#1. Assess the current situation
First of all, assess your current situation. Because you are the authority on your business, you are best positioned to take stock of how your business has been performing. As a result you can identify areas of strength and weakness, and importantly, areas where there is potential to grow.
- Are you currently reaching your targets?
- What areas of your business are performing at or above expectations?
- Are there areas which are underperforming?
- Can you identify the factors which are influencing performance?
- Is your current performance due to ongoing or incidental factors?
#2. Decide what you want to achieve
Set a clear and measurable goal for this marketing campaign. While you may want to achieve many objectives setting a clear and specific goal for each marketing campaign rather than a general aim will yield better results.
- Maybe you want to grow sales of a particular product or service?
- Or are you trying to promote a new offering?
- Do you want to target new customers
- Reward the loyalty of existing customers?
#3. Write it down
Once you set your goal, write it down. As a result of this simple action you will be much more clear about the focus of this specific marketing campaign. You can always run further campaigns designed to meet other objectives, but never lose sight of what this marketing campaign is setting out to achieve.
#4. Set a timescale
Setting a timescale is the next step.
- Is there a seasonal element to your campaign, because that can be very useful in deciding on your campaign timescale?
- Have you looked at your past activity or your competitors’ campaigns to help determine best launch dates?
- Can you launch ‘early bird offers’ to extend the life of a seasonal marketing campaign?
- How does this campaign fit in with other marketing campaigns you are running throughout the year?
Tip:?Keeping a note of when competitors run their campaigns can help you determine best launch dates
#5. Assign a budget
Because you always have to be mindful of the bottom line decide what can you afford to spend to achieve your set goal.
- Can you use existing resources to support this marketing campaign?
- What additional resources are required?
- Can you make more effective use of social media channels?
- Another option that can be cost effective is the use of influencers and testimonials. How can you leverage those for your campaign?
#6. Who is this campaign targeting?
You need to identify who you are trying to target for the campaign.
- Have you clearly identified who you are targeting with this campaign?
- What kind of messaging is especially relevant to that customer?
- Do they respond to particular incentives or calls to action?
- Most of all, your messaging in this marketing campaign has to provide the solution to an issue that particular customer is facing.
#7. Identify the best channel to reach them on
Next step is to identify the right channels for your campaign.
- How will you get your message in front of your target customers?
- Do they use social media channels, and if so, which are the most appropriate ones to use?
- Do they also respond to SMS promotions or email promotions?
- Another factor to consider is how to drive traffic to your website, from your customers’ channel of choice.
#8. Create engaging content
Another key step in any marketing campaign is creating content that is relevant, timely and of interest to your target audience. Because that is the content that will engage your audience.
- Decide on the key message of this campaign
- Ensure your message offers your target audience a solution
- Create attractive visual content, which be easily adapted for Facebook/Instagram/website etc
Tip: Canva.com is a super tool for creating your main creative element, and you can edit to resize for different channels in their Canva for Work programme
#9. Measure the effectiveness of the campaign
How will you know if your campaign is successful? In addition to hosting your message, your website is a key tool in gathering valuable customer insights while they visit and navigate your website. As a result of driving traffic from each marketing campaign to a specific landing page you can analyse that data and gain information that is especially relevant to key campaigns, and customers.
- Have you decided on the key metrics you need to measure?
- Have you set up tracking links and reports on key metrics for this campaign?
Tip: Google Analytics allows you to set up custom reports so you can easily gather the data that is especially relevant to each specific campaign.
#10. Review
As a result of a well planned campaign you can now carry out a comprehensive review once the campaign is over. Maybe you have met or exceeded your goals, maybe not. Either way, since you have valuable, measurable results you are more informed about what does and does not work with your target customers. Therefore you have gained valuable customer insight, and as a result can use that to design an even more highly targeted marketing campaign to achieve your next goal.
Finally, remember only you have the specific answers about your business, because you know it, and your customers best. However, you need to organise that information, plan effectively and measure everything. That is the secret to developing a Kickass Marketing Campaign.
Over to you now. Did you find this article useful? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.