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Last Updated on March 18, 2019 by Work In My Pajamas
Are you frustrated by your marketing efforts? Do you feel that you’re pouring tons of time and energy into marketing, only to see little-to-no return?
If marketing is frustrating you, you’re not alone. Thirty-three percent of small business owners also say that marketing is the greatest challenge for them.
You can’t give up on your marketing efforts if you want your business to succeed. If you’re not happy with your current strategy, it might be time to make a change and come up with a new marketing campaign.
Read on to learn how to create a marketing campaign that will help you win people over and maximize your sales.
In This Post:
1. Know Your Target Audience
Before you can start driving traffic to your website and getting the word out about your product, you first need to figure out who you want to address with your marketing campaign.
Who is your target audience?
You might think that you know who your target audience is — especially if you’ve already defined them in your marketing plan. You need to get really specific, though, when you’re working on a specific marketing campaign.
Of all the people who purchase your products, which ones will be most likely to purchase this particular product or invest in a specific service?
Maybe your target audience is women aged 25-40, but this specific product will appeal most to women on the higher end of the age bracket.
2. Set Goals and KPIs
Think carefully about what you want to accomplish with this marketing campaign, too. Get really specific.
Is the purpose of this campaign to generate new leads? Increase engagement? Drive sales?
Once you figure out your unique goals for the campaign, you also need to think about your key performance indicators (or KPIs).
These are the metrics that will help you decide whether or not your campaign is performing optimally. These metrics will also help you evaluate and refine your marketing strategy.
Once you choose your KPIs, you also need to establish a baseline.
Figure out what an average month or quarter looks like for your business. That way, you’ll have accurate numbers to compare when your campaign is over.
3. What Are You Offering?
In order to bring customers to your website or achieve your desired outcome, you may want to offer some kind of incentive to your customers. This might be free content, a free sample of a product, or a free trial of a new service.
Think about what you’re going to offer and make sure that it’s applicable to your target audience.
Basically, you need to offer them something they’re actually going to want. Otherwise, you’ll end up wasting a lot of time and money.
When you’re deciding what to offer, it’s helpful to think about what your target audience wants and needs. You might even want to send out some surveys or reach out to your social media followers to find out what appeals to them the most.
4. Which Channels Will You Use?
How are you going to reach out to your target audience? Which marketing channels will be most effective?
If your target audience is older, it might be helpful to use a more traditional marketing approach like magazine ads or TV commercials.
If your audience is on the younger end of the spectrum, you’re probably going to be better off using social media advertising or YouTube advertising.
It might be tempting to place advertisements everywhere and see what sticks.
This isn’t a very cost-effective approach, though. It also makes it harder for you to measure the effectiveness of your campaign.
5. Set (and Stick to) a Budget
How much can you afford to spend on this marketing campaign?
In addition to thinking about the total budget, be sure to factor in the specific costs of each individual piece.
How much will you spend on paid advertisements? How much will it cost to hire someone to write copy or help you design your ads?
It’s true that you can get pretty far with free marketing tools. Remember, though, that sometimes you have to spend money in order to make money.
It might be worth it to invest a little extra money in this campaign if it will help you yield a larger return later.
6. Track and Measure Your Results
If you don’t track and measure the results of your campaign, how are you going to know whether or not it’s working?
Remember, the work involved in your campaign doesn’t end as soon as the campaign is launched. In reality, though, this is just the beginning.
You’ll need to monitor your campaign carefully to see if you’re meeting your goals.
In addition to monitoring your campaign’s performance, you’ll need to make adjustments, too, in response to those results. The marketing world is always evolving, and your campaigns and marketing plan will need to evolve, too.
7. Learn from a Professional
Are you feeling a little overwhelmed at the idea of creating a marketing campaign?
If you’re running a relatively new business or are a one-man or one-woman show, it’s easy to feel as though you’re miles away from a great campaign.
Remember, it’s okay to admit that you need help. You might even want to consider taking an online course to learn more about the ins and outs of marketing.
You can read more here about courses that will help you learn to design memorable campaigns like the famous Birkenstocks “Ouch!” campaign.
You Now Know How to Create a Marketing Campaign: What Next?
The process of creating a marketing campaign isn’t exactly easy. But, if you keep these steps in mind, it’ll be a lot less overwhelming.
You now know how to create a marketing campaign. Don’t assume that this is the end of the road, though.
If you need to learn more about marketing and advertising, check out our list of marketing resources today.
You’ll find a number of great tools on this page that can help you stay up to date on the latest marketing trends and keep up with your competition.
