can begin to
build a measurable and achievable marketing and
communications strategy.
APAC | Strategy and Planning: All You Need To Know | www.meltwater.com
Take an integrated
approach – IMC
A unified approach is critical in today’s fast-
paced, consumer-first environment – so consider
implementing an Integrated Marketing and
Communications (IMC) strategy. Bring the marketing,
communications, PR and social media teams together
to discuss objectives, campaign ideas and desired
results. Is there a product launch coming up? How can
you align your messaging? Who will be in charge of
distributing content on each channel? Does the sales
team have access to contacts you could use to create
case studies? Is there an event coming up you want
to film and stream live? Coordinating your efforts will
align your key messages, and will help you to target
the right people at the right time without duplication
or confusion.
Gain support
To achieve your goals, you’ll need a budget and other
resources like content creators, photographers and
analysts – so once you have a plan of attack, prepare a
proposal for the C-suite and other executive leaders to
approve. Remember, you need to translate your work
into language they understand and appreciate. Think
about ROI, and explain how you plan to report on
results. How will your work lead to sales, increased web
traffic and greater thought leadership? Every detail
counts, so count it.
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© 2019 Meltwater. All rights reserved.
 Part 2: Research
It’s no longer enough to be an expert on your brand, product or service – today, you need to
research your industry, your local and international media landscape, and the interests and
activities of your target audience.

Understand your audience

Once you know who you audience is, consider what drives them. From a PR perspective, take into
account how they digest their news media and which journalists they respect the most. And from a
digital marketing perspective, consider how much time they spend on social media, and which Key
Opinion Leaders (KOLs) or social media influencers they listen to, and how they engage with your
content.

Consider how and where you would reach the most people, and at what time of day. Does your target
audience only use Facebook and Instagram or do they use Twitter, Snapchat and Weibo as well? Do they
look for content on Facebook between the hours of 9 and 10am on weekdays? Do they sit down to watch
the evening news bulletin on TV? Think about their lifestyle choices and how their work life affects their
schedules.

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 Take note

If you’re targeting consumers on social media specifically, ask the following

• What platforms and hashtags do they use?

• What conversations do they have and on which topics?

• What kind of content motivates their engagement?

• What trends do they follow?

Be aware of their geographic location too, and

don’t forget to be culturally sensitive. What are
their values? What sort of content is appropriate
to use? Do they belong to a unique community?

If you’re planning on targeting multiple groups

at once, consider how your campaign might
change per region or audience. Will you need to
use multiple languages? If you’re going to use
imagery or video content, do the models or case
studies need to change to reflect the audience’s
demographic? These are all important questions
to consider.

Understand your media landscape

Get to know the publications across your region or target countries, and use media monitoring tools to
find journalists, create media lists and build lasting relationships.

Meltwater’s Media Intelligence platform lets you discover, engage and measure all in one place. Using
Meltwater’s Influencer Contact Management tool, you can find the right journalist or influencer based
on the content of their most recently published articles. You can also find their contact information – like
email, mobile or office address – and any related social media handles.

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APAC | Strategy and Planning: All You Need To Know | www.meltwater.com © 2019 Meltwater. All rights reserved.
 Once you know your Influencers
media landscape, and
MY INFLUENCERS SEARCH OUTREACH NEWSWIRE
have a comprehensive
media list in place, you
can distribute media
releases and social media
updates through the
Meltwater platform too.

Are you targeting the right publication?

Some of the most popular publications in APAC

Australia Japan Singapore Indonesia

News.com.au The Nikkei The Straits Times Kompas

China Malaysia South Korea Philippines

Reference News The Star The Korea Herald Philippine Daily Inquirer

Hong Kong New Zealand Thailand

SCMP The New Zealand Herald Thai Rath

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APAC | Strategy and Planning: All You Need To Know | www.meltwater.com © 2019 Meltwater. All rights reserved.
 Find influencers

A social media influencer or KOL is someone with enough online clout to lead conversations and shape
opinions about organisations, brands and products. You can identify major influencers by vertical, how
organically their messages are reposted and shared, how many followers they have, the influence of their
networks and their true reach.

Celebrities
Awareness

Consideration Power Users

Evaluation Micro

Purchase Nano

Today, brands everywhere use influencers – as well as journalists – to promote products and services.
Think about your target audience and consider who’s opinion they would appreciate and take on-board.
Celebrities or KOLs with massive followings would enable your brand to reach a broad audience, but
they tend to generate low to medium engagement. On the other hand, niche influencers – micro or
nano influencers who have smaller, unique followings – are gaining traction as they are perceived to be
trustworthy and genuine. Remember, there isn’t a one-size-fit-all approach, choose the right mix of
influencers based on your campaign objectives.

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APAC | Strategy and Planning: All You Need To Know | www.meltwater.com © 2019 Meltwater. All rights reserved.
 Tips for finding influencers:

Dig deep
You can use Meltwater’s end-to-end influencer marketing tool to search from more than 500M
social profiles in any category across Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest and
blogs. This online platform uses demographic data so you can filter through influencers by
audience demographic. This way, you can ensure your influencer’s online audience fits your target
demographic.

Cultivate from within

People are probably already talking about your brand and other brands in your industry. Similarly,
your best influencers may already be in your network – people who pay attention to your
social media presence and know who you are. Tools like Meltwater can help you identify these
conversations so you can add the influencers to your social networks and begin reaching out to
them. The influencer marketing tool can provide a list of influencers who are already talking about
your brand to make identifying them even easier.

Be personable
Engaging a social influencer, especially one with a large following, is a lot like reaching out to a
journalist. For example, influencers are deeply passionate about their topics and could know more
about your market than you do. They will ask the hard questions, so be prepared to answer them.
Learn about their interests and engage with them on their terms. To make this process simple,
Meltwater’s comprehensive influencer tool provides instant access to five years of historical data to
help you measure their content quality and values before you even approach them.

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APAC | Strategy and Planning: All You Need To Know | www.meltwater.com © 2019 Meltwater. All rights reserved.
 Understand your competitors
While competitors pose a threat, they also inspire us, motivating us to be better, faster and more
adaptable. To stay ahead of your industry competitors, you’ll need to monitor their activity – including
any coverage they receive in the media and how they engage with consumers on social media and
other marketing channels. Dig deep into their key messages and unique selling points, how they present
themselves on social media, and what media publications they target to increase their own share-of-
voice. Using Meltwater’s Dashboards, you can easily keep an eye on your competitor’s activity in real-
time, and alter your own marketing and communications activity accordingly.

Competitor analysis 101

• Evaluate which of their messages and content receive the most engagement on and offline

• Examine their share-of-voice within the industry and on social media.

How does it compare to yours?

• Evaluate the differences between their brand messaging and your own

• Think about where they’re focusing their marketing spend – including in areas like paid content,
sponsored editorials and influencer engagement

• Look at how they’re represented in the media and online by influencers – could you newsjack the
reporters or influencers already writing about them, or trendjack
an existing online trend before they do?

With the insights you gather from watching your

competitor’s digital marketing activity, media activity
and overall industry movements, you’ll be able to
see what they might do next – and put effective
communications strategies in place to stay on top.

Download
Our Target Audience Profile
template here

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APAC | Strategy and Planning: All You Need To Know | www.meltwater.com © 2019 Meltwater. All rights reserved.
 Part 3: Theory vs Practice
How robust is your marketing and communications strategy? Are you prepared for a
change in the market, unexpected response or even a crisis? What are the possible threats
and/or challenges and have you briefed your team just in case? Once you have a campaign
plan in place, workshop different scenarios so you know what to do if things go wrong.

Contingency planning

Today, online conversations among consumers, influencers and the media move incredibly fast,
so marketers and PR professionals must be proactive in their approach to engagement and crisis
management. While reactive communications has its place – responding to a crisis in real-time – in most
situations it pays to be prepared just in case. This is where contingency planning comes in.

Once you have a rough campaign plan in place – including timelines, tactical approaches and content
themes – consider how things could play out if something were to go wrong. Create different scenarios,
and prepare commentary and/or press releases, step-by-step follow-up processes and alternative
campaign and advertising ideas.

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 Things to consider

• What if there’s a social media blackout during your product launch?

• What if your website crashes or gets hacked during a sale?

• What if a journalist asks a difficult question?

• What if an influencer partners with a competitor?

• What if your customers boycott your brand?

• What if your CEO says something divisive online or in the media?

• What if an online advertisement is taken the wrong way and goes viral?

Want to know more about

crisis communication?
Check out our Crisis Communications
eBook here.

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APAC | Strategy and Planning: All You Need To Know | www.meltwater.com © 2019 Meltwater. All rights reserved.
 Be prepared to evolve

Modern PR professionals, marketing executives and business owners must be nimble and open to
change. In an online environment where news breaks instantly and consumers can target your brand
without repercussions, change is the only constant. Is your marketing and communications plan
tweakable? Consider your original objectives – if something changes or goes wrong, are your goals
still achievable, or do you need to go back to the drawing board to create new objectives? How will
you break this to the C-Suite? What are the ramifications? If you include the possible scenarios (a
comprehensive contingency plan) and highlight the challenges/threats from the outset, you’ll not only
be more prepared and agile, you’ll also lessen the blow for the C-suite and other stakeholders.

Download
Our Contingency Plan
template here

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APAC | Strategy and Planning: All You Need To Know | www.meltwater.com © 2019 Meltwater. All rights reserved.
 Part 4: Implementation
Now that you’ve outlined your objectives, completed your research, and know your target
audience, it’s time to choose your tactical approaches and put together a campaign
strategy.

Choose your tactical approach

For the best approach, look to your objectives – they
will guide you towards suitable tactics. Ask yourself:
how can I best achieve my goals? How will I approach
the media? How will I use social media to generate
more leads and market products? What digital
content best suits my key messages or unique selling
points? What channels are going to provide the best
opportunity to reach the market?

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 Tactical approaches to consider

• Media relations • Events

• Social media strategy • Influencer engagement

• Video content and sponsorship

• Copywriting • Newsjacking

• Social media advertising • Trendjacking

Finalise key messages and unique selling points

Key messages lay the groundwork for all communications activity, while unique
selling points highlight how and why your products or services differ from that of your
competitors. Every message should be sharp and focused so you can relay them to
journalists, influencers and consumers at any point during your campaign.

Create a media o Who will you target?

relations strategy o What will you be sharing with them? What are your key messages?

If your goal is to increase

o When will you approach them? Consider their deadlines and work hours.
share-of-voice, thought lead-
When will they have the time to talk, or read an email?
ership or brand awareness,
you’ll need to build a compre-
o Where will you approach them? At an event? Via email or on the phone?
hensive media relations strat-
On social media?
egy. Consider the five W’s:
Who? What? When? Where?
o Why are you approaching them? Do they add value? Consider their
Why? (and How?)
previous articles, target audience reach, and influence.

o How will you measure your media relations strategy?

Crafting a media relations strategy is simple with Meltwater’s all-in-one-place Media Intelligence
platform. Using the Influencer Contact Management tool, you can search for media contacts, build
focused lists and engage directly through personalised outreach. What’s more, each outreach/press
release sent through Meltwater includes an open and click-through rate measurement – including the
length of time each person spent reading your email. You can then use this data to manage follow-ups
and phone calls.
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 Develop a social media and digital marketing plan

If you want to use social media to increase brand awareness, boost consumer engagement and drive
sales, then you’ll need to develop a social media and digital marketing strategy. Consider which platform
is best for your brand and objectives and develop content such as blogs and videos. Remember to keep
your target audience in mind – would they prefer to read long articles, blog posts, and short tweets, or
would they prefer to see your product in action through video, or social media “stories”?

Which platform is best for your brand or communications objective?

Monthly Active Users (MAU) on Social Media

Facebook Weibo
2.2 billion 446 million

YouTube Twitter
1.9 billion 326 million

Instagram Snapchat
1 billion 287 million

WeChat Pinterest
1 billion 250 million

Source: We Are Social and Hootsuite’s collection of Global Digital Reports 2019. Find out more.

Being active on social media not only improves brand loyalty, it also provides customer insight through
user comments and other online behaviour. Using Meltwater, you can combine social engagement with
media intelligence to improve your social media presence and online activity. You can even engage,
publish and monitor news and social media activity from the one platform. Publish and schedule
content, use the calendar view to identify gaps in your publishing schedule, and use the Social Echo
feature to determine the virality of an article on social platforms. With this feature, you can easily sieve
out articles that are gaining more traction than others thereby identifying content that you should be
paying attention to.

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 Engage HELP

CONVERSATIONS PUBLISH REPORTS

Create a timeline

Once you’ve consolidated your research, thought about the execution and have a rough plan in place,
you’ll need to develop a timeline. When will you roll the campaign out? When will you be posting on
social media? When will you be distributing press releases? Who is in charge of each task and what are
their deadlines? Every objective should have a tactical approach, a key message, and a timeframe. This
will make measuring and reporting on performance much easier later on, and will give you an indication
of how you’re tracking as your campaign unfolds. Keep in mind that things could change at any minute,
so be prepared and willing to alter your timelines as you go.

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APAC | Strategy and Planning: All You Need To Know | www.meltwater.com © 2019 Meltwater. All rights reserved.
 Look for opportunities

Monitor the news and social media every day, or take

advantage of Meltwater’s push notifications to find
opportunities to promote your key messages, build thought
leadership and engage consumers outside of your immediate
strategy. Remember to be proactive in your approach and
newsjack or trendjack where and when you can. You can also
use Meltwater’s latest feature, Explore, to spot if an event,
product, or brand is trending in the news or on social media
via ad-hoc and unlimited searches across social and news
content.

Newsjack
News is breaking every second of every day, and by identifying the right opportunity
at the right time, you can become part of the news cycle to amplify your own
messaging and drive sales.

Trendjacking
Bolster your brand, gain positive attention and join
conversations by capitalising on existing social media
and industry trends.

Responsiveness
Be aware of trending issues, industry threats and
competitor activity so you can respond on social media
or provide comment to media before you’re even
approached by a journalist or consumer.

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APAC | Strategy and Planning: All You Need To Know | www.meltwater.com © 2019 Meltwater. All rights reserved.
 Tips for news- and trendjacking

Be in the know — In order to find stories

and trends to hijack, you have to constantly
monitor the news and be active on social
media

Choose wisely — You can’t hijack every story

or trend – so be selective

Differentiate yourself — Think about how

you can stand out from the crowd

Create content quickly, but accurately — It’s

all about speed – but you want to proofread
everything first

Spread the word — Do what you can to share

your messaging as far as possible – share
it online, call a journalist, reach out to an
influencer, pay for a sponsored post

Create your campaign

proposal

A comprehensive campaign proposal should

include a brief overview of your activity, a list
of your objectives, a description of your target
audience and target media, your key messages or
unique selling points, and a brief explanation of
how you plan to achieve your goals.

Download
Our Communications
and Marketing Campaign
Proposal template here

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APAC | Strategy and Planning: All You Need To Know | www.meltwater.com © 2019 Meltwater. All rights reserved.
 Part 5: Measure
Set up your measurement framework and reporting processes before you launch marketing
and communications plan. This way, you’ll have everything ready to go from the outset,
and will be able to provide real-time updates to the C-suite.

Demonstrate value and report results

If you want to make an impact, provide the C-suite
with insights that are relevant, timely and applicable.
Help them to understand the things that may affect
the business in the future and measure marketing
results and media coverage as you achieve them.
Demonstrate value by tying your objectives to
company-wide goals. Consider what results the
C-suite want to see and use measurement tools to
report on performance in language and outcomes
they understand and appreciate. Provide more
precise, demonstrable results, both in terms of the
performance of your campaigns and how the business
is tracking against competitors.
If you’re short on time, Meltwater’s PR Insights Report
can assist you in generating presentation ready
reports without touching a spreadsheet. Creating
executive, fully automated and customisable reports
with metrics powered by artificial intelligence will no
longer be a feat.

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 Ensure the following:

1. Your measurements take into account the 3. Your measurements are scalable so they
long-term objectives of the business. Consider hold up as the company grows. The C-suite
their financial goals, current consumer trends are always planning ahead, and will expect
and how you can use your data to achieve the same from you. There is always another
additional measures, like corporate social ladder to climb, so consider how your data
responsibility (CSR). demonstrates your progress and how you can
use it to highlight potential.
2. Your data integrity is maintained to establish
trust. Your research, data and self-evaluation
must be able to stand on its own. It’s useful
to have a methodological way of segmenting
and qualifying your data to make it easier and
faster to comprehend. You can use Meltwater’s
automated reports and visual guides (graphs
and tables) to demonstrate value without the
need for lots of indigestible copy.

Gather insights

You have the data and results to prove ROI, but does it have any meaning? Find the insights in the data and
relay them to the C-suite and other stakeholders. Insights lead to business growth and strategy development, so
continue to ask questions and explore every detail. Have you achieved your objectives? What can you learn from
your mistakes and your achievements? Keep track of your work and file reports accordingly so you can always
go back to them as you
plan new campaigns
and develop new tactics
to engage with your
audience and the media.

Source: Meltwater’s Social Analytics Report

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APAC | Strategy and Planning: All You Need To Know | www.meltwater.com © 2019 Meltwater. All rights reserved.
 Meltwater
EBook

About Meltwater
Meltwater, a pioneer of media intelligence and now Outside Insight, gives businesses the information advantage
they need to stay ahead. More than 30,000 companies have used Meltwater’s media intelligence to stay on top of
billions of online conversations and extract relevant insights to strategically manage their brands. With nearly 20
years of experience analyzing data, Meltwater is dedicated to personal, global service built on the local expertise of
60 offices across six continents. Meltwater is also committed to fostering the data science ecosystem through MEST,
a pan-African entrepreneurial program and incubator, and Shack15, a global data science community. Learn more
at Meltwater.com.

Dashboards HELP

DASHBOARDS SHARED

For more information and the latest

media insights, please contact us!

Website: www.meltwater.com

Email: apac.marketing@meltwater.com

Want to find out how Meltwater can help your

company strategise and plan ahead?

Click here to get started

APAC | Strategy and Planning: All You Need To Know | www.meltwater.com © 2019 Meltwater. All rights reserved.