If you haven’t yet started a digital marketing campaign, one of the main reasons why you haven’t might be a simple lack of knowledge on how to get started.Calling it a “campaign” doesn’t exactly help, especially when you associate the word with complicated politics or a type of radical protest. Relax, that’s not what you’re getting into!The word “campaign” describes a series of actions taken with a specific goal in mind. So, a digital marketing campaign is simply a series of actions you take for the purpose of effectively marketing your company or business, using digital tools. A campaign can be big or small, can take a long time or a short time, can be focused on a subset of existing customers or can be aimed at a larger geographic area or particular demographic.To help you get started with your first digital marketing campaign, we have outlined five of the best tips and tricks for you to keep in mind to achieve campaign success. If you have experience creating and managing digital marketing campaigns, you can use this as a checklist for your next campaign to see if you can improve.
1. Set Marketing Goals
Remember that a campaign should remain focused around a specific objective. In order to ensure a great campaign, you need to first identify what your main goals are, keeping in mind that they should be realistic, financially feasible and properly measurable. Outlining your major goals will help you to determine the best action to take to move towards them.A marketing campaign goal is like any other type of goal, in that the more specific you are in setting your goal, the more specific your actions can be, and the better you will be able to determine your success.As an example, a personal goal to “lose weight” is not as effective as a goal to “lose five pounds over the next six weeks”. In this example, the first goal is nebulous, so it’s hard to know where to start or whether or not you’ve succeeded. The second goal, by contrast, has the definition of success built right in, which allows for more motivation and more measurable results.Being more specific also gives a better starting point to look for information on how to reach the specific goal.
2. Decide What to Offer
Offering something of value is a great way to get attention for your campaign. Your offer should support your goal. For example, if you want to drive more sales, try offering a coupon or discount. If you want people to help spread the word about your company or brand, offer them something they can share with a friend. If you want to get more people on your mailing list, offer a special download for people who sign up for your newsletter.Being specific helps here too. Simply advertising “a sale” will garner less attention than offering a specific product for a specific discount. Provide details about what you are offering and demonstrate the value of it to get more attention for your campaign. Focus on the main characteristics of your target demographic and think about what would appeal to them.
3. Utilize Great Marketing Tools
Part of what makes a digital marketing campaign so daunting for many people is not knowing how to handle the technical aspects of assembling an email newsletter, maintaining a mailing list or measuring results. These are indeed big tasks, and many business owners or volunteer coordinators don’t have the opportunity to develop the skills and experience necessary.This is where partnering with an expert source of great marketing tools comes into play. Using a service to handle all of the technical details will enable you to focus on your message and your customers, making the process of setting up your campaign much faster and easier. Research popular marketing tools that are relevant to your marketing needs and consider how they may benefit your campaign success.
4. Measure Campaign Results
When you have a goal and you’ve set your campaign in motion, you need to know whether or not it’s working. This means having some specific measurement by which you can tell if your campaign is reaching people and engaging them in the ways you want it to.The way you will measure success will depend on your actual campaign. For example, if you want to have more sales, that’s clearly what you need to measure. But there are other things that can determine whether your campaign is successful outside of your primary goal.For example, do you have a way to tell how many people read your newsletter? Can you determine how many customers were prompted to make purchases based on your marketing campaign? Even if you don’t meet your primary campaign goal, the more data you gather about your campaign, the more you can learn from it to improve future efforts.
5. Evaluate and Plan Ahead
When your campaign has run its course, one of the most important and valuable things you can do is to evaluate the results.If you’ve met your initial goal, that’s great! You have an example of what works and have gained some experience setting up a first campaign. If your campaign fell short in some respects, that’s okay too. Celebrate whatever successes you attained, and then analyze the total results. Decide what worked the best and why certain things didn’t. Use that information to plan for future marketing efforts, both via digital means and otherwise.Setting up a digital marketing campaign can be a big step towards increased success in many areas of your business or organization.Even if you’ve never attempted to do it before, carrying out a digital marketing campaign doesn’t have to be difficult or scary. Give it a try with a small campaign to gain some introductory experience and, before you know it, you’ll be making great campaigns and reaching more people than ever. Keep in mind these five simple steps when creating your first digital marketing campaign.
