COVID-19 disrupted all businesses’ financial projections last year, regardless of size. Because of the restrictions, in-person trades had vanished, and companies were on the verge of failure during the pandemic. Meanwhile, some businesses have shifted their operations to the digital realm to stay competitive and serve more customers. Companies discovered numerous opportunities to take their marketing to the next level while navigating these difficult times. These companies used technological tools to stay ahead of their marketing campaigns and achieve their long-term business objectives. Technology is completely transforming how businesses conduct marketing campaigns. Today, it dramatically impacts industries to reach their maximum audience.
The most effective marketing campaigns target customers and prospects with relevant and persuasive content through advertisements, mobile push notifications, emails or direct mail. Effective targeting requires a combination of sound intelligence, excellent audience insights, and tactical delivery to ensure that the correct content reaches the right person at the right time. Qualified marketers who have completed specialized courses, such as the online communications programs available at St Bonaventure University, can use effective campaign management to bring together the elements needed to drive compelling and highly engaging campaigns: quality data, audience segmentation, thoughtful scheduling, testing, and the continuous improvement of a campaign over time through insights, attribution and measurement.
What is a marketing campaign?
A marketing campaign is a collection of similar ideas used in tandem to support an overarching common theme. A marketing campaign is a collection of marketing tactics that work together to market a product or service through the appropriate media channels for that organization. Consider it big-picture marketing. Stand-alone marketing tactics may work occasionally. However, sustained marketing success occurs when those tactics are housed within a marketing plan fueled by targeted campaigns with a specific goal in mind.
The contents of these campaigns should be thoroughly researched, as should the strategies. As a result, a marketing event is created that delivers the right message at the correct time, to the right people, via the correct channel. Of course, you’re probably already running marketing campaigns. You just don’t refer to them as that. However, regardless of the terminology, one thing is certain for the majority of us: we can all do them better.
Ways to improve your campaign
Targeting
Finding a group of qualified leads for your campaign is analogous to targeting your marketing efforts. Before you begin any work, such as messaging or channel development, you must conduct preliminary research to determine which market segment you wish to target. Creating marketing or buyer personas to define these various groups of people is a strategic way to think about targeting. First, determine the characteristics of this subset for each persona. What do they enjoy and dislike? Where do they congregate? What are their most common problems or challenges? You want to define the characteristics of several sub-groups of your audience so that you can target them more precisely with your marketing.
One issue with marketing, mainly digital marketing, is noise. Many businesses say the same thing, and the majority of them don’t do the necessary research to determine who they are, what their message is, who needs to hear it, and how to get it out. Investigate your analytics and data, interview your customers, monitor and participate in social media conversations, and then create content that aligns your objectives with those of your audience, speaks to them uniquely, and is constantly reviewed and tweaked.
Customization
Tailoring campaigns is a marketing strategy related to persona creation. This can include customizing your marketing campaign messaging and researching the channels through which you send these messages. Make decisions that are appropriate for your target audience. For example, your research may reveal that one group of your customers avoids print media – you’ll want to create digital-only campaign materials for them. Another group may prefer only print advertisements. Before spraying a wide swath of marketing into the ether, you need to know this. You want to make sure that it lands correctly. You can also make changes to your marketing messages and copy as necessary.
Workflow
It is critical to improve your marketing operations to establish a project workflow between marketing and the rest of the organization. Individual team internal workings can be heavily influenced by how other departments request and expect projects to be completed. Once your workflow is in place, it is critical to use a tool to help with task assignments, deadlines and follow-ups.
Search engine optimization
Organic search engine optimization (SEO) entails creating content and ensuring that your website is technically sound in order to reach your customers without paying for advertisements. Organic SEO is a significant investment that can take months or even years to pay off, but the rewards are enormous. This strategy is becoming increasingly important as search engines such as Google refine their technologies to provide more relevant results to searchers, including local search results when people look for restaurants, salons, and other services nearby.
Customers frequently use mobile searches to find and view information about your company. It has also become crucial in SEO as smartphones and other mobile devices generate more traffic than ever before. If you haven’t already optimized your company’s website, you should think about it. Those who use mobile search are already in your area and looking for local businesses to patronize. Making sure that your website looks good on iPhones and smartphones can help your business immediately.
Goals
Your marketing objectives should always be linked to the fundamental goals of your company. For example, suppose your company’s goal is to increase online revenue by 20%. To contribute to that success, your marketing team may set a goal of generating 50% more leads through the website than the previous year. Whatever your overall marketing goal is, you must be able to measure the success of your strategy along the way using the appropriate digital marketing tools. A Reporting Dashboard, for example, consolidates all of your marketing and sales data in one place, allowing you to quickly determine what works and what doesn’t to improve your strategy in the future.
Whatever your goal, you’ll need a budget that you’re willing to spend to achieve it. You may have an annual budget in which you appropriate funds for each campaign, or the campaign may already be scheduled in your yearly business plan. Companies can spend up to 20% of their projected sales on marketing, according to the Small Business Administration. The amount you allocate to your marketing budget is determined by your industry, business size and stage of development. The higher the percentage of projected sales required to succeed, the younger your company.
Evaluate
When evaluating your existing marketing channels and assets to determine what to include in your strategy, consider the big picture – this will keep you from feeling overwhelmed or confused. Gather your assets and categorize them in a spreadsheet, giving you a clear picture of your existing owned, earned and paid media. Owned media refers to digital assets owned by your brand or company, such as your website, social media profiles, blog content or imagery. Owned channels are those over which your company has complete control.
Earned media is exposure gained through word-of-mouth marketing, whether it’s content you’ve shared on other websites, PR work you’ve done, or the customer service you’ve provided. The recognition you receive due to your efforts is referred to as earned media. You can gain media coverage by receiving press mentions and positive reviews and people sharing your content on social media. Paid media is any vehicle or channel you pay for to attract the attention of your buyer personas. This includes Google AdWords, paid social media posts, native advertising, and any other medium that you pay for increased visibility.
Influencers
Influencer marketing and celebrity endorsements, while similar, are not the same. Influencer marketing, like celebrity endorsements, uses a recognizable figure to instill trust and interest in a target audience. Still, it is also successful in ways that celebrity endorsements are not. To begin with, influencers are specialists in a niche, not just well-known individuals. In addition, influencer marketing instills more trust in the consumer because it is based on a smaller, more intimate fan base than an actual celebrity.
Social media
Social media has opened up a new market for business owners to target their audience and generate quality leads. It was initially considered only a platform for communicating with friends and family. However, businesses require social media more than ever in today’s digital-driven world. It enables faster and easier communication with potential customers to understand their needs better. A speedier customer interaction means better service and experience.
Of course, social media is an excellent way to reach out to new and existing customers. Nowadays, everyone is on social media. This is fantastic, but it also means that your message is more likely to get lost in the crowd. So, how do you develop a solid social media strategy that will aid in the development of customer relationships and brand loyalty among your target audience? First, you must determine your target audience, where they are from, when they are online, and which channel they use.
Create a social media audit as you collect data about your target audience to understand better what the data tells you and how to best navigate your channels. The audit should include information about the various platforms on which you are active. This audit should list links to your profiles, identify who is in charge of these accounts, key social media metrics, critical audience demographic information, and the best-performing posts based on engagement. This audit should also include information about your followers, such as what days of the week and what time of day they are most active on these platforms, as well as the types of posts they are most interested in.
Data
In most businesses, data is stored in several disconnected systems, such as a CMS, an e-commerce platform, an app or a website. When data from these siloed systems is collected and processed, errors are unavoidable. Customers move and change their email addresses, so you may have three different email addresses and two different postal addresses for the same customer across those systems. All of this can result in a marketing budget being squandered when an offer is emailed to the same person four times, when a catalog is delivered to the wrong address, or when failing to target a potential customer.
Unless and until all of these classifications are standardized into a single meaningful and consistent product name, analyzing disparate data and determining what type of customer is most likely to purchase your product or service will be difficult, making it harder to target them with relevant future offers. Cleaning, de-duplicating, unifying and standardizing all of that data from every company platform is the best way to ensure that resources aren’t wasted, messages are delivered to their intended recipients, and you have a clear understanding of each customer’s interactions with your brand.
A Customer Data Platform, for example, can help you achieve this by extracting customer data from all source systems, standardizing it, cleansing and transforming it to eliminate errors, and then joining the accurate, usable data into a Single Customer View using identity resolution and complex data processing algorithms. Of course, this can be done as a one-time process with a data bureau. Still, you should ideally invest in technology to keep records up to date as new customers and prospects come to you following the one-time process.
Content
The most enjoyable aspect of the campaign is developing your message. First, you must tailor your message about your product or service to your target audience. The more you know about them, the better your chances of getting a response. When developing your message, you must consider two factors about your audience: the problem that needs to be fixed and an unmet need. Your message must address three issues. The first is to elicit an emotional response from your audience by appealing to their emotions. Begin by empathizing with their problems or unmet needs. Then, demonstrate that you understand how they feel. This will help you build trust and engage your audience in reading or listening to the rest of your message.
It would be best to emphasize how your product or service will benefit your target audience. This includes demonstrating how your product or service solves their problem and helps them in the long run. In addition, your words and images must show how your product or service will improve their lives. The third factor that can aid in creating a compelling message is credibility. This can take the form of customer testimonials, industry leaders’ endorsements, or research studies. Case studies and success stories can also be included. Your audience’s belief in your product or service is strengthened by credibility. It also validates the purchase.
Conclusion
Your company’s marketing strategy is critical. It’s so important that businesses with a documented marketing strategy are more likely to report success than businesses without one. Your marketing strategy is your first step in business – it should be completed before allocating funds or investing time in marketing activities. It serves as your guide for who you want to target, how you want to talk about your company, and how you want to stand out from everyone else in your industry.
Marketing outcomes do not happen by chance. Creating a strategy ensures that you are targeting the right people with relevant content. The more time you spend formulating a clear plan, the more opportunities to sell you will create. Simply put, a marketing strategy outlines your company’s objectives, including who your ideal customers are and how you intend to reach them. It is your strategy and the blueprint for the marketing activity you will undertake in the coming months and years to help your business grow. A plan is necessary because it provides a consistent foundation for your work and holds you accountable. It is entirely possible to develop your own marketing strategy. The sections mentioned above are an excellent place to start. There are also numerous templates available online.