What you should know before starting a Marketing Campaign

In this blog, we will show you how to run a successful digital marketing campaign. If this is your first time doing a marketing campaign, it can be confusing to understand all of the components. In order to run an effective campaign, you’ll need a lot of patience, planning and time. Read on to learn the important things to consider for starting a marketing campaign.

What is a marketing campaign?

Marketing campaigns are organised, strategized efforts to promote a specific company goal. Such campaigns typically aim to reach consumers in a variety of ways and involve a combination of media, including but not limited to email, print advertising, television or radio advertising, pay-per-click, and social media, etc.

Types of marketing campaigns

• Product Marketing Campaign
• Brand Development Campaign
• Email Marketing Campaign
• Content Marketing Campaign
• User-Generated Content Campaign
• Public Relations / Awareness Campaign
• Direct Mail Campaign
• Affiliate Marketing Campaign
• Social Media Campaign
• Acquisition Marketing Campaign
• Paid Marketing / Advertising Campaign

Marketing campaign components

In order to have a successful digital marketing campaign, multiple components need to be taken into consideration.

• Goals & KPIs
  • Create a Google Analytics account that you can use to track traffic, goals and conversions. With this tool, you’ll be able to see how many people are viewing your website, where they are coming from, what content is performing well on social media sites like Facebook or Instagram. Next, identify your campaign goals and create metrics for measuring them. For example, a content creation campaign could be measured by organic traffic while each post is goaled on driving 1,000 views per month and 10 new contacts at the end of each month.
• Channels
  • Digital marketing campaigns are driven by the websites where you’ll be placing your content. If you want to grow a loyal audience of users around Facebook, for example, then prioritize developing content that will work on Facebook over all other platforms.
• Budget
  • A certain campaign may not require an incremental budget, but many still do. Factor in agency, advertising, and freelance costs if applicable to your ROI analysis.
• Content Format
  • When developing a content plan for your campaign, create a list of potential formats you’ll use to distribute the content. By including multiple types of creative in your campaign, you can increase the overall reach and engagement for your brand.
• Design
  • In addition to those four “must have” components, a great marketing campaign should have a noteworthy design. This can include a sleek website design, a logo at the end of a video commercial, or an interactive infographic. Ensure that any visual elements are professional and fitting for the purpose of your campaign.

How to create your first marketing campaign

First and foremost, let us go through the details with you on how to create your first marketing campaign.

Outline your individual/company marketing goals

Before planning any campaign, you need to establish SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely) for the best results. Your objective may be to gain ten new clients every month or to sell ten products per quarter.

Determine your budget

You’ll want to know your budget before getting started with any form of research. Why? Because conducting targeted research typically costs money, and these costs should be included in your campaign budget. Getting a good grasp of your budget helps you set goals, devise a strategy, and how much content you can or should create.

Perform marketing research

Describe your product or service in detail, including its features and benefits, and how it differs from the competition. Be sure to mention all of the key aspects of your product(s) / service(s), including prices, support, distribution and placement. Put the information together, organize and collect it.

Determine your target personas

There are several ways of finding your target personas. You can use website analytics to identify who visits your site, or you can conduct surveys on potential customers to find out their demographics and preferences. Google Analytics is a great way to discover new audience profiles.

Content Creation

Now you’ve done extensive research and you’re ready to start writing. But, remember that not everything has to be done by you. Many companies will outsource some of their work or design to freelance writers and agencies so they can focus more on strategy and development. You may choose to do some or all of the writing yourself if you feel comfortable doing so. Regardless of what you decide, make sure you keep your personas in mind throughout the entire creation process.

How will you reach your audience?

Now that you’ve taken a look at the channels you use to promote your company, let’s think about what type of marketing your campaign will use. This choice depends on your audience preference, budget, and brand engagement levels among other factors.

How and when will you publish?

Make it time-sensitive! By establishing a deadline for your campaign, you’ll know when and how often you need to promote it as well as when your SMART goal will be complete.

The first step in digital marketing is to create a timeline for your campaign. The calendar you use should have both your start date and deadline marked. Having these parameters allows you to work within them.

Next, look at the digital marketing assets you have available to help promote your business. Based on your people and financial resources, how often can you afford to promote your campaign content? Map out a promotional calendar for each marketing channel. Decide on a cadence for each channel and post at those times.

How will your marketing drive the desired action?

Digital marketing is a great tool to use when launching a new product or service. It can drive traffic and increase awareness, but it still needs to be completed by viewing the content and following the call-to-action (CTA) in order for it to be effective.

This step is all about calibrating your marketing efforts and channels through conversion assets. Conversion assets are a few types of elements that you can use for this step, such as landing pages, and lead forms.

How will you measure your campaign?

The answer to the question of how to measure digital marketing depends on your overarching campaign goal. You might say “email open rates,” “new Facebook Page likes,” and/or “product pre-orders.” These answers will depend on what you want out of your campaign. If your marketing efforts involve social media, direct mail, and radio ads, you should make a plan for how to measure each campaign.

Let’s think about what type of marketing your campaign will use. This choice depends on your audience preference, budget, and brand engagement levels, among other factors.

While it is a good idea to utilize multiple media, you shouldn’t start a new digital marketing campaign on a medium that your business doesn’t have a presence on. So, stick with those channels where you are already doing well.

To promote your marketing campaign, you’ll want to create marketing assets that are unique, stunning, and tailored to each specific platform. For example, if you’re promoting on Facebook, post photos of your product. If you’re promoting on Instagram, you might want to focus on lifestyle shots with customers using your products.

Lastly, you should never ignore any given medium. Even if you choose not to actively promote on a certain medium, it is still possible to optimize your content for that channel, at the very least, mention your campaign.

What metrics can you monitor?

You’ll want to monitor several metrics for any digital marketing campaign you run. You’ll want to know how many people are viewing your content, how many of them are engaging with it, and what actions they take after viewing your content. Since there are so many different types of campaigns, it’s impossible to give an exhaustive list of all possible metrics. This section merely serves as a baseline list to give you an idea of what to take note of.

• Email Metrics
  • Click-through rate
  • Bounce rate
  • Conversion rate
• Social Media (PAID) Metrics
  • Click-through rate
  • Conversion rate
  • Cost per click
  • Cost per-conversion
• Social Media (Organic) Metrics
  • Passive engagements (likes & shares)
    Active engagements (comments)
  • Follows
  • Click-through rate
• Display Ads / Paid Media Metrics
  • Cost per thousand impressions
  • Click-through rate
  • Conversion rate
  • Cost per conversion
• Content / SEO Metrics
  • Click-through rate
  • Bounce rate
  • Time on page
  • Page scroll depth
  • Conversion rate

Digital marketing can be a lot to keep track of, but looking at these numbers will help you see how your campaign is going.

How will you know if your campaign worked?

If you define “worked” to mean did it perform as you had planned, then the answer is no. If the campaign did not meet the initial SMART goal, but may still be successful because it led to good things down the road.

For example, if your goal is to get 100K more views on an organic blog post, it’s a success any time you get that many views. But there are different levels of effectiveness when it comes to digital marketing campaigns. A worthwhile campaign has an ROI (return on investment) that matches the amount of effort and time you put into it.

What to do with the campaign data?

Digital marketing helps maximize the impact of your campaign. By analyzing collected data, you can assess and measure your campaign’s success. This will also give clarity on your audience, marketing methods, creative prowess, and more.

Some final thoughts…

Digital marketing campaigns are made up of a lot of information, decision making, ideas, and observations. But don’t worry; creating and running one isn’t as hard as you thought it would be.

Marketing campaigns are essential for digital marketing. They are often created to drive awareness or action.

Lastly, remember that the best marketing campaigns have a goal, target audience, and deliverable’s in mind.