We have spoken enough about the importance of digital marketing campaigns and how it can aid your business online. But what are the steps involved in devising your first digital marketing campaign? We are answering that question in today’s blog post.
All we notice in a digital marketing campaign is how it looks and what is written in it but there is more to what the eye sees. A digital marketing campaign has various elements involved in its planning and execution, some of which you might think have no relevance. The entire process can be broadly divided into 7 steps.
For a better picture on digital marketing, read – Connecting Digitally in Times of Physical Distancing Through Digital Marketing Services
1) Conduct Your Market Research
When you are spending your time and other resources to run a digital marketing campaign, you must patiently do it right. Not only because a poorly planned digital marketing campaign will waste your resources but also because when a campaign fails, it may attract negative publicity.
You need to spend some time to conduct your market research before you start devising your digital marketing campaign. Your research must mandatorily look at older campaigns carried out by your competitors or similar brands, check how their audience has responded and the success rate of those campaigns. You can learn lessons from failed campaigns and get inspired from the successful ones. It will give you an idea of the kind of campaigns that can work well for your brand.
Your market research must concentrate on understanding the market dynamics, available products/services, response to those products/services, its seasonality, potential competitors, potential partners and potential target markets. You also need to develop your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) considering all the available data.
2) Decide Your Digital Marketing Campaign Goals
Every digital marketing campaign must have a goal that it should reach. The goal does not have to be to buy your product or hire your service, it can also be to acquaint your audience with your brand. For example, a campaign run by Hackowls might have a goal to receive 500 blog subscriptions.
When you decide your goal(s), make sure your goal is SMART. The acronym expands to Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic/Relevant and Time-bound. Some goals may be unmeasurable but that doesn’t mean that they are not worthy, for example – educating your audience about your brand and what you do.
If you are planning your first digital marketing campaign, it is likely that your audience will want to know about your brand before buying or hiring what you offer. So your goal can be website visits/phone calls. Whatever digital marketing campaign goals you decide on, ensure that it is achievable within the set time frame as well as is beneficial to your brand.
3) Define Target Audience For Your Digital Marketing Campaign
Unlike conventional methods of marketing, a digital marketing campaign can be targetted at a specific set of audience. Social media platforms collect basic information of users which they use for digital marketing purposes, not just the information that the platform asks a new user to fill while signing up, but a lot more while monitoring your usage on the platform.
Your market research data will have the representation of your ideal target audience. With that data and data from your existing customer base, you can formulate a buyer persona. You can narrow down the characteristics of your target audience by various factors like age, location, interests, job title and/or gender.
According to Tammy Duggan-Herd, director of marketing at digital marketing firm Campaign Creators, after shifting to digital marketing campaigns with audience targeting in 2016, her agency saw a 744% increase in organic traffic within 12 months. This is proof that audience targeting for your digital marketing campaign is a step you can not skip.
4) Decipher Marketing Channels
Once you define your target audience, you need to solve where you can find them. Digital Marketing Institue’s reports hold the following data –
If you are looking to strengthen your professional connections, LinkedIn is where you should go. Most users between the ages of 25 and 49 use this platform for career growth. 90% of the users on Instagram are under the age of 35, it is the ideal platform to use if your target audience is millennial.
Facebook is the most popular and most widely used site. Generation X (people born from the early 1960s to late 1070s) spends about 7 hours every week on the platform. Using Facebook for your digital marketing campaign gives you a wide reach to a global audience as it has extremely specific demographics and geographical areas. With over 1.5 billion global viewers, YouTube is the second largest social media platform.
Based on the above statistics (note: statistics are from the year 2020), you can make an informed choice on choosing the right channels for your digital marketing campaign.
5) Calculate Your Digital Marketing Campaign Budget
To calculate your digital marketing campaign budget, you need to identify 2 factors of your business – gross revenue and size. Market Math suggests using 12-20% of your gross revenue on marketing if you are a business lesser than 5 years old. If you are older than 5, they suggest you spend 6-12% of your gross revenue on marketing.
Spending a larger sum for small and new businesses might sound harsh but is needed as they usually don’t have larger brand awareness or dedicated audience. Established businesses will have a committed audience and hence do not need to spend much money on marketing.
If you have a keen eye and know your way around the Internet, you probably can do your own market research and decide on your buyer persona. You can also decipher the usage and monitoring of social media. In that case, you only need to allocate monetary resources for content creation i.e. for graphic designing and copywriting.
For detailed research and higher rates of success for your digital marketing campaign, you can hire a well-informed and passionate digital marketing team.
6) Create Your Content
After the preliminary stages of a digital marketing campaign come the execution. The goals that you had decided on earlier must be reflected in your content. It must also take into account your brand personality, values and tonality. It must additionally have a CTA to ensure that your digital marketing campaign viewers perform what you intend them to.
Some ideas function properly on some social media platforms and certain design concepts appeal a certain type of audience. There are specific words that will allow your viewers to carry out the intended actions faster and particular design elements that will please your viewers. Your digital marketing strategist, designer and writer can collectively make these decisions for you.
7) Execute and Monitor Your Digital Marketing Campaign
Once your materials are ready, you can publish them on the agreed-upon social media platforms. While publishing, you can specify the characteristics of your target audience and use appropriate hashtags in the caption to ascertain extensive reach and circulation.
With the help of tools like Google Analytics, you can set goals, monitor the performance of your digital marketing campaign and supervise if your goals have been met. This is just a fraction of what you can do with the tool. With the data available on Analytics, you can find answers for the following questions about your digital marketing campaign –
- How many views did you receive?
- How many users engaged with your campaign?
- Was the campaign successful?
- What element of the campaign helped in reaching your goals?
- What elements of your campaign knocked you down?
- Can you repeat the campaign?
