Lose or win running a Marketing Campaign? The choice is yours, we are going to share 5 key learning from the experience.

Running a marketing campaign can feel like balancing strategy, creativity, and timing on a tightrope. Sometimes you succeed, other times you stumble — but each mistake leaves behind a valuable lesson.

While working on our CheckUp campaign at UpCRM, our Marketing Officer Nataliia Veretenina came across plenty of those “easy ways to fail.” Here are the five most important lessons from her — hopefully they’ll save you some detours on your next campaign. Let’s check them!

Mistake 1: Rely only on old brochures and internal docs to understand the product

At first, Nataliia buried herself in brochures, slide decks, and internal documents, trying to build a picture of the product. But the truth only clicked when she sat down with the product creator. Even though his focus is technical, his answers gave the crystal-clear vision that was needed: what the product is, how it works, which problems it solves, and for whom.

👉 The lesson: Don’t stop at documents. Define the right questions and ask the person who knows the product best. Their perspective can save you weeks of guessing and give you the sharp clarity your messaging needs.

Mistake 2: Launch a campaign without aligning it to business goals

A campaign should never exist “just because.” It’s always the answer to a business goal — whether that’s generating leads, increasing revenue, or raising awareness in a new market. The more ambitious the goal, the more steps and resources you’ll need to reach it.

👉 The lesson: Identify goals as early (and honestly) as possible. Once you know the “why,” you can build the “how.” This was one of the strongest parts of our planning from the very beginning: by locking the goal early, we could map resources and actions much more effectively.

Mistake 3: Either target “everyone” or over-engineer one perfect persona

By now, everyone knows the audience can’t be “everyone.” But how narrow should your focus be? Back in 2018, Nataliia claimed it was trendy to create one hyper-detailed persona and use it as a marketing template. Today, that’s no longer practical.

👉 The lesson: Don’t waste energy creating fictional characters with hobbies and lifestyle habits. Instead, identify the key characteristics that truly matter for your product’s success — location, industry, role, digital maturity, company size, etc. Filter and reach your audience through those strategic touchpoints.

Mistake 4: Think pleasant design alone will win attention

Nice visuals are now the bare minimum. Without strategy, alignment, and consistency, design is just decoration. During the campaign, Nataliia had to rework messages and materials several times after feedback from colleagues, ensuring content matched business goals and that every stage of the user journey felt intuitive.

👉 The lesson: Learn best practices, adapt to the right platforms, double-check that messaging and CTAs align with goals, and always test the flow of your campaign pipeline. Content isn’t static — it’s collaborative, and it’s worth revisiting until everything clicks.

Mistake 5: Underestimate timing — launch when your audience is away

We overestimated our preparation timeline and found ourselves facing summer holidays with an incomplete campaign. The worst option would have been to launch anyway and waste budget when most of the audience was out of office.

👉 The lesson: Timing is everything. Be realistic about preparation steps and align your launch with your audience’s availability. If the timing is wrong, don’t be afraid to pause — use that time to refine content instead of pushing half-prepared messages into an empty room.

Final Thoughts

Losing a marketing campaign is surprisingly easy. But if you flip the lessons into the rules — digging deep into the product, anchoring to business goals, targeting the right audience, aligning content with strategy, and timing your launch wisely — you’ll tune the system in your favor.

Our CheckUp campaign is still ongoing, but it already taught Nataliia lessons she will carry into every future project. And if sharing these helps you avoid the pitfalls, the afford was worth it!

Keep Learning with #UpExperts

This article is part of our weekly UpExperts series, where our consultants share practical insights, proven best practices, and lessons learned from real-world projects. Check the previous article about different cases of applying Salesforce integration patterns!