Businesses are vying for the attention of their customers. With the explosion of social media and various other digital media channels, the competition to be visible is getting fiercer. This is where marketing campaigns come in! Marketing campaigns have the power to influence, make your business memorable, and help develop the identity or personality of your brand.
With this quick yet comprehensive guide on marketing campaigns, we hope to give you a clear roadmap for your campaigns.
What Are Marketing Campaigns?
A marketing campaign can be described as a strategic approach or effort to promote a business’s service, products, or offerings. It involves reaching out to your target audience through various channels including print, television or radio, social media, and pay-per-click.
Now, you may wonder whether marketing and advertising campaigns aren’t the same. Marketing is a way a company raises awareness about its brand and encourages customers to buy. Advertising on the other hand is the process of creating that compelling communication to support the aforementioned outcomes. In fact, one can say that advertising is one aspect of a marketing campaign.
What Constitutes a Marketing Campaign?
Like any other task, marketing campaigns also require perfect planning and execution for the desired results. Some of the key components include the following.
- Objectives or key performance indicators (KPIs): Your goals for your campaign should be measurable to track the effectiveness and performance. For instance, your goal may be to get 4000 visitors to your website per month which can be measured with Google Analytics.
- Marketing channels: This helps you plan where you will publish or distribute your content for maximum reach and impact. You may want to prioritize channels based on your target audience For instance, if there is a better chance of improving customer loyalty on Facebook, then you may want to eliminate or reduce the budget for other social media channels.
- Internal stakeholders: Identity the members of your team who will help you in the successful planning and execution of your campaign. Work collaboratively and allocate tasks for copywriting, designing, approvals, metrics reporting, etc.
- Customer profile: It is important to identify who you want to connect to during your campaign. Knowing your target audience will help you craft effective purpose, concept, and communication for maximum impact.
- Budget: For a paid marketing campaign, budget is an important aspect. Consider all factors or costs associated with your budget including agency, freelancing, or other services costs. You may want to consider whether your campaign requires incrementing budget. If yes, then plan accordingly and consider your ROI if you intend to reallocate your budget.
- Communication: Determine the format and type of communication you would use for your campaign—video, guest blog, press release, static ad, infographic, and so on. It is completely fine to use multiple forms of content in one marketing campaign. Carefully review your marketing communication assets in terms of branding, purpose, and match.
What Are Different Types of Marketing Campaigns?
Marketing campaigns can be categorized based on the following.
Market
- Business to business (B2B)
- Business to customers (B2C)
Reach
- Local/ localization
- International
Duration
- Short-term
- Long-term
- Periodic
Mediums
- Social media marketing
- Content marketing
- Email marketing
- Affiliate marketing
- Messenger marketing
- Display/ audio/ video advertising
- Paid search
Objectives
- Referral
- Public relation
- Brand awareness/development
- Product awareness
- Product launch
- Customer loyalty/retention
- User acquisition
- Community building
- Remarketing to churned customers
- Upselling or cross-selling
10 Questions You Need to Ask Before Creating a Marketing Campaign
- What is the goal (KPI), purpose (objective), and concept of your campaign?
- How will you measure or quantify your goals?
- Who is your target audience?
- How will you reach out to your target audience?
- What will you need to create your marketing campaign—content type, formats, etc.?
- How and where will you publish your marketing assets?
- How will you drive the marketing communication with call-to-action—lead forms, callback, landing pages, etc.?
- What all metrics will you measure the progress/ performance?
- How will you determine if your campaign has worked?
- How will you utilize the data generated from your campaign?
How to Create a Successful Marketing Campaign?
It may appear a pretty complex task but if planned correctly, you can reach your goals! Try to find in-depth and clear information on each of the points mentioned below to ensure you are on the right track. We will divide the steps into four prime categories—planning, distribution, conversion, and assessment.
Step 1: Define the purpose and goal
Primarily, you should first try to answer some broad questions here. WHY are you running this campaign? How will your campaign support the business? Your WHY can include but is not limited to the following.
- Increase brand awareness in the existing or new markets where you plan to expand
- Increase awareness of the recently launched product to drive sales and target new customers
- Nurture existing customers to show appreciation, reduce acquisition costs, or drive referrals
- Generate relevant, high-value leads for your sales team
- Increase user engagement
- Promote registration for an upcoming webinar or event
- Gather feedback from existing customers
Now, this list is not exhaustive but you can dig deeper with different stakeholders to clearly outline your WHY. Once, you have broadly identified the goal, try to narrow it down further. You can also try using freely available SMART goal templates to help you define your objective.
For instance, you may want to “increase the traffic to our blogs by 20% by utilizing on-page SEO to establish ourselves as the industry experts by September 31.”
Now, this goal is SMART because it is
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
STEP 2: Identify your target audience
You may have heard about the customer or buyer persona. This is what you need to define now—your ideal or intended customers. This is critical because what if your target audience is males over 50 years of age and you used too jargon-infused creative or the wrong channel to connect with them!
That is why consider your buyer’s journey and at what stage you are targeting—awareness, consideration, or decision.
You may want to acquire new customers, retarget leads, or get feedback from existing customers. This is critical because it will help you determine whether your target audience is completely unaware of your brand, has heard about you, or are loyal customers, significantly impacting your communication.
Dive deeper and try to find out
- Interests and behavioral patterns— what shows or movies they like, do they just browse, what time are they online, how they spend their leisure time, etc.
- Pain points
- Purpose of using different channels such as Instagram, Facebook, etc.
- Kind of content they like—humorous, witty, discount or sales-driven, emotional-laden, etc.
- Problems or pain points your service or product is trying to address
You can conduct surveys, explore databases, take feedback from the sales team, and interview your existing or prospective customers to get as much information as possible. There are various online templates and buyer persona generators at your disposal!
Step 3: Establish your metrics
This will vary depending on your goal and the channel(s) you are using for your marketing campaign. We can also say that this step will help you define the success of your campaign and also the important milestones so you know you are on the right track. For instance, for customer feedback, you can target 60 social mentions, setting milestones for monitoring at 20, and 40 mentions.
| Goal | KPI |
| Brand awareness | Social mentions, type of sentiment, etc. |
| New product or service promotion | Sales, and even pre-orders |
| Customer feedback | Social mentions, engagement (forms, surveys, etc.) |
| Revenue generation | Sales, leads, etc. |
| Event/webinar promotion | Bookings, registration, ticket sales, etc. |
| Engagement | Shares, comments, interactions, social mentions, etc. |
Also, depending on the type of content or communication used, your metrics will vary. We will discuss this in later sections.
Step 4: Identify who will do what
This step is critical because you need to identify both internal and external (if required) stakeholders to get your campaign running. If you are clear with the concept, content format, and type, the next step is to identify the right team members which may include
- Creative head
- Marketing head
- Content manager or writer
- SEO manager
- SEM manager
- Social media manager
- Web developer
- Graphic designer
- Video producer
- UX designer
- PR manager
- External agency or freelancer, etc.
Step 5: Select channels
Depending on your target audience, budget, objective, and so on, you will identify one or more channels for your marketing campaign. You can check historically which platforms have worked for your business, ensure the highest engagement, or allow paid advertisements.
Marketers often rely on the PESO (Paid, Earned, Social, and Owned) model to segment the channels and target their communication efforts.
| Paid | Earned | Shared | Owned |
| Sponsored content Advertorial content Search engine PPC (pay-per-click) Display ads Native ads Exclusive, membership-based content Paid influencer marketing | PR outreach Influencer marketing Bylined articles Investor relations Blogger relations Link building | Organic social media growth based on curated content Referrals Forums Word of mouth Reviews Online communities | Blog posts Webinars Podcats Videos Visual media Website Emailers Newsletter |
Step 6: Define a timeline
Define the start and end date of your campaign. This will help you to proactively plan how and when will you execute. Try to work backward to create your marketing assets for different channels. Depending on your team resources, determine the number of posts and frequency for your promotion. You can also consider creating a promotional activity calendar that will help you schedule when will your ads, posts, emailers, etc. will go out. You can use scheduling tools to evenly distribute your marketing communication for each channel.
Step 7: Calibrate
Now, you have to focus on concentrating your efforts on pushing your leads to the desired result. Here, you need to revisit your SMART goal and milestones. Check if you are hitting them timely. If not, then it may be time to calibrate to encourage your leads to take an action. This can be done by using very specific call-to-action on your form fills, landing pages, etc.
Step 8: Measure and monitor your performance
Depending on the type of content, your metrics to monitor the success of your campaign will vary. The below table just outlines some of the common metrics but depending on your goal and benchmarking, you may need to expand your list and also consider calibrating.
| Paid social media | Cost per click Click-through rate Conversion rate Cost per-conversion |
| Organic social media | Likes and shares Comments Followers Click-through rate |
| Email campaign | Open rate Click-through rate Bounce rate Conversion rate Unsubscribed rate Email sharing rate |
| Display ads | Cost per thousand impressions Click-through rate View-through conversion rate Cost per click Cost per conversion |
| Search engine optimization | Click-through rate Bounce rate Keyword ranking SERP visibility Backlinks Page speed Page scroll depth Time on page Conversion rate |
| Direct mail | Response rate Cost per acquisition and conversion Customer lifetime value Average revenue per conversion |
| Lead magnets | Opt-in rate Cost per opt-in Follow-up email open rate Conversion rate for opt-in Customer acquisition cost |
Step 9: Utilise campaign data
This step is very critical to making the most of your campaign. While executing the campaign, ensure to make sense of the data additionally generated to get deeper insights about your customers, their preferences, product acceptance, etc. With the details collected, you can expand and retarget your promotional efforts. This is the time to discuss with your team and create a purposeful report answering some of the below questions.
- How could you improve next time? What went wrong? What went right?
- How could you have judiciously used your budget?
- What marketing channels worked for you and what did you learn about your customers from each of the channels?
- What kind of feedback or sentiments you received from your customers or target audience?
Wrap Up
Marketing campaigns are a valuable way for a business to connect with their customers, engage them, drive sales, collect feedback, and much more. However, campaigns may not always be seamless and easy. However, with step-wise planning, collaboration, execution, and assessment, you can make the most of these super creative tactics!
