Struggling with your marketing campaigns? Unsure of what a good campaign looks like? Let Chester based marketing agency Bluezoo Ltd take you through some simple steps to creating a successful strategy…
Marketing has changed dramatically over the past five years. Businesses need to be more creative than ever to climb over new hurdles and raise above the parapet. The ship has sailed for conventional marketing.
Here are some hints and tips to make your marketing campaigns more memorable.
1. Ideas and research
Start with research and goal setting. Organising the ideas for your marketing campaign will go a long way to making it a success and identifying opportunities with the most potential. Consider:
- How long you expect the campaign will take
- What resources it will require
- What is your budget
- What sort of results you expect
Always consider your competition and possible ways to distinguish your company or brand from the competition. It’s also a good idea to use humour and don’t be afraid to take risks.
2. Target audience
At the heart of every marketing campaign should be your audience. You need to make them feel part of your campaign. Thoroughly research your target audience and play to their emotions.
Ask yourself the following questions: What sort of marketing campaign will suit this audience? Where have you had previous successes?
Build a profile up of your target audience, for example if its a consumer, what is their average age and spend. Socio economic grouping, buying patterns. What times of the day is it best to target your audience?
Consider how you can deliver as much value as possible to your target audience.
3. Campaign goals
When it comes to setting goals for your marketing campaign be as specific as possible. You need to do this so that you can measure your success later.
For example you might be looking for:
-£100k opportunity pipeline
-5 new qualified leads
-2 product trials
4. Building your campaign landing page
If you want your marketing campaigns to inspire action, then you’ve got to make the intended goal crystal-clear. Ideally you should be creating a dedicated landing page for every campaign you create. This allows you to direct your target audience towards your end goal in a compelling way and allows you to easily measure the success of your campaign
Talk about the benefits not features of your company or product. Make sure you supply enough information for your prospects to make a rational decision.
Your landing page should include five main elements:
- A unique value proposition
- A clear, high quality image or better still a video
- Company/product/service benefits
- Proof points
- A call to action
Once you’ve got all the elements in there, don’t forget to test, test and test again
5. Tracking your goals
Once your marketing campaign is up and running, choose some tools to track the success. Google analytics is a cost effective way of tracking straightforward goals.
Fundamentally you want to be able to see who has visited the page, how many visitors its had, what they’ve clicked on and whether they have followed the call to action.
6. Promotion of the marketing campaign
Consider carefully which channels will you use to promote your marketing campaign- Email, social media, press releases, direct marketing, blogs – maybe even running a competition?
It is really important that the planning and preparation for this is done well in advance of the launch date.
Social media campaigns are an effective strategy for reaching new audiences. The power of social media to drive campaign success has resulted in a massive shift in content marketing. The best campaigns are those created with content that is easily shareable on social media.
Tag your campaign on Twitter and Instagram, share and like on Facebook, engage readers on your blog and post your campaign everywhere. Whatever you do, make sure you choose your language and keywords carefully for SEO purposes. If you choose email to launch your campaign, make sure the language mirrors that on your landing page and don’t forget to spam check it first. Mail Chimp is a great email marketing tool, used by businesses worldwide – and its free!
Create a campaign schedule of which channels you are using and on what dates and times that you will reach your audience.
7. Lead nurturing
After your campaign is launched, no matter the goals you need to ensure that any leads are turned into customers and those customers into repeat customers.
Keeping track of those relationships is crucial and a good Customer Relationship Management tool (CRM) can help make this simple. The more details you have on your customers the more value you can bring to them.
8. Review
When your campaign has come to an end, take stock and look at your results. Evaluate the good the bad and the uncle about the campaign. What have you learned, what can you improve on for next time?
FINALLY! Treat all your marketing activities as distinct campaigns
There is no such thing as the perfect marketing campaign and there is always room for improvement.
