Creating An Intentional Marketing Campaign: What You Need To Know
When it comes to marketing for SMBs, the reality is any marketing campaign needs to be worth its cost to ensure a good ROI. But if you don't know what you are doing, where to get started, or where previous marketing campaigns have fallen short of the mark, how do you ensure the next attempt yields the desired results?
The following points are designed to help small businesses run their marketing campaign and target the right people without throwing it out there and hoping someone will bite.
Know Your Customer
Where possible, you need to use real-time data to build a buyer's persona and get to know who your customer is. This is where a CRM can be useful for directing your campaign to the right people along with other data, as the CRM will hold valuable data on your current customer base you can use.
As a minimum, you need to identify the age, location, income, and job title of current and prospective customers. This will enable you to narrow down who you target and start building an idea of your customer. From here, you need to collect data that helps you identify their pain points, goals, and priorities. You can do this by gathering data from your social media accounts email list and asking for customer feedback, social media, and web traffic. All this information can help you build a better picture of your customers so you know exactly who they are.
Identify Your Goals
Not every marketing campaign has the same goals, which is totally ok. However, you need to pin down what it is you are expecting to get from this endeavor to quantify success. You can’t see how successful you have been if you have no goal to measure it against. It could be getting sign-ups for your email list ready for product launches, it can be boosting sales by 20% in the next quarter, or it can be generating 100% more leads than last year in the same time frame. Whatever it is, set your parameters and give your marketing campaign a dedicated focus.
Analyse Previous Or Current Marketing Campaigns
You cannot make improvements if you don't know where you excelled or failed last time. Look at the data: what did you achieve, what results did you get, what worked well or not so well, and what would you do differently next time?
Put all the information you have in a spreadsheet so you can analyze it properly and give you a clear picture of where you are now. Include owned, earned, and paid assets;
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Owned assets are things like your website and social media email lists.
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Earned assets are word-of-mouth engagements, assets distributed via press releases, or mentions you have gained from other brands or media.
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Paid assets are your paid-for ads, which include paid social media ads, Google Ads, radio ads, etc.
Create A Content Creation Plan
When it comes to cultivating a content marketing plan to help you push out your campaign or fill gaps left behind from previous campaigns, you must ensure that each piece has an intended action and target to help you get the conversions you need. Whether you do this in-house or use an integrated marketing agency, you must compile your content creation with a purpose in mind for each medium it will be used in. They need to be clear, concise, and intentional. You must ensure they work towards your goal and are an integral part of the process, not just filler to push out as and when.
Group your content into three stages: beginning, middle, and end. This will help you to segment your content and use it appropriately for the best results.
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Beginning content includes blog posts, infographics, or quizzes, for example, to help prospects realize they have an issue and that there is a solution to that issue,
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Your middle-stage content needs to be geared towards directing them to resolve that problem and is typically delivered through ebooks, case studies, or whitepapers.
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Moving to your end-stage content, you should be gathering testimonials or demos showcasing capabilities and proven results.
Stay on Brand
It can be tempting to make your brand more appealing to your customer base or prospective customers to win them over, but you should always remain authentic and stay on brand to help convert those leads you generate. A flashy campaign must be backed up with similar services and ongoing contracts and services. However, customers want authenticity, meaning they want to get to know the brand behind the ad, and if your ads convey who you are and what you're about, then this will be more enticing than trying to reinvent yourself, thinking this is what will work best.
Keep Experimenting
You should regularly get your team together or your external marketing agency if you’re working with one to focus on new opportunities or avenues for you to explore. It shouldn't be down to one person or something you do once your campaign has reached its end. There is no harm in pivoting partway through if one thing isn't working or if an opportunity presents itself for you to try out. Be open to changing direction and embarking on new projects to help you get maximum results for your campaign. You need to be proactive and encourage everyone involved to be on the lookout for new ways of marketing the businesses and supporting frameworks you already have in place.
An effective marketing campaign needs to be one based on real-life data and analytics that can give you a renewed focus and direction to help you achieve the right results. Use all of the data you have, or work with companies who can help you interpret this data to use moving forward to build your campaign, hit your goals, and do exactly what you need.