When you develop and launch a product, it can feel like a huge relief to see the progress you have made up until the finished product line. But the next step is crucial; gaining traffic into your ecommerce site or attention for your product can be difficult, time-consuming, and sometimes may seem impossible. This is where marketing campaigns come into play. An effective campaign can allow the product to sell itself. The purpose of such a campaign is to provide leads, clients and customers to your goods and services. In this blog, we show you the outlines on how to make your marketing campaign a success utilising marketing best practices in 2021.
Establish Your Goals
Before you can start planning your campaign, you need to have a detailed marketing proposal clearly outlining your overall marketing goals. Your goals should follow the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely) method of strategising for best results. Marketing goals vary between every campaign and must be established based on your company’s situation. Generic goals such as “attain more customers” are ineffective; marketing campaigns should be personalised to whatever the goals are and, unsurprisingly, more personalised marketing campaigns are able to “attain more customers” effectively. Goals can be whatever the company requires, but here are a few examples as a guide:
• Increase sales by xx% over X period.
• Improve average customer satisfaction, measured by google reviews/ratings from xx out of 5 to xx out of 5 over an X period.
• Convert current into recurring customers by %x amount by X period.
Other marketing goals can include:
– Product-oriented marketing
– Brand development
– Email-focused marketing
– Content marketing
– User-generated marketing
– Public awareness campaigns
Determine The Budget
After establishing clear and effective goals for your marketing campaign, the next step is to acknowledge a budget to keep track of and keep you on track. Not all campaigns need a strict budget, but it can be good to establish a rough outline as a minimum. Persona research often costs money, and you’ll want to include these costs as part of your campaign budget. Determining a budget can also help with any initial expectations going into a marketing campaign. A company with a bigger budget is more likely to reach a wider audience and thus may have larger expectations than otherwise.
When considering your budget, we like to focus on KPIs around profitability like return on investment (ROI) as opposed to having a concrete budget and sticking to it. This is because, for example, if you are able to reach 5 sales giving you revenues of £100, and you spent £40 on marketing, that’s a £60 profit-on marketing. However, when considering other variables like product costs and such factors, that 250% ROI ((100/40)*100) will quickly become unrealistic and misrepresentative.
That’s why a successful budget should consider various factors and be flexible throughout the campaign to make sure all efforts are maximised without compromises.
Market Research
Who is your ideal customer? Developing an effective and successful campaign is more times than not dependent on the initial market research conducted. This market research will determine who you will target, how you will target them and the strategies that will ensure KPIs are met. What communication channels are you going to use? Email? Direct mail? Social media? Pay-per-click online advertising?
The strategy you pursue should be entirely dependent on your buyer persona and the most effective method of reaching them. For example, a stay-at-home mum is likely to have a lower budget than a CEO. Whereas if your key audience is in their 60s, they’re less likely to be tech savvy than millennials. These factors must be considered when deciding on the most effective methods to reaching your ideal customers.
Create a Timeline and Action Plan
Finally, the next key step is creating a timeline and action plan; record exactly what you are going to do and when. This will reduce ambiguity and ensure you follow through. Also, a detailed action plan allows you to keep track for future campaigns as a benchmark.
Action plans can be very simple. As long as the plan considers SMART goals, it should contain the necessary information required. For example, campaign plans can be:
- Sponsor a local event in July, (£200 to sponsor the event)
- Issue a paid social media marketing campaign for 4 weeks, at £5 per day, (for a total of £140)
These SMART goals can be used in conjunction with another. This is why having a holistic, underlying marketing campaign goal is effective as it allows cohesion between different activities within the specified period of the campaign.
Implementation
The implementation phase of the marketing campaign revolves around ‘pulling the trigger’ and getting started. A lot of businesses plan out great marketing campaigns but lack the motive to start which could be due to fear of failure or lack of experience. Here at Brighter Directions, we are able to support you from the beginning. This involves both the planning and implementation phase of your marketing campaign. Simply reach out to us today through our easy-to-use form or call us on 01246586330.
