Creating a Successful Market Activation Plan: A Step-by-Step Guide

If you want to grow your company’s reach and awareness, you need a marketing activation plan. The marketing activation plan needs to be such that all the activities planned under it connect with your target audience in the most authentic way possible. As a company, you need to reach as many people as you can with your brand’s products, services, and message.

It may not always be very easy to do it due to plenty of noise on the internet and your competitors. So, creating a market activation plan is something you should think about. This blog will also help you understand how market activation and consumer insights, market activation and customer retention, and influencer marketing and market activation are related. Continue reading to understand market activation’s importance, types, and steps to run a market activation successfully.

Market Activation: Definition

Market activation is the implementation and execution of the marketing activities that are planned by your organisation. This provides greater returns on customer marketing investment and gives better results. It involves the execution of events, campaigns, and experiences that increase your brand’s awareness. If it is done well, it will resonate with your audience and help achieve your brand’s business objectives. You can also outsource the market activation to V5 Global if you want to become the preferred choice of your customers

Importance of Market Activation

Your market activation plan can make you stand apart from your competitors. Here are also other reasons why market activation is crucial for your brand:

• It enhances the product purchasing process of a customer.
• It is used to meet the key objectives of business within deadlines.
• It accelerates the impact of existing programs.
• It leads to consumers sharing a favourable opinion of your brand.

Types of Market Activation

Now that you know how crucial market activation is, let us understand its types too. There are two types of market activation:

• Short-term market activation 
• Long-term market activation

Short-Term Market Activation

This market activation is direct and for a short span of time. All the sales promotion activities executed by your brand to improve sales are categorised as short-term market activation. It can also be done via discounts and offers based on your brand’s pricing strategy. The main focus of this type of activation is to generate sales and deliver results on an immediate or short-term basis. In this type of activation, market activation and lead generation go hand in hand.

Long-Term Market Activation

This type of market activation refers to the process that activates the value of your brand. The main focus of this type of activation is to build an emotional connection with your customers. Hence, every activity categorised as a part of long-term market activation aims to build a long-term emotional connection between your brand and your customers. It may not require an interaction to take place but requires a long-term view. It positions your brand in your customer’s minds such that your brand becomes their go-to choice.

How To Plan A Successful Market Activation?

Here are the five steps to plan a successful market activation:

• Step 1: Determine your brand’s goals and values
• Step 2: Define your target audience and your customer’s persona
• Step 3: Run a dedicated social media campaign to engage with your target audience
• Step 4: Design a brand experience to run successful sales campaigns and get online impressions
• Step 5: Track the impressions and other crucial metrics from social media to assess how effective the campaign was.

Steps To Run A Market Activation Successfully

Most brands follow the below five-step process for market activation:

• Researching and analysing the company’s current position
  In this step, the SWOT analysis of a brand is done to understand its strengths and weaknesses. Post this, they develop a persona of customers they want to cater to. All the characteristic traits of their target audience like interests and demographics are considered.
• Building a strategy to spread your brand’s message to your target audience
  In this phase, the company chooses the type of campaign, where, and how you will be executing it. It depends on the brand’s goal, target audience, and budget they have to execute the campaign. When the budget is higher, there’s a higher probability of experimentation.
• Executing and implementing the strategy
  The brands execute and implement the strategy in such a way that it attracts the target audience and involves them. If the campaign engages with its user and tries to create a bi-directional relationship between the user and the brand, there’s a higher chance of the campaign being successful.
• Marketing and promoting the event
  The brands market and promote the events to target the customers who could not participate in the campaign. The companies implement market activation strategies that enhance their brand’s image and reach a larger mass. These strategies in the market activation plan might also encourage the customers to create user-generated content.
• Evaluating the effectiveness of the campaign
  The last but one of the most important steps is to check how effective the campaign was. The campaigns have quantitative and qualitative outcomes. The brands also measure the impact of the campaign by seeing the increase in sales to understand if they reached their goals or not. Brands also evaluate:
  • Market activation ROI
  • Customer reach
  • Customer engagement

While all the above points are crucial, here are a few things that can help you make any marketing activation plan successful:

Tip 1: Set A Goal

Every market activation happens for a reason. A few reasons for using market activation are opening a new branch or store or launching a new product. In either case, you need to aim to increase your brand’s influence on your customers.

If you are a young brand, you need marketing activation to activate your business or deliver your products or services. The aim behind market activation for established brands is to increase your brand’s awareness or reshape your brand’s image.

No matter if you are a young brand or an established brand, having a clear goal is very important.

Tip 2: Create A Budget For Market Activation

It is not difficult to have a marketing activation plan that works. If your brand has the budget to compete with established businesses, you need to invest in it. You can invite influencers and celebrities to your market activation event if your budget permits. It works pretty well and in most cases, a budget like this is not available. Hence, try using the potential of various influencer marketing and market activation activities to make a difference.

Tip 3: Define Your Target Audience

Your target audience plays an important role in making your campaigns go viral. You may have a unique customer base but you need to come up with innovative ideas to attract your customers. If you do not have a deep understanding of the desires and problems of your customers, the market activation plan will not work effectively. It will only happen if you are able to define your target audience properly.

Tip 4: Use Digital Solutions

You can add a touch of local and digital marketing tactics to make sure your campaign reaches the masses. Using social media and the internet is a great way to do that. It helps you activate your brand’s online presence as well. It can be beneficial as it will not help you tap into your current customer potential but also reach more users in a shorter span of time.

Final Words

It is crucial you take time to build a market activation plan and define every step carefully. It will make sure that your market activation is successful. Follow the best market activation strategies to create an exciting and engaging experience for your target audience. These strategies will help you promote your products and services in the best way possible. You also need to remember that the approach for market activation for small businesses and market activation for established brands will differ as the goals will be different. You can also outsource your brand’s market activation to V5 Global to meet your objectives.