Introduction
Are your digital marketing campaigns underpinned by a strong campaign strategy? Recent research from Smart Insights shows that almost half (45%) of companies still don’t have a digital marketing strategy. If you are in that group and running a digital marketing campaign, you are unlikely to be seeing the high level of success from your advertising activities that you deserve.
Exposure Ninja’s Content Marketing Ninjas are here to help you master the basics of designing a strong marketing campaign strategy, from the initial planning and creating a roadmap to hitting every milestone on time to achieve your end goals.
In this guide, we discuss:
- What Is a Digital Marketing Campaign Strategy?
- Who Needs a Digital Marketing Campaign Strategy?
- Successful Small Business Marketing Examples
- How to Create a Digital Marketing Campaign Strategy
Content table
- Introduction
- What Is a Digital Marketing Campaign Strategy?
- 11 Steps to Building a Results Focused Digital Marketing Campaign
What Is a Digital Marketing Campaign Strategy?
Your digital marketing campaign strategy is the overall plan for your campaign. It should consider your target audience and include your approach, the actions you will take and your campaign goals. This strategy needs to be realistic, achievable and practical, based on your budget, available resources and business objectives.
A good campaign makes a company memorable to its target audience — but you want to be remembered for the right reasons. It’s vital to start by reflecting on your goals and company mission so that these can inform your entire marketing strategy before you start drawing attention to your business with advertising.
Exposure Ninjas are experts at planning effective digital marketing campaigns. If you’d like our help planning your next big advertising push, why not contact us for a free marketing review of your website and to discuss your campaign objectives
11 Steps to Building a Results Focused Digital Marketing Campaign
A digital marketing campaign has many moving parts that all work together to grow your business.
Once you get your campaign up and running with advertisements, email automation, and sales funnels you will be able to review analytics and physically see your business developing.
From defining your goals and budget to setting up Facebook and Google advertising it’s a long road.
But we’re here to give you the best advice, tips and tricks to building your next digital marketing campaign.
Apply these tips to your digital marketing campaign, or contact our expert team and we’ll be an extension of your marketing department.
1. Define your goals
Do you want conversions, followers, likes, responses to emails, to be #1 on Google searches?
The options are endless in digital marketing but it is wise to decide what your main goal is going to be in your digital marketing campaign.
If you want to send emails as well as run ads on Google and other social media platforms.
Consider hiring a digital marketing agency to help you out as this can be a huge task for a small business owner.
There are several different types of goals you can focus on.
Some important ones that you should be aware of are brand awareness, follower growth, conversions and lead generation.
Brand awareness should be high on your list.
How many times have you told someone to search for something on the internet but instead of saying “Go search for it” you have said “Just Google it”?
This is brand awareness at the highest level.
When users start to use your brand name to refer to a generic term, you’ve made it. But it’s a long process to get there.
Gaining followers is not as easy as it sounds.
Sure you can tell all of your friends and family to like your business on Facebook or follow you on Instagram.
But you still need a digital marketing campaign.
Here you can run follower growth ads on Facebook that target your specific audience and ask them to like your page.
Send emails to your current clients asking for likes or follows. It is always a good idea to have something to exchange like a coupon or free gift.
Getting people to convert to using your product takes a lot of coaxing.
If you want your digital marketing campaign to be focused on conversions you essentially want someone to…
…see your ad or open your email and make a purchase.
Lead Generation is a step in the conversion process.
If you are focused on generating leads, these users will become aware of your product and then…
…let you know they are interested in learning more and potentially making a purchase.
With each of these goals there are various steps you will have to take in order for your digital marketing campaign to be successful.
2. Define Your Target Market
What types of people do you want to target?
If you already have a website and are running analytics you can pull reports to see what kinds of people are shopping for your products.
If you are just starting out you will need to do some research.
You can check out your competition to see who they are targeting but don’t just target their audience.
You should find a niche market to target that they might be missing out on.
You will need to first decide if you are targeting other businesses or consumers. No you cannot target everyone.
Find your niche market. A successful digital marketing campaign has a well-defined audience that is carefully crafted by you, the business owner!
You can survey your current customers on your own or hire a digital marketing company to do the research for you.
3. Develop Personas
Create a buyer persona for you brand. Describe this person in detail – what they do for a living, their annual income, family situation, age, likes and dislikes.
Say you are opening a craft coffee company in your local community. The average price of a cup of coffee is around $5.
Your ideal customer will likely have a higher salary and have some disposable income. Let’s map out a persona for our future coffee business.
This is Steve. Steve is a 27 year old marketing professional who earns $80,000 a year at his job.
He loves his local community and is always looking for a fun new place where he can spend the days he works from home instead of the office.
He is very tech savvy and loves a good subscription box. Steve loves learning about the latest technology but also enjoys the outdoors.
He spends his Saturdays shopping at the local farmers market and taking his dog for walks in the park.
He hopes to one day have his own tech company. Although he likes to save money, he will often splurge on locally crafted food and drinks.
This is a short summary of an ideal customer for our local coffee business.
When creating buyer personas, you should consider your customers’ demographics, fears, goals and their online behaviors.
Creating these takes time, practice, and patience to get them just right.
4.Define Your Budget
For any digital marketing campaign, you will need to come up with a budget. Keep in mind that digital advertising is the cheapest form of advertising!
We have already compared digital marketing vs traditional marketing if you don’t believe us.
If you are hiring a digital marketing company keep in mind that you will need to budget for paying for services as well as…
…having a budget for running Facebook or Google Ads if that is something you are interested in for your digital marketing campaign.
You can start by asking yourself how much revenue you want to see. This is where you need to set a reasonable goal.
If you are running a Facebook ad campaign and you want to make $10,000 each month and your product margin is $100 you will need to…
…generate 100 sales from this ad campaign.
And with that in mind, you can set your budget based on the profit margin you’d like to generate.
Creating a budget is a big part of your digital marketing campaign.
If you don’t know what you budget should look like, set up a time to talk it through with a social media professional.
5. Choose The Channels You Want to Use
In your digital marketing campaign you will probably want to utilize as many channels as possible.
If you are a business-to-business company you should not be using the exact same channels as a business-to-consumer company.
You can advertise on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and even Pinterest.
Google Ads are popular as well and can quickly get your company website to the top of search results.
Don’t leave email marketing out of your digital marketing campaign.
Sending emails is often neglected by companies but this is one of the best ways to grow your business.
A combination of marketing on social media channels, sending emails, optimizing your website, and using Google to…
…advertise can build a strong strategy if done correctly.
With all of these strategies working together, there’s a lot of room for user error.
Of course, you can learn how to build an amazing digital marketing campaign yourself.
But wouldn’t it be easier to let a professional do all of the heavy lifting for you?
6. Do Keyword Research for SEO and PPC
If you are planning on running Google Ads (PPC) or optimizing your website for search engines (SEO) you will need to do some keyword research.
Keywords are words that users type into search engines in order to find a product or service or answer a question.
If you don’t want to run ads you definitely want to make sure your site is optimized.
SEO is free unlike PPC and is used to organically move your page up in Google search rankings.
The trick to finding keywords for your business is to put yourself in your customer’s shoes.
Brainstorm a list of keywords that you think customers will be searching and then test them!
You can type words into Google and let your search bar autofill like this. It will help you get an idea of what customers are searching for.
You can also use sites like Answer the Public.
This site will provide a web of questions that people are asking search engines based around the keyword you type in.
As you can see these are all the questions that people are asking Google about flights.
Here’s a sneak peak into our keyword research process.
We start by talking with our clients about their goals for their digital marketing campaign and which words they think customers are searching for.
We then compare what competitors are ranking for and check to see if there are any keywords you are ranking for…
…already and if it’s possible to get you that number one spot.
After our initial research is completed we compile keywords so that we can compare their monthly search volume and keyword difficulty.
We also like to map out which page we can optimize for each keyword or if we should create a new landing page.
We are usually looking for keywords that have high monthly search with low competition.
For this client, we used industry-relevant keywords to optimize their website and was able to rank them at the first spot of Google search results.
Here you can see part of our process for defining which keywords will work well for this company and which won’t.
We like to explore all of our options to make sure we don’t miss a potential keyword.
Our process for PPC is a little different as we have to compare the cost per click of each word and then group the keywords accordingly.
With PPC we are focused on how much each word will cost when a potential customer clicks as well as the monthly search volume.
Our goal is to keep your CPC low while reaching as many people as possible.
Once you have completed your keyword research you are ready to start optimizing your site and set up Google Ads.
SEO will physically take place on your site.
You will need to change your title and meta descriptions, H1 tag, images alt tags and copy to reflect the keywords you have chosen.
When creating your PPC ad campaigns you will use your target keywords so that when they are typed in, your ad comes up as one of the top ad results.
If you are going to put time and money into something like SEO and PPC you want to make sure it is done correctly.
Hiring a professional for your digital marketing campaign will ensure that a custom strategy is put in place so that you can achieve your goals.
7. Set up Ads on Social Media Platforms
Now that all of your research is completed and your goals are set, you can jump into social media advertising.
Wherever you decide to advertise (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter) you will need to…
…create engaging advertisements that resonate with your audience.
Since Facebook advertising is the most popular form of social media advertising in a digital marketing campaign we’ll show you an example.
You will be creating this ad in the Facebook ads manager for your Facebook business account.
They will first ask you to choose your objective. Let’s go with brand awareness.
You will then choose a name for your campaign and decide if you want to optimize your budget or not.
You will then be prompted to create an audience for your ad.
Pro Tip: Use a lookalike audience. This is a great way to target people who are similar to your existing customer base.
You’ll need an email list to start so that Facebook can build an audience for you.
Once you have this set up you’ll be targeting potential customers like a pro!
This is an example of how we used lookalike audiences for our sightseeing service client’s PPC ads.
You will then set your advertising budget. Our best advice is to start small and then scale up.
You wouldn’t want to spend a bunch of money on an ad set that’s not converting.
Finally you will create an advertisement complete with images and copy that is going to resonate with your audience.
8. Manage Your Social Media Profiles
Not only is social media advertising an important component for your digital marketing campaign but…
…managing and monitoring your accounts should not be neglected.
Follower growth and reputation management are two management techniques that we swear by.
You should always be focused on growing your fan-base because you want to continue to gain customers. Don’t just rely on your existing customers.
In order for your digital marketing campaign to be successful, you should make sure you have a good online reputation.
This means you will need to interact with your customers on your social media accounts as well as reply to…
…disgruntled customers who give you bad reviews.
Reaching out to people who have had a bad experience (although it may be scary at first) builds trust and rapport with your customers.
Here’s a review that was left on Google. This could have really harmed the business if the owner had not responded.
If a customer did have a bad experience you can open a dialogue with them, ask them to send you a message or an…
…email about their experience or offer them a coupon to try your business again.
As a business owner the best thing you can do is to make sure you are actively reading comments and reviews on…
…social media as well as interacting with customers.
9. Formulate an Email Marketing Strategy
Email marketing should not be left out of your digital marketing campaign as it can be incorporated with the social media side of your campaign.
You can use social media to collect emails which you can then use to build a lookalike audience for your campaign.
You now have a list of people who have opted to receive news and special offers from you!
You can also use emails to encourage follower growth on your social media platforms.
If you feel like you don’t have time to send emails, at least set up some automations (or hire an email marketing pro to do it for you!).
Automations can be created to welcome users, remind them that they left something in their cart, update them on their purchases and more!
Once you create the emails you want to appear in your automation, you will need to set up a trigger and press start.
We’ll look at setting up automation in MailChimp.
As you can see, the trigger is set to send the first email one day after a subscriber joins your list.
You can then add as many emails as you want to this sequence.
Automating emails can save you a lot of time but it is good to send non-automated emails as well.
A welcome sequence is great but what happens when it’s over and your customers finish the automation?
If you discontinue email marketing, your customers will quickly forget your brand.
The above image is a proof of just how much email marketing works, if done effectively.
10. Set Up Remarketing
Remarketing is a tool that you should be using throughout your digital marketing campaign.
It allows you to capture sales that you might have otherwise lost.
If someone browses your products but does not make a purchase you can target them with social media ads, Google Ads or emails.
Here is an advertisement from Rareform, a company that sells wallets, bags and purses made from recycled billboards.
Since they have a bunch of different products, they are running a carousel ad so that customers can…
…easily browse their products or see products that they have looked at previously on their website.
They even offer a coupon to further entice customers.
Remarketing emails can come in the form of cart abandonment emails.
If you add something to your cart and don’t purchase, you may receive an email about it later encouraging you to come back and make a purchase.
Big companies like Amazon have remarketing down to a science.
They will send you emails about what you have left in your cart or products that are similar to products you have either purchased or…
…clicked on like this backpack.
This strategy should be a big part of your digital marketing campaign in order to catch the customers who slip through the cracks.
11. Craft A Blogging Strategy
Blogging is a critical piece of your digital marketing campaign that may sound insignificant but it can be a game-changer for your business.
Blogging can help out your SEO, increase customer engagement, and help to answer questions that your customers have.
A big tip for writing blogs is to make sure you are crafting relevant content.
Your blogs don’t have to be 3,000 words but keep in mind that the longer the blog the better your chances of ranking.
If someone clicks on one of your 300 word blogs, they’ll be finished reading pretty quickly.
This means that their time spent on your site will be fairly short.
Users will spend a lot more time reading a longer blog that has engaging copy and cool graphics.
If users spend a lot of time on your site, Google now thinks that your content is important which can ultimately help you move up in search.
By writing a blog you can also help to answer your potential customers’ questions about your company or product.
No matter what your product, service, or cause is your website will greatly benefit from blogging.
If you don’t know where to begin, our team of experts can help you brainstorm topics and even help with writing your blogs.
Which can end up saving you a lot time.
Constructing a Winning Digital Marketing Campaign
When building a results focused digital marketing campaign you should be utilizing each of these strategies.
One builds on the next, and skipping a step can be costly. This is a huge job for one person especially if you lack experience in any of these fields.
At LYFE we give our clients a team of dedicated specialists who work together to curate and manage successful digital marketing campaigns.
Contact us today to see how we can help your business reach its full potential.
