Digital marketing is a great avenue to reach customers and promote your business with high precision and efficiency. For digital marketing to be effective, however, you need a plan. A digital marketing campaign is your roadmap to decide what to promote, how to reach your customers, and what you can spend in order for your marketing efforts to deliver ROI. Let’s walk through how to design a killer digital marketing campaign, step by step.
How to Design a Killer Digital Marketing Campaign: Step by Step
1. Define Goals
The first step to design a killer digital marketing campaign is to clearly define your goals. What do you want to achieve for your company, and by what metrics will you measure success?
Your goals might include generating a set amount of sales, earning a number of new subscribers, or getting new potential customers to sign up for a free trial. Or, it might include promotional goals that more indirectly link to sales, such as generating downloads of a free promotional guide, gathering leads which your sales department can follow up on, or getting attention to a new product or new store you’re about to launch.
2. Set KPIs
Whatever goals you choose, they should be linked to key performance indicators, or KPIs. Your primary KPI should be linked directly to your goal. For example, if you want to generate more online sales, your primary KPI might be the amount of online sales generated in a given timeframe. If you want to get more downloads of a free guide as a lead-nurturing initiative, your KPI should be downloads of the guide in a timeframe.
Your goals should include a set number, using a KPI, and a timeframe. Using your previous data as benchmarks, choose a KPI number or span that is challenging, but possible, to attain.
For example, if you typically generate $1,000 in sales per month, generating $2,000 in monthly sales might be a lofty goal; does it seem feasible to increase your sales by 100%? Generating $1,200 in monthly sales and increasing your monthly sales by 20% might make more sense. Your goals will also depend on your timeline, which we’ll discuss later. Your goals will also impact how you set your budget, so it’s important to set realistic goals, or it will throw off your budgeting efforts.
KPIs While the Campaign is Active
It’s helpful to use additional KPIs to measure how your digital marketing campaign is performing while it’s active. For example, you might use the amount of traffic to a landing page to assess how well your ads are performing. Or, you might divide this by organic traffic and paid traffic to assess how your organic SEO strategy and advertising are performing, separately.
Consider how you might also use your KPIs to assess your campaign and its success while the campaign is running, so you can make adjustments. Then, you can be sure you’re heading towards your goal.
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3. Define Audience
Who do you want to reach with this campaign? The campaign should align with your marketing personas, their interests, concerns, and what need or desire your product or service fulfills. Consider how you might reach your target audience, including what types of media they prefer, what platforms they’re likely to find you on, and where your marketing campaign might reach them across the marketing funnel.
4. Set a Budget
To design a killer digital marketing campaign, it’s critical to set the right budget. Setting your budget too low will make it difficult to put your promotions and content in front of your audience, and your campaign will be likely to fail. But setting your budget too high will make it impossible to realize a return, making your campaign pointless.
Use your goals to calculate how much you would gain if your campaign were successful. Then, consider what ROI you’d like to see. Finally, consider the likelihood that you’ll be able to reach your goals. This will give you a range for the budget of your digital marketing campaign, with the high point representing a big success and high ROI, which might be unlikely, and the low point representing a minimum success and low ROI, which will be relatively easy to achieve.
5. Select Promotions
What will you primarily be promoting with your campaign? Your promotional content or offer, which might include a guide, discount, trial membership, or any other content along the buyer’s journey, should be interesting to your audience and relevant to your goals.
Consider not only your promotion, but also how your target audience might access your content. This might include optimizing a landing page, arranging a free trial, or ensuring a discount code works on your online store.
6. Plan Distribution
How are you going to reach your target audience? What methods will you use, and how do these align with the buyer’s journey?
Are you going to reach them through email, social media, display ads, search ads, traditional marketing, or something else? A killer digital marketing campaign should include a combination of these things that work synergistically to reach and resonate with your target audience.
Remember, your audience isn’t going to be immediately interested in your promotion; they’re more likely to slowly become interested in the idea through several steps. Your distribution plan should ideally reach customers at varying stages of interest. For example, social media posts or ads might reach them at the awareness stage, while an email drip might reach them once they’ve become a lead.
7. Outline Deliverables
What will you need to create to put your promotion in front of your target audience, using the distribution methods previously outlined? Who will be in charge of producing these deliverables, and how long will it take? Does this align with your budget?
Outline your deliverables, including what you need to make, who will make it, how long it should take, what platform or media the deliverable will be used for, and a general description of the item and its purpose. Once you’ve established this list, it’s a good idea to organize your content and your team using a content calendar, project management app, or both.
8. Set a Timeline
Over what time period will your digital marketing campaign take place? Will your campaign run for a month, a quarter, six months, or even a year or more? When will you release different deliverables? Does this make sense with your budget? Consider how long your digital marketing campaign will last as well as how long it will take to assemble all the different items. Lastly, consider when each item will go live, and become available for potential customers to see or interact with.
Make sure that everyone on your team is aware of this timeline. Also, it should be clear which items are reliant on other items for completion first. This will keep your marketing campaign development streamlined.
9. Choose Your Team
With your plan organized, your budget and timeline set, and your deliverable items clearly outlined, it’s time to assemble your team. Consider how you might outsource some tasks to a digital marketing agency or freelancers, and which tasks your own team will be in charge of. With all tasks assigned and everyone aware of their responsibilities, it’s time to get started on your digital marketing campaign!
To design a killer digital marketing campaign, it’s important to align your goals, audiences, KPIs, deliverables, timeline and your team. Everyone should know what they need to do, who they can turn to if they need clarification, and how they might get more information about the other aspects of the campaign. This will help to ensure that your digital marketing campaign is cohesive and well-organized. If you’re interested in developing a digital marketing campaign designed for your business and your goals, we can help. Contact us today to schedule a free discovery session, and learn more about designing a killer digital marketing campaign for your business or organization.