You've probably come across sponsored ads as you scroll through Instagram. How about Facebook ads on your newsfeed?
Today, businesses are taking their marketing strategies to the digital arena. In fact, you see various digital marketing campaigns every day.
Why?
Because consumers are almost always online. Marketers need to reach them and observe their buying behavior. But this could be overwhelming for a start-up business.
How can you create and maintain a killer online marketing campaign? Where do you start?
In this post, you'll learn the difference between a digital marketing strategy and a campaign. Best of all, we'll walk you through the steps to building a successful campaign.
What Is a Digital Marketing Campaign?
Before you can create online marketing campaigns, you'll first need a strategy.
I know what you're thinking:
Isn't a digital marketing strategy and campaign mean the same thing?
Although used interchangeably, they don't mean the same thing.
A digital marketing strategy is a set of steps that'll help you achieve your specific goals.
A digital marketing campaign, on the other hand, is the actual actions and efforts placed within your strategy.
Confused?
Here's an example: The goal of your digital marketing strategy is to drive more traffic to your site through social media.
So your campaign includes promotions on social media. And sharing your best content to attract more audience.
Remember, a successful advertisement leaves a mark on its target market. And your audience must have a positive experience with your brand.
Later, we'll talk about the strategies involved in creating a digital marketing campaign.
But Is a Digital Marketing Strategy Really Necessary?
Yes.
Whether you're a small or large business, it's important to reach your audience where they are. So if your audience is online, you should be too.
To succeed in the ever-changing digital landscape, you need an effective digital marketing strategy. Without it, you'll be running an ineffective campaign. One that won't attract or convert audiences.
That's why you need a solid foundation. A robust strategy will help you launch a high ROI digital marketing promotion.
Ready to get started?
Steps to Building a Successful Digital Marketing Campaign
The following strategies will help you create a logical and efficient digital campaign. It'll help you achieve the best possible outcome.
Identify Your Goals
The first step is to identify your company goals. This may seem like a no-brainer but some marketers neglect this step.
Creating a digital campaign without knowing what you want to achieve means you can't accurately measure your success.
Your campaign must work towards meeting those goals.
The goals you want to pursue will depend on your business. It's entirely up to you and your current standing in the industry you're in.
For instance, do you want to improve your conversion rate? Or do you want to rank higher in search engine rankings? Of course, you can simultaneously pursue different goals.
Here are some common goals:
Increase Brand Awareness: How familiar is your audience to your brand? Has it become a household name? When diving into digital marketing, you must make brand awareness a top priority.
Why?
Because a strong identity and market presence will boost brand recall. This means you'll be at the top of consumers' minds. As a result, it'll lead to more sales.
Generate More Leads: Converting prospects to customers is also a top priority for marketers. How do you make this happen?
You need to convince prospects to do something after seeing your ads. For instance, prospects can sign up for an email list. Or they can register for a webinar or book a sales call.
Increase Conversion Rate and Sales: Who doesn't want more sales? As a marketer, the ultimate goal is to convert readers, subscribers, or followers into customers.
But when identifying your digital marketing goals, you can't simply say "I want to increase sales". You need to be specific to measure success.
That's why you need to set SMART goals.
Use the Smart Goals Framework
It means setting specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely goals. Here are a few reasons why this framework works for digital marketing goals:
How do you make a SMART goal?
Specific
Your goal must be clear and well-defined for everyone involved in the project. For example, you are responsible for growing your Instagram account.
A specific goal will look like this: "I want to increase the brand's Instagram following to boost brand awareness."
Measurable
What metric should you measure to know whether your campaign goals are met? You need to attach a measurable number to your goal. This is important in determining the success of your project.
Going by our first example, you want to specify by how much you want to grow your Instagram following. It'll look like this: "I want to increase the brand's Instagram following by 10% to boost brand awareness."
Achievable
As a business owner or marketer, you need to aim high. But you still need to be realistic. So your goals must be attainable.
Is your goal within reach? For instance, if based on previous insights, you've been gaining a 5%-10% growth rate on Instagram, then an additional 10% is a realistic goal.
Relevant
Will your digital marketing goal help achieve your overarching business goals?
Your digital strategies are put in place to help grow your business. For example, will growing your Instagram account benefit your business? Will it make a difference?
If your business goal is to boost social media presence, then growing your Instagram account is a relevant goal.
Timely
Set a clear deadline. In doing so, you can measure your results and use them as a benchmark. You can compare them against past campaigns and prepare for future ones.
With that said, you need to have a start and end date. Going by our example, your goal will look like this:
"I want to increase the brand's Instagram following by 10% by the end of the month to boost brand awareness."
Every time you set a digital marketing goal, use the SMART framework. With clear goals, you'll know which direction to go. Most importantly, you can assess the success or failure of your campaign.
Define Your Target Audience
The next step is to determine who you're selling to. Define your target audience and what products or services you can give them.
Here's a tip: Create a customer avatar. This avatar will represent a fictional ideal customer based on data about your real-life customers.
You can gather information about your customers through research, survey, or interviews. Remember, your customer avatar must be based on data, not assumptions.
The information included in your avatar will depend on your business. But here is some information you should include:
Be as detailed as possible. Most importantly, narrow down your target market.
If your market is too broad, then you might attract people who aren't 100% interested in your brand. As a result, you'll be wasting money.
Once you have a detailed customer avatar, it's time to give your audience a reason to interact with you.
Why should they subscribe to your email list? What will they get out of clicking your ad? Will your product or service address their pain points?
In short, you need to give something valuable to your target market.
Later, we'll discuss how you can give value through content creation. But first, you'll need to come up with a feasible budget.
Assess Your Budget
Now that you have set your campaign goals and know your target audience, it's time to assess your budget.
How much can you realistically afford to spend?
There's no right or wrong answer to how much you need to spend on ads. It depends on every business. But it's important to set a clear budget. Why?
First, it's a restriction on how far you can take your marketing campaign. Secondly, it'll dictate how you're going to allocate your resources. Lastly, it'll help you decide which marketing channel to spend on.
When assessing your budget, ask these questions:
- 1- What is your target revenue? How much do you need to spend to hit that goal?
- 2- How well did your previous online marketing campaigns work?
- 3- Are you converting visitors into leads and leads into customers through your website?
- 4- What are your best digital marketing channels? Is it on social media, email marketing, paid media, or others?
- 5- Are you considering paid advertising? How much can you afford to pay for each bid?
- 6- For content marketing, how much are you allocating for content creation?
Plus, you also need to consider the resources you'll need for your digital marketing. Here are a few factors to consider:
Even if you have a limited budget, you can still create a killer digital campaign. You'll need to have a clear budget, keep track of your expenses, and allocate funds to resources that are necessary.
Audit, Plan and Create Content
Content is the bread and butter of any digital marketing promotion.
Whether it's a landing page, product description, blogs, podcasts, or social media posts, you'll need content. And highly valuable content helps convert visitors into leads. These leads could potentially become customers.
That's why the next step is to conduct a content audit. At the end of the audit, you'll need to ask yourself: Is your content helping you achieve your goals?
But how do you conduct a content audit?
The goal is to determine what works and what doesn't. Depending on your findings, focus your content creation efforts into helping you achieve your goals.
Keep these factors in mind when planning your content:
If you have paid campaigns, conduct an audit on them as well. Evaluate your paid media across channels like social media, Google AdWords, etc. In doing so, you'll figure out which content performed best.
For example, you've been investing in Facebook ads but haven't seen good results, then it's time to change your strategy. Either you polish your content or focus on other channels altogether.
Plan How You'll Analyze and Monitor Your Digital Campaign
With digital marketing, you can track as well as quickly analyze the results of your campaign to determine if you're getting the desired results.
But how do you measure success?
Measure the factors that will impact your goals. You need to know the campaign's key performance indicators or KPIs.
KPIs are usually connected to conversion. Do you want your audience to sign up for an email list? Or do you want them to buy your products?
It's up to you how you define "conversion". The important thing is to be specific. It should be easy to define and measure.
Here are some of the metrics you need to consider:
Ready to execute your plans?
Time to Build a Digital Marketing Campaign
Digital marketing is changing the way marketers interact with customers.
Customers are almost always online. In fact, they're relying on digital channels when making buying decisions.
That's why you need to take your marketing efforts into the digital arena.
For successful digital marketing, you need to focus on achieving your business goals. This means you need to have a clear strategy on what actions to take.
Think of it as a roadmap. Use these steps and create a killer digital marketing campaign.