A marketing campaign can seem like a daunting prospect if you’ve never done it before. Luckily, plenty of other marketers have done this, and you can benefit from the wisdom they gleaned from their successes and their marketing mistakes. This guide on how to run a successful marketing campaign will help you with everything from choosing your target audience to determining which keywords are right for your business to finally developing your brand persona to highlight it.
Table of Contents
Do Your Research
Before you even begin drafting copy for your next marketing campaign, you need to conduct thorough research on your target audience and how they interact with your product. Speak with existing customers and potential customers and ask what it is about your product or service that resonates with them. What do they wish were different? Find out where they hang out online and what it is that compels them there. If applicable, consider using surveys, focus groups, interviews or other forms of market research to help determine what exactly is driving people’s purchasing decisions. This way, when it comes time to create copy for your advertising campaign, you’ll be able to target all potential audiences based on concrete data rather than assumptions.
Understand Your Audience
It’s not enough to simply start a marketing campaign. You need to also know your audience and speak directly to them. A good place to start is by paying attention to what people are searching for on social media and in search engines. When you have an idea of what interests your target audience, craft content that will address those needs or desires.
This kind of information is readily available through platforms like Google Trends, Twitter Analytics, and Facebook Insights. Use their tools as best you can so that you understand what topics your audience wants to be addressed. Otherwise, it’s going to be very difficult for you to run a successful marketing campaign. You should create a goal before you start any campaign to see if you’re meeting its objectives. What is the point of running this campaign? What do you want the outcome to be? If the desired result isn’t being achieved, it’s time to make some changes.
Plan Out Every Detail
It’s easy to come up with ideas on what you want your marketing campaign to say and do, but it’s not so easy to think through every detail of how you can make that message clear. Thoroughly plan out each step of your marketing campaign in advance; don’t leave anything out, because it will show later on. It’s easy to rush things and gloss over details when they start coming together but that usually ends up being where things fall apart.
By taking the time at each stage of your campaign planning process, you give yourself more chances for success by covering all of your bases early. You might find that there are some gaps in your plan or some new opportunities arise during this process which you hadn’t anticipated. That’s great! Use these chance encounters as opportunities to add even more information about your company or product into the mix. Remember: Your goal is to market effectively so you need a comprehensive understanding of everything about your company before executing any sort of advertising campaign.
Promote the Product
If you’re an experienced marketer, you might be aware of some of your campaigns’ key performance indicators (KPIs). At least you should know if they’re increasing or decreasing and by how much. If not, then it’s time to dive into your analytics platform and look at what’s working and what’s not. One thing that’ll help determine whether your campaign is successful is if it brings you, new customers. If your advertising isn’t generating new leads, no amount of brand recognition will help you generate revenue. Be careful that your marketing plan doesn’t get stale even if something has been wildly successful in previous years, things change fast. While trying to keep your current customer base happy, make sure you’re also finding ways to attract new ones.
Use Different Tools to Market a New Product
When you’re introducing a new product, there are several different tools you can use to market it. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google have been used effectively by thousands of businesses across all industries. Try creating an account on each platform and see which one works best for your business. However, don’t put all your eggs in one basket; try experimenting with multiple platforms before making any decisions. You may be surprised by the results.
Contrasting a marketing campaign with pure selling
in marketing, you have multiple goals. Sales can still be one of them, but you’re aiming for more than just immediate sales. You need to consider how your campaign fits into your overall business strategy and how it affects long-term growth. It has to drive revenue, but it also needs to build relationships with customers and influence the positive perception of your brand. This can result in direct revenue at some point down the line or an indirect pay-off by improving customer satisfaction and reducing the churn rate.
There are five steps to creating an effective marketing campaign:
1) Figure out what problem your product solves
2) Pick a good channel
3) Create content
4) Measure performance
5) Analyze the data.
The first step is most important, because if there’s no pain point that your product solves, then there won’t be any demand for it either.
Know When it’s Time to Change Up
If you’re running an ad that seems to be successful, but it suddenly stops working even if it was one of your best-performing ads in other ways it might be time for you to make some changes. When that happens, advertisers need to experiment with different elements of their campaign or try something completely new. No matter what, marketers should always be willing and ready for change. As a marketer, try not to get attached to an ad that’s not performing well. If it’s not working out for you, move on and give another idea a shot instead. Sometimes we can get too comfortable with our strategies and they stop being effective, so the key is to stay open-minded and learn from past mistakes.