You may have the impression that your previous marketing campaign has worked. But you cannot definitively say that unless you have analyzed every aspect of the project. This is where post-mortem comes in.
A post-mortem may be a morbid word for post-project meetings, but it has been widely used across many different industries. But what’s common is that there are lots of things that you can discuss during these meetings. Mainly, post-mortems allow people to discuss the things that went wrong so that the team will not do it again. At the same time, these meetings highlight the good bits of the project, so everyone will be inspired to keep such things up in the succeeding campaigns.
If you want to make your marketing post-mortem work, here are some of the things to keep in mind:
Decide on the agenda
Just like any other meeting, post-mortems need an agenda. This will make sure that the conversation will have one linear direction and that everyone will not be sidetracked. In the long run, a meeting agenda will help you save time, which you know is an important resource in the corporate world. Send the agenda to the parties involved ahead of time, so they will be able to prepare their questions.
Involve your partners and suppliers
If you’re on the client/brand side, it will be utterly helpful to involve your creative marketing agency and other pertinent suppliers. That way, you will have a comprehensive review. This will also allow you to gain third-party perspectives and ideas, which you might have not considered because of your personal biases.
Consider inviting your clients
In case you are working on the agency side, inviting clients may be a good idea. While many agencies are against it because clients tend to be critical and unreasonable, some actually still do it since the candidness and honesty of clients help them come up with better decisions next time. Getting their feedback will also help strengthen your relationship with them.
Avoid pointing fingers
Post-mortems are not the right venue and time to play the blame game. This is because it will downplay the success of the campaign. But that does not mean that you will not uncover the mistakes that happened while the campaign was ongoing. You can discuss the blunders, but you may choose to hold back a little when it comes to identifying who committed them. Talking to the people who are at fault will require another meeting, though.
Mine new insights
Post-mortems should also be a great opportunity for the client and the agency to get new customer insights. While the campaign was on-going, you were able to gauge the reaction of customers to your messaging and story. Just looking at these aspects will help you understand what works and what does not work.
During post-mortems, it is imperative that you encourage the parties involved to speak up their mind. After all, you are trying to get everyone’s perspective on the conclusion of the project. Understand that this is necessary as it will help keep your team, your client, and suppliers accountable for what happened while the project was on-going.
