How to Manage Your Marketing Campaigns Successfully

A marketing campaign is a big thing that if not managed well will be a detriment to your brand.

Marketing campaigns are focused efforts that guide customers towards a desired action. They give your brand an identity and make you recognizable in the crowded marketplace.

For these reasons, you need to make sure yours runs smoothly. However, this isn’t easy. Without proper execution, your campaigns will not be able to give you the publicity your company needs. This is why we’ve created this guide to highlight the steps for creating a successful marketing campaign.

What is a marketing campaign?

Marketing campaign definition: A marketing campaign is a collection of carefully planned activities aimed at delivering specific business outcomes. Marketing campaigns take a brand’s goals and transform them into practical targets that resonate with the needs of the customers, which are then executed step by step. Such campaigns help brands earn their audience’s trust and make customers see the solutions the business offers.

Generally, digital marketing campaigns are set up to:

• Build brand visibility
• Attract more customers
• Attract organic traffic

Take note that marketing campaigns exist outside a brand’s ongoing marketing efforts. They are designed to promote a focused idea or achieve a particular outcome. They also have a budget, a set timeline, and the tools/resources you will use to connect with your target audience.

Let’s say your business is trying to attract customers in a particular area. So, you hire local influencers and ask your existing customers for referrals. At the same time, your regular marketing operation is going on – creating blog content, running Facebook and Google ads, and so on.

Now that we’ve clarified what a marketing campaign is let’s take a look at the different types of campaigns.

Different types of campaigns

Marketing is a large field, encompassing different verticals such as search marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, etc. All these activities are the responsibility of your marketing team and play an essential role in improving your brand’s visibility and driving long term goals.

The marketing campaigns a brand can execute include:

• Product marketing campaigns
• Email marketing campaigns
• Content marketing campaigns
• UGC campaigns
• Public relations campaigns
• Affiliate marketing campaigns
• Social media campaigns
• Acquisition marketing campaigns
• Paid marketing campaigns

How to manage your marketing campaigns successfully

Follow these steps to build an effective marketing campaign.

Choose your goals

Before you do anything, set your campaign’s objectives – the more specific and measurable your goals, the better. Not only does this make it easy to gauge your success, but clear-cut goals will also help you plan.

Maybe you want to increase the sales of a particular product. Do you want to sell 300 units? $5,000 worth of the product? Or get 50 percent of customers buying a different product to get this one as well? That’s the level of specificity you should be aiming for when setting your goals.

Besides helping you plan your campaigns and making it easy to gauge success, clear goals will help you determine which tools and resources will help you meet those goals. This will ensure your campaign runs smoothly without any problems.

Measure your KPIs

The goals you set determine the KPIs you will track. Marketing campaigns can be affected by many unforeseen circumstances, which will make it difficult for you to achieve your goals if not solved. Monitoring your relevant KPIs will help you see when things change and guide you on how to adjust your campaigns to meet your goals without too much trouble.

We have highlighted the important KPIs you should be tracking when running a campaign in our blog, 10 Common KPIs You Need to Watch in Your Marketing Strategy.

Understand your target audience

Keep your audience top of mind when validating your campaign’s goals and tactics. Who are you targeting, and which tactics resonate with that group? Understanding your audience will help you communicate directly and deliver marketing content that appeals to them.

This will help you attract more people since your campaigns provide them with value. You will learn more about the audience and use this information to improve your product or service offering.

Some of the characteristics you may want to consider when defining your audience include:

• Age
• Gender
• Level of education
• Job title
• Location
• Income bracket
• Interests
• Pain points

Understand what you need for your campaign

A marketing campaign connects you to your target audience. Once you’ve set your goals and identified your audience, you need to find the best ways to reach them. Campaign tools range include social media ad campaigns, SEO, paid search  and influencer marketing. Make sure the platforms and tools you select meet your goals and audience needs.

You also need resources to handle the responses your campaigns generate. How will you monitor order fulfillment, website comments, and traffic to your site? If you’re asking customers to sign up for your newsletter, do you have the resources to manage the list and ensure the newsletter is delivered regularly?

You need to assign people to handle different activities to ensure your campaign flows smoothly. When adding team members for the campaign, make sure they have the right skills for the job. If you will publish marketing content across your social channels to boost brand awareness, you need someone with excellent content development skills for this task. Remember, you can let a growth marketing agency handle some of these specialty tasks to make your campaigns impactful.

As you plan all these, ensure you have a budget that fits your campaign strategy. The budget should cover all the costs associated with your campaign, such as advertising expenses, media buys, content creation, and staff salaries.

Also, don’t forget to set a time period for your marketing activities. You don’t want to spend too much time on one activity and eat up your entire marketing budget.

Create a timeline

Record what you’re going to do and when. This increases the chances that you will follow through with your plan and make it easy to evaluate your campaign’s success.

For big projects, set the due dates for the smaller pieces of work. Include the outline, draft, and final content for that work. Make sure to include time for approvals and revisions in your schedule.

Execute your strategy

With everything set, your campaign is now ready to go live. Execute the growth marketing strategies you had planned for your campaign. Write your ad copy. Place your ads. Find someone (an influencer) to be the face of your campaigns. Whatever actions your marketing campaign involves, execute them and follow your workflow carefully to ensure the campaign brings the desired results.

Ensure your tracking tools are in place to help you capture valuable data from the campaigns. Your tracking methods will depend on the goals you had set. If your goal was to sell more of product A, you should keep a running tally of your sales. You should also ask customers how they heard about your product to help you optimize your marketing channels.

Measure your results

Measure your results to determine your success. How many items did you sell during the campaign week? If your objective was to increase product sales by 50 percent over four months, compare your sales figures during this time.

If you were running a social media marketing campaign, are you on track to get the number of followers you wanted? Are your posts getting likes and shares? Are people commenting on your posts and leaving valuable feedback?

To help you save time, invest in the best marketing campaign management software to make it easy to measure your efforts.

Use your outcome to plan for next time

Tracking campaign metrics is crucial because it helps you plan for next time. Once you get your marketing campaign results, you will know what to do to improve your strategies to bring even better results.

If you wanted to boost the sales of product A by 50 percent, but the results show that product sales increased by 100 percent, you’ll probably repeat that campaign next year (with a few changes of course).

Campaign metrics also reveal the weak aspects of your campaign. If your data shows that only 5 percent of sales came from Facebook ads, you may decide not to run that campaign next year.

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As you can see, marketing campaigns can be very complex. They have many moving parts that you have to get right if you want your campaign to succeed. Make a small mistake, and everything comes crashing down. You will not only fail to achieve your goals, but all the effort and resources go down the drain.

If you want your campaigns well managed, you should work with a marketing agency. The team at Growth Marketing Genie can help. We will design and manage your digital marketing campaign to make your company goals a reality and help you attract new customers for your business on a predictable basis.

Do you want to improve your marketing efforts? Our marketing strategy will help you deliver the best-in-class campaigns.