Don’t start a digital marketing campaign without doing these 6 things

Planning and launching a digital marketing campaign is an ambitious, often challenging undertaking that requires a lot of careful thought and research.

There’s a lot of noise and activity in the digital space, which you’ll need to cut through if you want to connect with your target audience and gain some tangible returns from your marketing efforts.

It’s vital, therefore, to make sure you’re taking the right steps to maximise your chances of success. We’ve outlined six important actions below, which could make the difference between a good or mediocre campaign and a truly great one.

Step 1: Start at the top

Meet with decision-makers in your business to discuss goals and expectations, and ensure your marketing goals are in line with the company’s objectives for the year. You can break these overarching goals down into short-term campaign targets (typically spread over three-month periods), which could add focus and structure to your marketing efforts.

Business goals often concentrate on conversion. This is, of course, a great objective to aim for, but there are steps along that path to attract, engage and convince potential customers before you get them to convert. If necessary, try educating your decision-makers on the key stages of the typical buyer’s journey (awareness, consideration and decision) and explain the goals and metrics that really matter in each of those phases.

Step 2: Plan your resources

It’s not uncommon for marketers to feel their budget and resources are stretched too thin, especially when you have the needs and expectations of different departments and product types to take into account.

Get all your stakeholders in one room and have a frank discussion about your budget and resource limitations. Aim to decide what goals should take priority and be clear about what can be done within your means.

If you have multiple priorities, keep in mind that budget is often allocated across teams that do similar functions. For example, there may be overlapping development, graphics and SEO budgets that could be made much more efficient. Be sure to check in with any relevant teams to see where there might be crossovers and where you could be making better use of your resources.

Step 3: Ask how you’re going to measure performance

It’s vital to ensure you’re setting clear goals for your campaign, so you can measure performance and make changes when and where they’re required. Consider setting goals that adhere to the SMART criteria:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Achievable
  • Realistic
  • Time-based

Defining key performance indicators will also help you when the time comes to look back at your strategy and assess whether you have hit the goals you were aiming for.

If you’re not sure where to begin, start by working to understand who you want to target and what you want them to know about you. Focus on defining your ‘why’ so it’s clear in your marketing communications how you can help your customers. Knowing who you’re targeting and why will form the skeleton of your strategy.

Step 4: Figure out what content you need

Don’t wait until your campaign is live to figure out the supporting content it needs. Throughout the planning process, ensure you have a coherent calendar of content to go live before, during and after your campaign launch. This is also a good opportunity to establish which other teams will need to be involved throughout the process so you can schedule in the appropriate time with them – for example legal teams for compliance or the graphics team for an ebook.

Image credit: iStock/oatawa

Step 5: Set up your goal tracking

Once your goals are defined, it’s important to set up the necessary tracking and metrics to gauge if you actually achieve them. There’s a lot you can do in Google Analytics and Tag Manager to help with this step.

Similarly, you should look to set up a dashboard in your analytics software and monitor it regularly to look for spikes, patterns or trends. We always recommend that unless you see something alarming, you shouldn’t look to dramatically change your strategy for at least three months.

Step 6: Get social

LinkedIn is not Facebook and Twitter is not Instagram. Ensure, before your campaign goes live, that you have a strategy in place for posting content on each of the social networks you use. Each network has a different audience and a different purpose, so it’s vital that you tailor your content to each one. Social listening can help you better understand your audience and their various concerns and goals, which can help with content production.

There is no quick solution to making your marketing efforts more effective, but there are a lot of great resources out there that can help you learn how to impact your efforts over time.

Check out our Digital Advertising page for all the help you need!

Contact Axonn to discuss how we can help you plan and run a successful digital marketing campaign.