How to plan an advertising campaign

An advertising campaign is ten decisions written on one page before any money moves. The objective as a countable number, the buyer, the offer, the geography and the dates. Then the channels, the creative, where the response lands, how it is tracked, and who answers. Campaigns fail on the last three, not on targeting. If you cannot fill that page, you are not ready to brief an agency. And an agency that never asks you for it will spend your budget on whatever it happens to have to sell.

The ten decisions

1. The objective, as a number you can count. Not awareness. Forty booked site visits, or sixty qualified enquiries for CNC job work, or two hundred trial classes. Write the number and the deadline.
2. The buyer, described tightly enough to exclude people. A purchase officer at a food processing plant in Karnataka with in-house maintenance. A mother of a four-year-old living within twenty minutes of the campus. If the description fits everybody, the campaign will reach everybody and convert nobody.
3. The offer, which is what the buyer gets for responding. A site visit with the floor plan and price band. A free trial class on a fixed date. A sample cut in your material. An offer is not a discount; it is a specific next step worth taking.
4. The geography, drawn on a map and not described as a city. Three pin codes, or the roads within twenty minutes of the showroom, or four industrial estates by name.
5. The dates, including when the offer ends and when the team is on leave. A campaign that peaks while the factory is shut for a week has bought enquiries nobody will answer.
6. The channels, at most two or three, chosen from how this buyer already finds suppliers. Each with its own share of the budget written next to it.
7. The creative, in the language your buyer reads, saying the offer in the first three seconds. One message per advertisement. The version in Kannada or Hindi is not a translation done at the end; it is written by somebody who speaks it.
8. Where the response lands. A page that matches the advertisement word for word, or a WhatsApp number, or a phone line with a person behind it. Sending campaign traffic to a home page wastes most of it.
9. The tracking, tested before launch. A separate number for offline media, a form that records the source, and a check that the enquiry actually arrives in somebody's inbox and phone.
10. The person who answers, by name, with the hours they cover. Including Sunday, because that is when a lot of buyers are free.

Fill all ten before you approve a rupee. Nine out of ten is where campaigns quietly fail.

The two decisions everybody skips

Tracking and the responder are the ones left to the last day, and they are the ones that decide the cost per order.

Test tracking like a customer. Fill your own form on a phone, on mobile data, on a Saturday night. Call the campaign number from a number nobody in the office recognises. Then check whether the enquiry appeared, who it went to, how long it took to be answered, and what the person said. Most owners doing this for the first time stop the launch for a week, and save the campaign.

The responder matters even more when the media is offline. A hoarding with the main office number gets calls at all hours, and an unanswered call is the entire cost of that call wasted. A separate number, forwarded to a mobile, with a person and a backup, costs almost nothing and makes the media measurable at the same time.

When to run it, and when not to

Indian media is seasonal in a way that spreadsheets do not show. In the fortnight before Diwali, property and jewellery have already booked the junctions and the rates have moved. Wedding season takes the good slots in some categories. Exam months empty out anything aimed at parents. Monsoon changes what people do on a weekend in coastal towns.

So plan physical media two months early and keep the digital decisions late, when you can still change the creative. And do not launch on a Friday evening. Launch on a Tuesday morning, when the people who have to fix the first problems are at their desks.

What to review, and when

Week one is a technical review. Are the advertisements approved and running, is the tracking recording, is the phone being answered, what did the first ten enquiries actually ask for.

Week four is a money review. Cost per enquiry by channel, share of enquiries that were real buyers, and one change made. One, so you know what caused the difference.

The week twelve review is the honest one. How many orders, from which channel, at what cost each, and what the sales team says about the quality. For example, a campaign producing enquiries at an illustrative ₹400 each looks better than one at ₹900, until you find that the cheaper source produced no orders at all.

What to do next

Write the ten lines on one page for the campaign you are about to run. Where a line is blank, that is the work for this week, not next quarter. Then send yourself a test enquiry. Time the reply. If you would like the page filled in with your own numbers and the leaks found first, book the free audit.