A successful digital marketing campaign requires an extensive planning process, during the planning process you get to identify the need of the campaign, set the goals and identify methods to achieve those goals. A good planning process which consists of extensive research helps you avoid any miscalculations and losses and maximizes your chances of running a successful campaign for your brand.
Steps to plan a Campaign:
Step1 – Research and Goal Setting
1) Research your market: The first step in planning a campaign is to do thorough market research . It’s important to have a transparent and realistic understanding of the current performance metrics of your products or services in your operating market. You can use data and KPIs for this type of information . Another way to achieve this data is by doing social listening where you observe and analyze what customers are saying about your products/services.
2) Know Your Competitors: It’s important to know where your competitors are in terms of their previous and current marketing activities . It helps you understand the areas you should be targeting where your competitors may be currently missing out. It also helps you to identify any similarities with your upcoming campaigns and your competitors’ previous campaigns.
3) Set achievable goals: Running a campaign consists of several activities but all those activities should directly or indirectly help you reach your goal. goals can vary from campaign to campaign for example goals can be lead generation, brand awareness etc. It’s important to set goals that are achievable and this can be done using SMART goals.
Specific
Measureable
Attainable
Realistic
Time Bound
Step 2 – Set up a Budget.
It’s important to set up a budget so you will be able to allocate accordingly. Budget should be set according to your campaign goal and should be constantly tracked during a campaign life cycle. Budget should not restrict your channels from reaching the desired objective but it’s important to keep in mind ROI as well.
Step 3 – Know your Buyers Characteristics
It’s important to know your buyer’s characteristics . characteristics should include age, location ,gender, income etc. understanding these characteristics will help you identify your buyer’s persona, traits ,habits and purchase patterns this will help in posting the right content on the right channels.
Step 4 – Content Creation
After knowing your customers characteristics and persona the next step is content creation. Content should be relevant to your campaign and should have a hook to draw in customers. While creating content it’s important to understand the channel it’s being posted to since every channel is different and different content should be posted for different channels.
Step 5 – Implementation
The next step is to implement the prepared content. Before implementation you should create a timeline for posting and create a distribution plan so that you can implement your content on time and your campaign deadlines are met. It’s also important to see how all the content fits together and to ensure that the content has a unified message which is in line with campaign objectives.
Step 6 – Tracking & Analysis
After implementation the next step is to track your KPI to see if they are performing up to your expected goals and to make necessary tweaks to optimize performance. It’s important to track and report your campaign metrics so you can review and analyze the data for future campaign planning and management.
