Is your online marketing delivering the results you want? 6 simple steps to start a campaign

Digital marketing – Social Media Management, Content Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, and Email – are essential elements in any marketing plan, and you are probably running multiple campaigns that touch on each. 

But are they delivering the results you want?  Do you even know what results you were expecting?  Which channel delivers the best outcome for your business? 

If you don’t know the answers to those questions, then now is the time to ‘Stop and pause’.

Below are 5 simple steps to run an effective campaign

1: Business and Marketing Objectives

Are your marketing campaigns intrinsically linked to your business goals?

List all the business goals and document which marketing tactic is helping to achieve what.  This ensures that your digital marketing campaign plan is credible.  It’s here that you really need to agree how you are going to measure the success of any online activity.  Discuss as a team – management, sales, and marketing – what the outcomes should be.  Some examples:

  • Engagement levels up by x% (it’s not all about ‘likes’!)
  • Building awareness of your brand (measured by new followers in particular sectors)
  • Conversions (content downloads)
  • Search engine ranking

2. Run a Digital Marketing Audit

Your website, social media channels and content (collaterals) are at the heart of any digital marketing plan. If you want to get consistent results from online marketing, then it is necessary to carry out regular audits of your SEO, website, content and any paid advertising – the larger the organisation usually the more complex the audit – so you can review strategies and the outcomes of your efforts.  You are then in a much better position to identify areas where time and money are wasted, as well as the tactics that are driving real business growth.

I would recommend using the services of expert for SEO/ keyword analysis/ PPC as it is a specialise and ever-changing area.

Step 3: Is your target customer still your prospect?

When was the last time you checked that the businesses or individuals that you are targeting are still your ‘ideal prospect’?

Has your value proposition changed?  Are you getting more success in certain sectors over others?  Have your customer’s challenges changed?

Building a ‘persona’ for your ideal customer is crucial.  Who are they now?  How do you add value to their business?  What are their challenges?  Where do they find their information?  Do you really understand them?

You can only communicate with the right messages, relevant content through the right channel or platform if you truly understand who you’re trying to attract.  And of course, they will only listen if you have something that they want or need!

Step 4: Content Strategy

Digital is all about content. Do you have a content strategy? Do you know what your customer journey looks like – from awareness to decision making? Read Marketing Insider Group for a great article outlining this. Planning what you are going to create – that links back to your customer journey and challenges is vital. You can link your content to the buyer journey (awareness, consideration, and decision), plan when and how you release it, mix it up with 3rd party content, or even user-generated content. There are lots of free planning tools available from the likes of HubSpot and content creation tools from SEMrush.

Step 5: Research platform profiles

Do you understand the demographics of each social media platform? This is essential or you waste time and money on a platform that your target does not use or interact with.  E.g. Demographics for Twitter below. sproutsocial provide a complete list.

If you’ve researched your ‘personas’ then you will know what mix of digital marketing activities to run and which platform to use in your campaigns.

Step 6:  Review

Not everything we do as marketers is successful.  But…I’d rather stop something early if it’s heading in that direction! Keep on top of campaign analytics – weekly. Most social media platform contain all the analytics you need – you just need to learn how to interpret and use the data.  What content or campaigns are doing well?  Where are you seeing more engagement?  Are you tracking and looking after the leads that are coming into your CRM?  Are you responding to what’s being said about your brand online?

Before you start the campaign outline how you are going to track it, what success looks like and what you are going to report on.  Digital campaigns are ‘living’ campaigns – gathering insights, trends, audience behaviours in an ongoing activity.

So, in summary,

  1. Have clear marketing objectives and goals
  2. Optimise your website and content (keywords, SEO)
  3. Understand your target audience (Personas)
  4. Link content to your customer journey
  5. Choose the right digital platforms
  6. Review, review, review
Author: Sere Davoudi