When you’re creating a marketing campaign, one of the biggest decisions to make is what type of message you’re going to be sending out there. By choosing the right angle and approach, you can increase your chances of success significantly. But by going about it wrong, your business might suffer irreparable damage. This guide will help you determine the best course of action for your unique situation so that you can create effective marketing campaigns that help your business thrive.
A marketing campaign is a series of tasks, events, and activities that delivers value over time to create awareness, interest, and desire for a product or service. A successful marketing campaign builds rapport with customers by establishing meaningful relationships with them over time. It will also provide added value to the customer throughout their lifecycle as you continue marketing your products and services. Building a strong relationship with your customer allows you greater selling opportunities, creating brand loyalty and long-term sales.
Identify your Goal
Before you can effectively create any marketing campaign, it’s important to identify your goal for doing so. Is your business trying to gain more customers, or are you looking for ways to increase sales from current customers? One of these might be much easier than the other—for example, if you already have an email list, sending out an email with a coupon code might be just what you need. If not, taking out print ads or trying paid search ads could prove trickier.
Pick the Right Social Media Channel
To determine which social media channel(s) you should use, try asking yourself if your target audience spends time on that platform. If they don’t, it might not be worth it for you to invest your time into trying to market there. For example, if you’re an accountant looking for small business clients and know that your target audience isn’t active on LinkedIn then investing energy into building a presence there is probably not worthwhile.
Create an Appealing Campaign
Keep in mind that you’re going to be judged on all facets of your campaign — from conception through execution. It’s crucial that you not only think about how every aspect will look, but how it will feel, too. Successful campaigns aren’t just aesthetically pleasing, they speak to people on an emotional level. If they don’t appeal emotionally, they won’t generate results.
Select a Target Market
One of your main goals is probably getting your product, or service in front of many people as possible. However, you must identify and target your best prospects first. Targeting everybody ends up wasting time, effort, and money on those who won’t give you what you want — buyers.
For example, a private equity would rather target high-net-worth individuals and institutional investors. In order to reach their full potential and expand their audience, they can reach out to a private equity marketing company to help them identify these audiences and create targeted communication campaigns that will engage them.
Decide on Reward Tiers
Tiers are levels of rewards that your customers can receive depending on how much they pledge. Every crowdfunding project must have at least one reward tier, and most projects offer several tiers as a way of enticing backers to contribute more. When selecting reward tiers, think about what level of commitment you’re comfortable asking from backers and what range of rewards makes sense for your project.
Outline Details of Your Campaign
Decide what kind of campaign you’re going to run. The specific goals of your campaign will determine which strategy is right for you. Do you want to educate people about an issue, sell them something, or create buzz? Remember that every marketing campaign requires some promotion and time spent on advertising. Whether it’s social media, traditional advertising such as TV or radio spots, billboards, or something else entirely —getting your campaign out there takes effort.
Create Shareable Content for People to Share
A marketing campaign won’t succeed unless you can get people to share it. Your content must be shareable, which means it needs to be relevant and interesting. Don’t limit yourself in terms of creativity, either—reach out for new ideas for different media. For example, there may not have been enough time or resources to create an animated video for your last campaign; if so, consider taking up a friend on their offer to collaborate on something next time around.
Keep An Eye on Analytics
Even if you don’t have an analytics expert on staff, you should be looking at your website traffic data regularly. Google Analytics is a great free tool for measuring site traffic. More importantly, it will tell you what content visitors are most interested in reading. This insight can help you focus your efforts on producing more content in future posts.
Before starting your campaign, you must understand who your target audience is and how you plan on reaching them. In addition, take some time to think about how you will define success. Use these metrics as a way of evaluating and improving your efforts in future campaigns.
