An effective marketing campaign can increase revenue, boost your brand image, and position your business ready to take the next step in its growth.
1. Get Clear On Your Goals
Knowing exactly what you want your marketing campaign to achieve is vital and will determine every part of how you create it, run it, and measure its success. Resist setting a vague goal of, for example, simply increasing profit; instead, be as specific as possible. Perhaps you would like to reach a new audience, increase the value of your average order, or increase the incidences of repeated custom. Having a precision-focused target means that your campaign’s success can be measured throughout, and at the culmination of, the drive.
As part of this planning process, set your budget for the campaign, too. Make sure that it is realistic and that it will cover all of the required expenses. You may want to include a small buffer amount, just in case of unexpected expenses.
2. Sort Out The Basics
Whether you’re planning an email marketing campaign, a series of targeted ads, or a social media drive, it is crucial to make sure that all of the text used is high quality and up to a professional standard. Messages, web content, blogs, or newsletters that are peppered with typos and full of grammatical errors can undermine your business and be detrimental to the image that you want to endorse. If these communications are a potential new customer’s first impression of your business, you want it to be a great one.
Writing tools and grammar checkers are an affordable and simple way to ensure that your writing is polished and error-free and reflects positively on your business. Go now to this article, for a rundown of how grammar checkers can improve your writing, by not only eliminating errors but also due to the tools that many now feature, which can ensure consistency of tone as well as checking for plagiarism. Some packages also incorporate training modules and reports to further help you identify areas for improvement.
3. Choose The Media
Selecting the right media for your campaign could mean the difference between the success or failure of your marketing efforts. To make the right decision, consider your target audience, and the forum in which they are most likely to see and be receptive to your message.
For example, pay-per-click (PPC) ads are probably your best bet if your goal is to increase your online sales, drive more people to your website, or increase awareness of your business’s social media presence. Increasing foot traffic to your physical store is likely to be best achieved with TV or newspaper advertising – especially if, regarding the latter, you include discount vouchers. You may choose to use blogs, content marketing, or a series of newsletters to get your message across.
In many cases, a combined approach produces the best results, with various channels being used to drive a campaign. Pay careful attention to certain media types that prove to be particularly effective so that you can utilize these to an even greater extent in your next marketing mission.
4. Use SEO
The proper and effective use of SEO (search engine optimization) on your website or in the online content you produce as part of your marketing campaign can make a huge difference to the results you see. When used well, SEO means that your business or brand will rank much higher than it otherwise would in search engine results.
For example, if you’re running a small chain of restaurants offering all-organic meals in Bristol, then SEO deployed effectively could mean that a Google search made of ‘healthy places to eat in Bristol’ brings up your business on the first page of the returned results.
Using this tool correctly is the key, however, as nothing will put an audience off faster than a blog post or a website stuffed with keywords. All content should be high-quality and readable, and this is more important than the inclusion of SEO at any grammatical cost!
Find the keywords you should include in your content using a dedicated tool or piece of software – there are several free options online. Make sure that your content clearly addresses any queries that a visitor may have and, if you can, aim for your content to encourage shares. Creating an optimized visitor experience alongside the proper use of SEO will ultimately result in a stronger online presence and support both your marketing campaign and your business in general.
5. Optimize Your Message
There are two elements to this stage of planning your campaign. Firstly, the message of your campaign needs to engage your target audience: it should get across how your product or service will benefit them or solve a problem they have as clearly as possible.
Connecting with your audience’s experiences or interests will make your message all the more powerful, too, as is partly why identifying the characteristics of your target audience in the planning stage is so important.
Secondly, determine how you want your message to sound: think about which words you will use, the tone of the message, and whether you want it to be, for example, humorous or informative. Make it succinct, to the point, and with a clear and powerful call-to-action, and determine whether you wish to incorporate images. Bear in mind that, on average, an individual will decide whether or not to engage with a marketing message within about three seconds, so make your message stand out.
6. Analyze The Results
It may be tempting to wait until your campaign has ended before measuring the results and determining the parts that proved most successful. However, it’s a much better idea to analyze results as the campaign develops and progresses. Wickedreports.com can analyze marketing efforts and provide actionable data on marketing results.
If, for example, the pay-per-click element of your marketing drive is performing beyond expectations, but the email advertising linking to your social media is not producing results, then ascertaining this early on and making the necessary changes to your campaign could pay dividends. Perhaps your email message needs tweaking, and your spend on pay-per-click advertising increased, if your budget has a buffer that would allow for this, or if you can decrease costs in other areas.
Once your campaign has run its full course, perform a final assessment of the results, focusing on whether or not the goals you set in the planning stage have been successfully met. This information can help you to understand what adjustments could be made next time and how to capitalize on the wins going forward.
