Marketing teams often leverage data from past campaigns to inform their marketing strategy. But an effective post mortem marketing analysis meeting can help your team create better campaigns in the future. Whether your campaign was a money-making splash or a whale of a flop, the post mortem will provide crucial information that can drive future success.
Before starting your post mortem meeting, you’ll want a process in place for maximum productivity. Make post mortem meetings part of your operating procedures, so that everyone is prepared. Then, move forward with the following steps.
Use a Post Campaign Questionnaire to Identify Talking Points
Your post mortem meeting should invite everyone to share their insights and feedback on the campaign. But that’s not always the case. Some people are shy about speaking up in front of a crowd. Others may not be confident enough to believe that their ideas have merit. Some might fear pushback. A questionnaire ensures that everyone’s voice can be heard and also identifies the main points people want to discuss about the project.
Make Sure to Address These Important Questions
Whatever your post campaign questionnaire discovers, ensure that your post mortem meeting addresses some, if not all, of the following questions:
- What were the key performance indicators (KPIs)?
- Did you meet them?
- Were the KPIs the right ones to measure?
- Did the team meet deadlines?
- What else did the campaign accomplish?
- What did the team do correctly?
- What went wrong?
- Did problems arise?
- Can these problems be avoided in the future?
- How can the team use this knowledge to improve future campaigns?
Other questions may come up during the discussion. Address them if they seem helpful, but avoid going down rabbit holes, nitpicking, or blaming team members for what may have gone wrong during the campaign. The goal should be to learn from the process and then make changes to help everyone be more successful next time.
Set a Clear Agenda
Once you know what questions you want to explore during the meeting, base your agenda around those questions, but always begin by praising the team and emphasizing the positive aspects of the campaign. Celebrate your wins. This will start the meeting on a high note and inspire everyone to participate in making the next campaign even better.
In general, your post mortem should fall into the following four parts:
- Recap: objectives, goals, KPIs
- Review: Review the results based on tangible metrics
- Explore the “why”: Plunge into why aspects of the campaign went right or wrong, and steps you can take in the future to achieve better results.
- Insights: Finally, delve into what changes the team can make in the future to improve campaign performance. These insights should be shared in a post mortem document and referred to before future campaigns. Your post mortem can drive strategy and tactics for incremental growth and increased success.
Choose a Moderator to Keep Things Moving
Every meeting has the potential to get off-track without a strong-minded moderator to keep participants in check. Post mortem meetings shouldn’t last more than an hour; it’s up to the moderator to ensure you don’t spend too much time upfront reviewing the objectives. The meat of the meeting occurs in the last half, when you’re exploring why the campaign succeeded or failed and how to improve in the future.
The moderator can ensure that the meeting follows a manageable timeline and also that team members have a chance to contribute, if desired, within the allocated time frame.
An Outsourced CMO Delivers New Perspectives in Your Post Mortem Meeting
Sometimes, it’s hard for your marketing team to spot the mistakes or avenues for improvement in your campaigns. A full-service outsourced marketing agency like Hawke Media can leverage takeaways from your campaigns and combine their expertise with insights from hundreds of other brands and projects.
A consultancy may see what your team misses when it comes to your past campaigns and deliver deep insights into how to maximize your return on investment (ROI) next time around. Reach out to learn more with a free consultation from Hawke Media.
Dawn Allcot is a full-time freelance writer and content marketing specialist who frequently covers marketing, e-commerce, finance, real estate, and technology. She is also the owner and founder of GeekTravelGuide.net, a travel and lifestyle website.
Sources
Hubspot.com – 5 Steps to Run a Project Post-Mortem Meeting
Backlog.com – How to run an incredibly effective post-mortem meeting
Shopify – 9 Tips for Getting the Most Out of Post-Mortem Meetings