Understanding the Costs of Campaign Delays

Click on the image to access the full PDF

Years ago when I worked agency side, I was very clear on the costs to create a campaign.

My ability to make a profit was directly impacted by who worked on campaigns, how much time they spent and how many rounds of client review and amends were required to get campaigns live.

The longer a campaign lingered in the system the more expensive and painful it became.

I had a fire under my butt to move efficiently. I spent time up front to get the necessary inputs and develop the strategy so that the execution could be as friction-free as possible. (Side note: there was always friction and pain, which is why having aligned goals across functions is so important, but that’s another topic for another day 😀).

As an account lead I was very strict about timelines, deadlines, meeting sizes and ensuring we had client buy-in at each stage so that projects were profitable.

Client marketing teams have even more cats to herd, and campaign management is only one in a long list of important and urgent responsibilities.

But delayed campaigns still have an important impact on the business that needs to be quantified. There’s an opportunity cost to being late to market with your message and it has a knock-on effect on pipeline and revenue.

Here’s a useful calculation I found to help start to understand the impact of deadline slippage. It can be tailored for your own business specifics or types of campaigns. I’ve put in dummy numbers to illustrate. To access the PDF, click the image above.

The important thing is that quantifying the costs of delay can help us prioritise:

⭐ Where to focus efforts. If everything is urgent, what is most important?

⭐ The need to have inputs up front so that work is strategically sound and not reworked during the execution phase.

⭐ Meeting deadlines.

Let’s change the way we think about B2B campaign development