How to Conduct a Profitable Marketing Campaign

Introduction

Great marketing campaigns have a way to remain in the audience's mind long after the message impression. Why does this work so well? Effective campaigns make a brand unforgettable, promoting a targeted outreach to guide an audience toward a preferred action. In addition, marketing campaigns provide brands with a personality, feeling, and identity. These campaigns can do the same for your brand as well.

What is a marketing campaign?

A marketing campaign is a structured, planned effort to publicize a particular business objective, for example, obtaining consumer evaluation or drawing attention to a latest product. Campaigns usually target audiences in various ways, with a variety of media. These media strategies include pay-per-click, email, social media, and advertising through print, radio, or television.

Marketing vs. advertising

A marketing campaign calls attention to a brand to persuade its audience to purchase. As part of a larger marketing strategy, an advertising campaign is the method of developing convincing messages based on these general objectives. Advertising a recent product would represent one part of a company's marketing campaign. To accomplish the entire goal, additional components can be incorporated into the preparation and performance. The whole campaign could also include paid searches, email campaigns, and social platforms.

More components to marketing campaigns are:

• Goals and KPIs. This element specifies the final objective of a campaign, calculates it using precise and quantifiable goals, and stipulates what metrics are to be used for tracking your progress. For instance, a campaign using content creation could have an organic traffic quantification where every post is targeted to gain 1,000 monthly views and 10 fresh leads, measuring metrics through a Google Analytics connection to Looker.

• Channels. Your channels are where you distribute messaging and content to your audience. For instance, if your campaign involves social media, you could focus on growing the most relevant channels to your readers while skipping channels least apt to attract a dedicated audience base.

• Budget. Many campaigns still need a graduated budget. Consider any additional costs for advertising, freelance, and agency fees, factoring their total number into your campaign's return on investment (ROI) analysis.

• Content Format. Identify what type(s) of content you'll be developing to generate your campaign. It's not rare for advertisers to incorporate several types in one campaign, such as social media, press releases, video ads, website ads, and guest blogging.

• Team. These are the people you're trusting to carry out your marketing campaign. Prior to launch, ensure you have the delegated staff for each element of your project, from developing web design and content to media purchase and analysis.

• Creative Assets. Creative assets complement your campaign in the form of digital files, to ensure your campaign reflects an appropriate and professional image to its audience. Examples are still or moving images, audio, pdfs, and other media types. These are usually stored and arranged within an asset management system for a manageable workflow.

Planning a successful campaign

In planning, you can set the gauge for measuring success, and this will serve as a guide for when things go off target.

1. Determine your objective and audience action

Your first and most crucial step will be recognizing your ultimate objective and what action you want your audience to take. Why do you want this campaign, and what do you want it to accomplish? If defining a purpose is difficult, generalize your goal. Do you want to advertise new goods or services, expand awareness of your brand, receive audience feedback, attract leads, boost revenue, increase audience engagement, or promote a future event? If any of these align most with your purpose, it will give you a general idea of a goal that a campaign could help you reach.

From there, you can hone in on the specifics through a SMART goal: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. For example, if you wanted to gain audience feedback, you would make your goal:

Specific (outcome = gain audience feedback),
Measurable (quantity of customer feedback)
Attainable (method of attaining feedback, such as a hashtag)
Relevant (what you want feedback about)
Timely (date by which you wish to reach this goal)

2. Define how your campaign will be measured

Depending on the channels and end goal of a campaign, these measurements can vary. Measurements could apply to pre-release orders, social media likes, email open rates, or a mixture of these. Also, consider how your definition of "success" applies to your business. Although it's always exhilarating to accomplish goals, sometimes it's not possible. Aside from a primary goal, what secondary goal would still equate to a successful goal or milestone?

When deciding how to measure your campaign, put several checkpoints in place, such as at your 20%, 50%, and 80% milestones. These will not only be a reminder to continue on to the final goal but you and your team will be encouraged by reaching the completion of each checkpoint.

3. Identify your target market

No matter how perfect your campaign material and medium, your message may be ignored without the right audience. To begin correcting this issue, pinpoint what part of the customer journey you're targeting. Are you directing your campaign to potential customers or trying to gain responses from current ones? Does your audience already recognize your brand, or are they being introduced to it? Your message depends on whether the majority of your readers are in the introduction, evaluation, or decision-making stage.

In addition, examine their preferences and problem areas. By sending your audience surveys to complete or having them create a user profile, you can use the data to develop your brand's buyer personas.

4. Build a campaign framework and gather a qualified team

Your marketing campaign must have a purpose, plan, and brand image. Successful campaigns reflect their brand in appearance and voice, consistent with the brand, yet keeping their own distinction.

5. Choose your campaign channels

Your choice of media channels will rely on factors such as budget, audience, and levels of brand engagement. Examine current channels you currently use for promoting your brand. Which channels have better results? Which ones take payment to run ads? Which have optimal interaction? And above all, where does your target audience hang out?

6. Establish a campaign timeline

Setting a rough campaign timeline allows you a better glimpse into when, how, and how frequently your campaign should be promoted. Once you construct a timeline, mark your calendar with its launch date and deadline. Check your marketing assets and the marketing channels you've chosen, then work in reverse from your campaign start date. Using your resources, how frequently can your budget allow the posting and promoting of your content? Make a calendar for each channel and decide on each channel's sequence. On your calendar, plan out your scheduled posts, marketing emails, etc.

Mapping your campaign visually will assist in evenly distributing your promotions and publishing equally on each channel. This mapping also gives you insight into where you're spending your time and energy so you can review it when evaluating your campaign's performance.

7. Make sure your campaign drives your audience to the desired goal

Even an effective, highly-trafficked campaign needs to fulfill its desired goal. By aligning your marketing outreach and channels, you can lead your audience to choose that goal through conversion assets. These assets can include lead forms, landing pages, and calls-to-action. A marketing asset can work individually or with another.

8. Keep track of the correct metrics

The metrics to indicate your campaign's effectiveness will depend on your campaign type and your chosen channels. You might consider it appealing to target vanity metrics, such as click-through rates, impressions, and generated traffic. Since these don't always reflect a revenue increase, you should use additional metrics for measuring your campaign's effectiveness.

9. Define successful numbers and metrics

If your campaign reached the SMART goal in step one, this should be easy to ascertain. If it missed the goal, you can research the data to learn what went wrong.

10. How will you use your campaign data?

Your campaign data will help you make the most impact in your campaign. After analyzing and applying your data, the data value will have a tenfold increase. Besides helping you measure and evaluate the results of your marketing campaign, it'll bring clarity and direction regarding your audience, creative ability, and marketing channels, among others. This information will not only assist you in your current campaign goal but amplify your general marketing strategies.

After your campaign, meet with your team to evaluate and discuss the results with questions such as these:

Are there things we could have done a different way?
Are there ways we could have cut costs?
If some aspects failed, what do we believe was the cause?
What was our learning experience regarding our audience or marketing methods?
What type of feedback could we collect from our campaign participants?

Conclusion

It's never simple to run campaigns, yet they're beneficial and essential to developing a thriving brand. A marketing campaign brings specific outputs that stand out from general marketing strategies and reach your customers through innovative and compelling methods.

While taking that first step, start thinking of things that would benefit your audience and build upon that. All in all, your audience is the driving force of your brand and marketing.