What is the likelihood you would say “yes” to a marriage proposal after one date? It’s the same likelihood a person will buy your service or product after just one out-of-the-blue email, or one social media ad. Unless you sell a product that people buy largely on impulse, there will need to be multiple “exposures” to your message before your customer hands over their hard earned money.
Which means that running a marketing campaign is a bit like dating: You need your audience to trust you, like you, and eventually adore you—but that only happens over time, and through multiple interactions. To pull that off, your campaign will need a fair amount of planning: From knowing what a campaign is for, what the elements of a campaign are, and which combination of tactics to use to reach your marketing goals.
What is a Campaign, and What Makes it Unique?
Marketing campaigns are structured, strategic initiatives designed to reach a specific goal. These goals can range from boosting awareness of a new product to building customer relationships. Such campaigns usually involve a series of tactics, which may include email, print advertisements, point-of-sale (POS) displays, television or radio ads, digital advertising, and social media. These tactics are not just thrown together; they are engineered to lead customers to a specific action or belief.
In other words, “campaign” is not just a fancy word to describe a part of your marketing practices. In order to qualify as a campaign:
- You must have intentionality in what you’re wanting to achieve. You need to set a specific goal within a specific time frame. For example, a broad goal might be to increase clothing sales by 25% in 1 year. A campaign goal would be more specific: sell out of your Fall/Winter collection starting September and ending in December.
- Campaigns have a start and an end date. There is no right or wrong when it comes to setting the length of a campaign. This could be seasonal: You can determine the length of your campaign to align with your sales cycle, or set up a different campaign each quarter. It’s really up to you and what you think your business can accomplish in said amount of time.
- Multiple campaign tactics need to be employed in order to reach your specific goal. Sending out one email won’t yield results; you might need to send out a series of emails, post on your social platforms, and do paid ads. By one count, there are up to 20 possible customer “touch points” where someone can be reached during a customer journey. Try to hit as many as you can, with each step pointing your audience to the same thing.
What are the Key Elements of a Campaign?
A campaign consists of several elements, which are crucial for planning, execution, and evaluation. (Think: Before the campaign runs, while the campaign runs, and after the campaign runs.)
1: Campaign Plan
You may be tempted to skip right to the implementation phase once you have an idea for a campaign. STOP – don’t do it! The first key to a successful marketing campaign is to create a plan – bring clarity to what you are trying to accomplish with your campaign and who you are trying to reach.
Campaign Objective or Goal: This is the overarching purpose of the campaign. It defines what the campaign aims to achieve, such as increasing brand awareness, boosting sales, or launching a new product.
Target Audience: Identifying the specific group of people or demographics that the campaign is intended to reach and influence. You can have a different audience for different campaigns; some of your followers and potential customers might need/like one of your services but have no need for a different service you provide.
Messaging: The core messaging you want to convey to your target audience. These should align with the campaign objective and resonate with the audience. The messaging should also align with your foundational brand voice and tone so it is consistent with other messages and campaigns you have running.
Campaign Strategy: The high-level plan outlining how you intend to achieve your campaign objectives. It includes the above mentioned goals, audience and messaging along with the channels, tactics, and resources you’ll use to achieve your goals and reach your audience.
2. Campaign Implementation
Once your plan is in place, THEN it is time for the actual implementation of the campaign, including the deployment of creative assets, advertising, and content distribution. Your plan and ideas are no good if you do not bring them to fruition. It is important to implement your campaign well, as everything you communicate impacts the way your audience feels about your company and products/services. However, resist the temptation of perfectionism. It is better to have good marketing in the place over none at all.
Creative Assets: Visual and textual content like images, videos, copywriting, and design elements that will be used in the campaign. This includes advertisements, social media posts, email templates, etc.
Media: The specific channels and platforms where you will run your campaign, such as social media, email marketing, paid advertising, print media, or events.
Timeline: A schedule outlining when each component of the campaign will be implemented, including start and end dates for all of the tasks that lead up to submitting or launching each deliverable.
Monitoring and Analytics: Continuous monitoring and measurement of campaign performance using key performance indicators (KPIs). How often you are reviewing performance is correlated with the length of your campaign. Shorter campaigns should be monitored more frequently, such as daily or weekly, whereas longer campaigns can be monitored on a bi-weekly or monthly basis. This helps in making adjustments as needed to optimize results.
Feedback and Iteration: Don’t just set it and forget it – monitoring your campaigns allows you to adjust or abandon tactics that are not working well to help you steward your resources well. Based on the campaign’s performance, feedback from the audience, and data analysis, you can implement adjustments to creative, audiences, channels, and messaging to improve its effectiveness.
To implement a campaign well, you (or a team member) will need to be able to manage multiple projects and components simultaneously, understanding how they work together to get you to your goal.
3. Campaign Evaluation
Assess the campaign’s success against the set goals and objectives. Analyze the data to understand what worked and what didn’t.
Record Analytics: Create reports summarizing the campaign’s results and lessons learned. These reports are often used to inform future campaigns.
Review Analytics: You and key leadership at your company should be reviewing the analytics report and documenting what you want to replicate or change in future campaigns.
4. Campaign Budget
The financial allocation needed to run a campaign includes costs for advertising, creative development, and other expenses. Campaign budgeting is important for several reasons:
- Goal Alignment: A budget helps align your campaign goals with your financial capabilities. It ensures that your objectives are realistic and achievable within the allocated budget.
- Measurement and Accountability: A budget sets clear expectations for spending and results. This makes it easier to measure the performance of the campaign against its financial goals, holding the team accountable for the outcomes. It also gives you a clear view of your ROI for the campaign. When setting a budget, don’t forget to include the cost of paid advertising as well as the cost of producing the marketing materials you will need for the campaign (i.e. landing page, email blasts, digital ads, sell sheets, trade show graphics, etc).
- Efficiency and Optimization: Budgeting encourages you to continually assess and optimize your spending. You can reallocate funds to tactics that are delivering the best results and cut back in underperforming areas.
Campaign budgeting is a fundamental aspect of effective campaign planning and management. It helps you make informed financial decisions, achieve your campaign objectives, and ensure responsible use of resources.
These key elements are interconnected and should be carefully planned and coordinated to ensure a successful integrated marketing campaign that aligns with your overall marketing, business, and financial goals.
Campaign Example
A good example of a successful campaign is the Pumpkin Spice campaign Starbucks repeats each fall season. The genius of this campaign is that the company actually has this flavor year round, but they use several tactics to create hype for it each Autumn. If you’re a fan of their coffee, you already know this flavor craze is coming every single year—but the ads, messaging, and email marketing they come up with get you in the mood for Pumpkin Spice all over again in a new and exciting way.
Putting it All Together
To sum up campaign planning:
- Make it intentional, with specific goals,
- Have a timeline with clear start and end dates,
- Always be evaluating the effectiveness of your marketing campaign
- Define your budget
Along the way, be sure to use metrics to help you analyze what’s working and what isn’t. This will help you plan the next campaign—or even pivot during the campaign to make the most of your successes.
Campaign planning is just one part of marketing plan implementation that can really help your business thrive. Imagine having a roadmap to help you be intentional about getting in front of the right audience to achieve your business goals. The Marketing Physical program is a great place to start to understand where you are currently and build a marketing roadmap for success.