We are back to share the second of six marketing webinar series we created and hosted with The Marketing Squad. This partnership was designed to bring free resources to our agents and followers with the click of a button. We want to give you easily-accessible information to drive sales and marketing efforts in your business, as the two are a combined process.
The second webinar in our series is titled, “Developing Campaigns and Attracting Attention.” We will breakdown and give an overview of the what a campaign is, the different types of campaigns, and the steps to develop one in order to attract your desired audiences. If you missed some of the content leading up to this point, feel free to click here to read the previous post on setting attainable goals and tracking your progress.
What is a Campaign?
A strategic marketing campaign is a focused and organized series of communication, such as content, ads, and messaging, directed to a specific goal. A campaign will provide a plan to execute that will achieve your desired goals. There are various campaigns you can do to meet your company’s goals, both large and small. This brings us to the different types of campaigns:
Types of Campaigns
A Full-Scale (Major) Campaign:
The goal of a major campaign should line up with your overall business goals. For example, a goal could be growing a specific area of your business or promoting an industry-specific topic like open enrollment, like a company like ours would do. Some of the characteristics of a major campaign include:
- A month, quarter, or year long timeline.
- Having substantial goals.
- Should almost impacts all of your mediums of communication in order to streamline your focus to your audience.
A major campaign is designed to achieve large results due to the efforts put into it. A campaign of this nature is a major milestone in your overall marketing efforts because it ultimately drives the progress that can be measured in leads and growth.
A Mini (or Sub) Campaign:
Although different from a major campaign, a mini-campaign still serves a substantial purpose in your marketing plan. Mini campaigns will still share some of the characteristics of larger campaigns–basically fitting within your bigger campaigns and they contribute to your overall goals. But these usually vary in their capacity and scope. These campaigns will be for a shorter amount of time, such as a week(s)-long time frame versus a whole quarter. Special offers are often used in mini-campaigns to entice consumers to become interested and respond to a you because of very specific call to action. For examples, most companies would not offer a special discount for 3 full years. But they may offer it for a short period of time to drive awareness or cause a bump in leads for a certain month. Also, to grow your social media channels, a company would not do a giveaway that doesn’t wrap up for a whole 365 days. It would realistically only last a few days to a few weeks. These are examples of smaller campaigns. Notice they are also confined to specific communication channels too.
So you might be asking yourself, why are campaigns important? The answer is that campaigns create maps that guide your marketing. They use tactical, or systematic, approaches to generate revenue through highly targeted communication steps. Campaigns will outline specific actions (CTA’s) that guide your audience to do exactly what you’d like them to do. The thing that differentiates campaigns from other marketing efforts is that they are not just daily actions, but strategically-planned steps to propel your business towards growth and success.
In order to make progress, you FIRST assess where you are and AND who is your target audience.
The Steps of a Campaign
Before you plan a campaign, you need to take an inventory of what efforts you currently have going on, such as channels and platforms to get your message out. Make a list of those assets. This will determine what you need to add or take away from in your current strategy.
Your content and messages ALWAYS need to align with your goals and should crafted to attract people doing in the same direction you’re headed. The content and mediums you use need to be centered around that target audience. Therefore, determining who your audience is and the mediums they use will allow you to choose the mediums and create the content that fits those exact people. This ultimately drives them to you and to your website.
After you assess your messaging/content, your mediums, and target audience, you are ready to begin a campaign- here’s how:
1. Start by Setting a Goal
- Your goal should define the outcome you want.
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
2. Plan the Campaign Content and Mediums
Determine the content– emails, social media posts, ads, downloads, blogs, etc.– you need to achieve this goal by taking into account the the deeper features of your target audience such as their pain points, their goals, their lifestyle, etc. You must also decipher how, when, and where you will deliver the content and through what mediums.
3. Implement the Campaigns Steps
The next step is to schedule the content using a calendar and tools such as:
- Social Media Channels
- Email Platforms
- Text Messaging or Phone Calls
- Ads Management Accounts
- Development to your website
- Keyword/SEO Support
4. Measure your Work, See the Results
Finally, after your plan has been set into motion you can track your results by asking these questions:i
- How many people are seeing your content?
- How are people are engaging?
- How many leads are you getting?
Content Choice Matters
When writing, sharing, and creating content, you need to focus on relevant industry/cultural values that your audience cares about. Although trends come and go, there is an appropriate time to use them because give your content the “buzz” it needs.
One tip we discuss in our webinar that ensures your audience sees your content is to effectively place CTA’s on all your material with the best design and wording possible. Highly searched keywords are a great way for your website and content to easily be found on Google.
We hope you have already gained some valuable insights through this blog post as an overview of our second marketing webinar, “Developing Campaigns and Attracting Attention.” We encourage you to access the full presentation on this topic now! You can also download all the other presentations in this series for free too! If you have any questions regarding marketing campaigns in your industry, feel free to reach out to us here or speak with someone on The Marketing Squad‘s team. Your success is truly our top priority.
