Digital marketing campaigns can help you get more traffic, improve your brand awareness, generate more sales, and much more.
But running a digital marketing campaign can seem like a complex process. After all, there are dozens of different platforms and hundreds of different strategies that you can run.
But, by taking the time to plan your digital campaign step by step, you can increase your chances of success while reducing overwhelming across the board.
In this post, you’ll learn what a digital marketing campaign is and a 10-step process you can follow to run and build a digital marketing campaign.
A digital marketing campaign is a strategic online marketing effort that is executed to achieve a specific goal. Typically, the end result will lead to increased brand awareness, more traffic, improved conversions, or more revenue.
The purpose of planning a digital campaign is to help you articulate who your audience is, what goal you want to achieve, and the process it will take to achieve that goal.
Putting together a successful online marketing campaign can be a lot of work, and there are a lot of moving parts you’ll need to get right.
The first thing you need to do is figure out why you’re running a digital marketing campaign in the first place.
The options are almost endless, but if you try to pursue too many goals at once, you’re not going to achieve any of them. For example, do you want to improve your conversions, grow your email list, improve your traffic, rank for more keywords, get more followers?
What is a digital marketing campaign?
In any case, it will be cheaper than offline marketing!
It’s hard to assess the exact cost of a digital marketing campaign, because it depends on what you want to do.
Google advertising, for example, can get expensive quickly, especially if you’re in a highly competitive industry.
But the advantage of digital marketing is that it is very flexible and scalable. You can start with a small investment and add more and more budget as your business grows.
And do not forget that it is absolutely possible to start doing online marketing without any financial investment, working, for example, on your SEO or promoting your product on social networks.
Now that you’re convinced that you need to develop your digital marketing, let’s move on to the different tactics available.
Modern internet is constantly evolving. And the same goes for digital marketing: every year (or every day) new trends and tools emerge.
Fortunately, there are some techniques that have been established as classics of digital marketing and that still work.
Today, everything is done on the Internet and almost all decisions are made at Google.
I want to buy a new pair of shoes? Let’s Google it. Discover a new Japanese restaurant? Let’s ask Google. Compare travel prices? Let’s see what Google says.
In concrete terms, this means that if your site is not readily available on Google (or other search engines like Bing), you have almost no chance of attracting customers.
Digital marketing campaign
Digital marketing refers to the creation and dissemination of content through digital media channels (such as websites, landing pages, social networks, emails and mobile applications) and the promotion of this content through a wide range of strategies: on digital channels for a fee, earned and owned, including SEO, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, content syndication, social networks, email, messaging, and much more.
Digital marketing strategies help marketers define goals, clarify an audience, and develop a digital marketing plan that achieves them. These strategies direct a specific campaign or program and provide a framework for the evaluation of results.
Today everything is digital and digital marketing has been integrated into almost every aspect of business, radically changing the way companies communicate and provide value to customers.
Therefore, if your business cannot implement and execute a digital marketing strategy in an ever-growing global online marketplace, you simply will not be able to compete.
Jay Baer’s Best Guarded Secret in Digital Marketing (1:32)
Cross-channel marketing, multi-channel marketing, omnichannel marketing, or any other term you prefer, aims to engage your customers or prospects through every digital channel and any device. From inbox to social media and from laptops to tablets and smartphones, today’s consumers move seamlessly and expect you to be there with them, offering seamless experience and interruption.
What does a marketing campaign do?
A marketing campaign is simply an approach to marketing whereby a brand, product, or service awareness is promoted through one or a series of clearly defined and structured successful marketing campaigns, each of which has a clear objective.
A digital marketing campaign is not limited to an email marketing campaign or a social media marketing campaign. It refers to any campaign that takes place within your digital marketing department.
No two marketing campaign efforts will be exactly the same, and in fact, it will be through the first definition of what the goals of a campaign are that will dictate the campaign’s marketing strategy and whether it will end up becoming a marketing campaign. Successful marketing, that is, the number of resources to be launched, what other channels to use, and what methods are likely to be the most effective.
Various marketing campaign efforts will form arms of your overall inbound marketing strategy. For example, if you had a goal of generating X number of new leads for your business, you or your marketing campaign manager would come up with a campaign that would run alongside all of your regular inbound marketing efforts, but the campaign itself would retain that sole purpose of generating leads, and that sole purpose alone.
As such, a marketing campaign is absolutely based on strategy. Successful campaigns will be carefully considered, well-researched, and highly focused on detail and execution, with all efforts sharply across your digital channels achieving a specific goal for your successful campaign. Choosing the right marketing channel, whether you’ll focus on long-term organic growth with the help of search engines (SEO) or paid advertising for faster ROI.
Marketing campaign step by step
For agility, we rely on the Smart Goals framework to set and achieve business goals. Smart goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely. It’s important that your campaign goals are realistic, but also push you to do your best to achieve them.
It’s pretty obvious, but if your audience isn’t at the core of building your campaign, that’s a huge miss that will affect your results.
One of the most important steps in crafting a successful B2B marketing campaign is identifying which buyer persona you’re targeting. Consider your audience’s goals, preferences, and pain points as you craft your campaign so it’s perfectly tailored to them.
Be sure to also find out which channels your audience prefers so you can create a promotional strategy that works. If your target audience never uses Facebook, don’t waste time and money promoting your campaign there.
It’s rare for a prospect to buy on the first touch, so it’s essential to understand how your target audience interacts with you, your website, and your other marketing materials. How many steps does it take them to buy?
After finalizing your campaign strategy, gaining a deep understanding of your target audience, and conducting keyword research, it’s time to start creating your content! Use the knowledge you gained from your planning and research to create modern content that resonates with that specific person.
Advertising campaign
Without a clear, impactful and differentiated concept, there is substantially less chance for a campaign to cut through the noise and generate the desired attention from the target audience. That’s why you need a great idea.
The creative element of any campaign is by far one of the most enjoyable. However, the process of coming up with a great idea can also be a bit daunting, especially with so much at stake. Whether on the agency or client side, there will be many interested stakeholders involved, each with an opinion or point of view. So in this post, we’ll look at some of the key steps in developing a great idea to help provide structured thinking around the process.
Any new campaign will need a hook or theme that you want people to remember, share and act on. The big idea of a campaign is the overall message that underpins all elements of a campaign to resonate with the target audience. The idea will need to be rooted in a penetrating vision and linked to the goals of the campaign to ensure it has maximum impact and relevance.
The big idea should be an overarching concept that can be spread across all media, so it’s not just limited to one channel. In this context, the big idea can sometimes be referred to interchangeably by the term “experienced idea” because it marks the transition from strategy to execution.
The goal is to develop an idea that is tied together and integrated with all other relevant channels, rather than a series of separate executions that have tenuous relationship to each other. This approach will put you in a stronger position to meaningfully engage consumers in the places that matter.
What is needed to make a digital campaign?
A digital marketing campaign is made up of a series of strategic online marketing activities that are carried out to achieve a specific goal. Typically, the end result will lead to increased brand awareness, more traffic, better conversions, or more revenue.
The purpose of planning a digital campaign is to help you articulate who your audience is, what goal you want to achieve, and the process you’ll go through to reach it.
The first thing you need to do to launch a digital marketing campaign is to understand what goals you want to achieve with this process.
There are different types of goals: brand awareness, increased sales, lead generation, and social media following growth. Some of these types of goals are easier to quantify than others.
For example, it’s much easier to see if your mailing list is getting new subscribers rather than seeing if more people are aware of your brand. However, we advise you to try to root these targets with the data as much as possible.
Before you start a marketing campaign, you’ll need to define the exact audience you’ll be reaching out to.
One of the best ways to do this is to create what is called a buyer or buyer persona. This is a description of your ideal customer and will include information such as:
- What do they do for a living?
- How much money does he make?
A successful digital media strategy requires coordination between different departments within your company, including sales and marketing. You must work together to ensure that you meet the needs of your customers and create a positive experience with your brand.
Your goals help you stay focused on your digital media strategy. If you want to see success with digital marketing, you need to determine what you want to achieve with your strategy. The objectives depend on the needs of your business.
Whether you’re looking to get new leads or get more conversions, you need to think about what your business wants to achieve by investing in a digital marketing strategy. If you’re looking to increase sales, your next digital marketing goal could be to increase sales by x%. In short, your marketing goal should align with your overall business goals.
Every digital media strategy goal should work towards achieving a larger company goal. Also, these goals should be smart goals. Smart goals are:
- Specific – Your digital media strategy should try to achieve a specific goal. A vague goal like “Earn more conversions” won’t help you know if you’ve reached your goals, but a specific goal like “Increase conversions by 20%” pinpoints what you want to achieve.
- Measurable: Your goals should also be measurable. A measurable goal is one that you can easily track, such as “increase traffic by 50%”. With a goal like this, you can visibly see how much your traffic increases or decreases throughout your digital media campaign. When goals are easily measurable, you can identify key metrics and determine how much you’re achieving.
Customer in digital marketing campaign
To start a campaign, marketers need to understand who their customer is and where to reach them and anticipate what action the customer will take next.
Customers approach brands through an omnichannel lens. So to reach a customer effectively, marketers need to connect digital marketing campaigns across all channels.
Digital marketing campaigns can be less expensive than other marketing campaigns and can interact with customer behavior in real time.
Businesses can use a digital campaign for a variety of uses, from increasing brand awareness to telling loyal customers about a new product.
The first step is to learn about the customer and understand who they are. Marketers need to find out which customers are already actively engaged with the brand and who is opening emails, clicking ads, or visiting the website.
The second step is to take action on the ideas collected from consumers. By understanding past behavior, marketers can anticipate what consumers are likely to do next and customize future marketing efforts. Based on a customer’s past behavior, a salesperson might decide to send an email offering a discount code, make an upsell offer, or display an ad with a new product that might entice the customer.
If a business can understand its target audience and anticipate what they are likely to do next, it can deliver compelling experiences. And creating a personalized experience comes down to content, regardless of the touchpoint.