A Simple Formula To Help You Plan Your Marketing Campaigns Effectively
Let's face it, planning marketing campaigns can be tough. There are so many variables at play that it can easily wind up feeling like rocket science. You have to consider the goals you want to achieve, the type of campaign that should be run to meet those goals (awareness vs. action – and a thousand different types of action campaigns), audience demographics, the message of your campaign, the channels you're going to use to deliver it, how your going to test it and optimize it…and this is all before you even start considering what media you want to use or even what your messages might be! It's easy to get overwhelmed. A good way to help simplify this process is to create a template like the one included in this article. One of the most important things to when preparing to set up a marketing campaign is to thoroughly plan it out! Let’s break down how to do so in an effective way.
First things first: What the heck is a marketing campaign? A marketing campaign is a promotional period or plan for how and when you deliberately create awareness about a product, service, or brand. There can be many different shapes and forms that a marketing campaign takes on. There are also many various approaches to marketing campaign development as well as management. Let me break down how I go about planning marketing campaigns!
Define the goal
The first thing you want to consider when planning your marketing campaigns is to define your goals.What are you trying to accomplish right now? This will define the GOAL of your marketing campaign. You can have many different marketing campaigns running at the same time! So, if you have several goals, your marketing campaigns are just going to help you more effectively juggle, balance, and execute them.
Some common marketing campaigns I set up and run on the regular include:
Brand awareness campaigns
Community building campaigns
Brand trust + loyalty building campaigns
Service/Product promotion campaigns
New product/Service launch campaigns
Evergreen Value campaigns
Define the type of campaign
As you will see from the above list, not all marketing campaigns are about just trying to sell something! In fact, the best marketing campaigns don't sell anything at all! Rather, they help support the growth, nurturing and sustainability of your customer journey. In doing so, when you go to sell it becomes a heck of a lot easier!
Some of the common goals you may personally have that can help you establish what type of campaign to run:
The goal of growing your audience
The goal of increasing content engagement and community interaction
The goal of generating more referrals
Launching a new offer
Consistently promoting an evergreen offer
Growing your email list
Driving traffic to a blog or podcast
Once you do the above, now you want to make sure you have your target market defined for the campaign you are running (who the campaign is for) as well as what the message of the campaign is (your verbal brand aka copy and creative direction). After doing this, you are ready to move onto the final stage which is developing your content (or media) strategy!
Establish a content strategy
Let’s now talk about some ways to make it easier to plan the content that will support the campaigns! Depending on the type of marketing campaign you are creating, chances are there will be certain types of content that will best suite it.
Some examples:
If you are running a marketing campaign to help you grow your brand audience: This type of marketing campaign is for awareness and discoverability building! So, the types of content you want to create for this type of campaign should address the first stage of your customer journey. People who experience this campaign probably don't know much if anything about your brand and therefore need to see content that helps them get to know who you are in a way that helps them quickly make a decision as to whether or not you're their cup of tea 🍵 .
Content that is great for this type of campaign:
“For Fun”: Content that highlights your brand personality, values, and UVP.
Evergreen Value: Content that addresses common questions you get around your areas of specialty, top tips, best practices, roundups and how to's
Thought leadership: Content that shows your unique perspective, spin or approach to a topic relating to your specialty and/or industry issue, providing an innovative solution!
You can have the above type of marketing campaign running on evergreen (aka at all times!).
If you are running a marketing campaign to launch a new product and/or service: This type of marketing campaign targets the final stage of your customer journey: Conversions! Therefore, this type of campaign should be catered to the audience you have already built, nurtured, and ran through the other stages of your customer journey. People in this type of campaign already are familiar with your brand, have built a relationship with your brand, and have trust established with your brand to the extent that they are interested in what you have to offer!
Content that is great for this type of campaign:
Community Spotlight: Content that highlights a case study, user generated content, interviews… and creates a culture around what you are promoting.
Informational: Content that shares your process, what people can expect, who the product/service is for, why you created it, how its unique (USP), and so on.
Multimedia: Content such as infographics, listicles, demo processes, or micro snippets of longer form content like a blog.
This type of campaign can have a time limit on it if you are in a controlled launch…or it can be set up in a pseudo-evergreen format to consistently promote evergreen offers over time!
When you are planning your marketing campaigns, I hope you understand that you can be running many different campaigns at the same time. Say you create and publish content 5 days a week. You could realistically be running anywhere from 1-5 different types of marketing campaigns a week if you really wanted to! I recommend trying to keep your marketing campaigns more condensed, where you may run 2-3 tops a week. This way you don't cause your audience to head spin in confusion over all of the content and various things you are encouraging with it!
The more planned out your are with your marketing campaigns, paired with the more strategic you are with your media creation, the easier it becomes to run an intentional yet highly effective content strategy week by week that generates the types of outcomes you're looking for. Keep in mind: Data doesn't lie! Watching your analytics closely will help you determine what's working and what's not, giving you an opportunity to adapt your methods week by week to get better results.
In a nutshell, by applying these tips to your marketing campaign planning, you ensure that you have a clear path for reaching your audience with your relevant and compelling message. Sometimes, it is the simple things that make all the difference. Now before you run off to start planning your next marketing campaign, remember that not all campaigns are created equally. The strategies for launching a new product or service will be different from strategies for building brand awareness or generating fresh engagement. If you need help identifying the best strategy for your business or organization, don't hesitate to reach out -- we have experience in both areas.
Until next time…
Natalie Brite
DoGoodBizStudio
