Launching Marketing Campaigns: Everything You Need to Launch a Successful Promotion
When you’re ready to promote your business, it can be a little confusing. You know you want to launch a marketing campaign, but what does that look like?
- What makes a marketing campaign different from a marketing strategy?
- How do you get started?
- And, what do you need to plan for and execute a marketing campaign that actually works?
We’re going to dive into these details and give you an outline of how to create marketing campaigns that help you reach your goals and drive results.
What Is a Marketing Campaign?
A marketing campaign is a defined plan of action designed to create a specific marketing result. A marketing campaign is one piece of a larger marketing strategy.
A marketing strategy is a broad plan that outlines a brand's overall marketing goals, direction, and objectives. It outlines what the brand would like to see happen, but it doesn’t outline the exact steps to get there.
A marketing campaign fits with the marketing strategy. Each campaign is a singular plan to reach the overall goals of the marketing strategy. A marketing strategy will have multiple marketing campaigns designed to help reach the broader goals.
For example, an Italian restaurant might have a marketing strategy that is focused on retaining existing customers and attracting new business.
Their marketing campaigns may include
- An email marketing campaign that sends a 25% off coupon to past customers if they don’t visit the restaurant in more than three months.
- A social media marketing campaign that boost their social post about their buy-one-get-one Thursday personal pie special.
- A PPC Google ad campaign that shows ads when nearby customers search for local Italian restaurants.
Each individual marketing campaign fits within the larger marketing strategy. Each has different components, start and end dates, goals, audiences, and distribution channels -- yet they all work toward the larger goals of the brand’s marketing strategy.
So as you begin to promote your brand, start with a marketing strategy that outlines your overall goals. Then, create individual marketing campaigns that drive results that support those goals.
Elements of a Successful Marketing Campaign
To run successful marketing campaigns, you’re going to need a few things.
#1) Audience Description
Your marketing strategy may already have an outline of your audience. But for each marketing campaign, drill deeper into your audience. Identify exactly who you want to target in the individual campaign, which in many cases will be a smaller, more specific segment of your overall audience.
For example, the Italian restaurant’s audience for the email marketing campaign will be different from the audience for the social media marketing or PPC campaigns. The email campaign is specifically targeting an audience of existing customers. Knowing that difference will change the way you talk to and market to that specific audience.
Recommended Reading: Get to Know Your Customers Through Super Simple Buyer Personas
#2) Objectives & KPIs
Because a marketing campaign is designed to “create a specific marketing result,” it’s imperative to know the result you want to create before you start. You must have a clear goal or objective for your campaign.
What do you want to happen as a result of the campaign? Do you want to:
- Generate leads
- Build brand awareness
- Drive sales
- Increase website traffic
- Get more social followers
- Improve SEO
When you know where you want to go, it will be easier to outline a marketing campaign plan to get there. Outline specifically what you want to accomplish, and then list out key performance indicators that will help you measure your success.
Recommended Reading: Confused About Marketing Metrics and Analytics? Let This Be Your Guide
#3) Budget
It’s always a good idea to know how much money you want to spend before designing a marketing campaign. When running your first few campaigns, it might be difficult to know how much to set aside for each campaign.
But as you run campaigns and track your results, it will be easier to set budgets as you can look at past performance to determine ROI and value. Either way, assign a value to each campaign so you know how much you are willing to spend as that will help you use the money in the most effective way.
#4) Type of Campaign / Distribution Channel
When you know your audience, goals, and budget, you can start to determine which type of campaign will work best for you.
The type of campaign refers to the distribution channel that you will use to run your campaign. To determine which type of campaign will work best, ask:
- Where is the best place to connect with my target audience?
- What channel will best help me reach my goals?
- What distribution channel fits into my budget?
For example, say the Italian restaurant didn’t have a large budget and wanted to get existing customers to return to their business. Email marketing was the perfect type of campaign because it directly reached the target audience, fit within the budget, and helped to drive the intended goal (getting people to return to the business).
#5) Collateral
When you know what type of campaign you’re going to run and what distribution channel you will use, you can then start to plan out your collateral needs.
Collateral includes any assets that you need to execute your campaign. It may include both processes that need to be executed and actual assets you need to create.
For example, if you’re running an email marketing drip campaign, you need the email copy, subject lines, and email marketing software. You also need someone to write the copy, add content, and schedule the emails.
Outline everything you need to launch the campaign. If you’re working on the campaign with other people, also determine who is responsible for creating assets or executing processes.
With these five pieces of the puzzle, you'll be able to put together marketing campaigns that effectively and efficiently promote your business.
How do You Measure the Performance of Marketing Campaigns?
In order to measure your marketing campaigns to determine how successfully they are performing, you will need to refer back to your Objectives & KPIs. You will need to establish some benchmarks to measure against. These benchmarks could be established with your own marketing data, industry average data and metrics by tactics. Having all this data will help you measure the performance of the marketing campaigns enabling you to further optimize them over time.
Recommendation: Start by measuring your Cost per Conversion metrics. If you are seeking to generate leads with a marketing campaign, determine the overall Cost per Lead and if that is inline with your business goals and budget. You can compare how each channel is performing or contributing to the overall marketing strategy.
Recommended Reading: 3 Examples of Real Campaign ROI
Launch Marketing Campaigns with mySuite
Now that you know what marketing campaigns are and what you need to setup and launch effective plans -- it’s time to get started.
And, MyArea Network has the perfect place to begin.
MyArea Network recently launched mySuite, a local marketing platform that helps you launch and monitor marketing campaigns.
When you create your free account, you get access to the Marketing Marketplace where you can set up and start running campaigns for:
- Text Marketing
- Social Media
- Geofencing
- Local Display Ads
- Event Promotions
So what are you waiting for? You now have the know-how and the tools to help you launch marketing campaigns that effectively promote your business to local customers.
Start driving business today. Sign up for your free MyArea Network mySuite account.
