How to create a strong foundation for your next digital campaign
Getting a decent return on your digital marketing spend takes more than just a big idea. In fact, the creative phase should be the last thing you do before launch. A successful digital marketing campaign requires a strong foundation of research and strategy. Without it, you’ll spend more than you need to and get less back than you hoped.
Fortunately, all you need is to get the basics right:
- Define your goal
You’re not running a digital marketing campaign just for fun – what’s the business outcome you’re working towards? You’ll need a specific outcome in mind for each campaign, like increasing leads or boosting sales. But your campaign should also be aligned with wider business goals. Get clear on what you’re hoping to achieve, then use this to base your decisions on for channels and creative.
- Meet your audience
You need to know who you’re talking to before you craft your message and send it out. Ad placements, digital purchasing and even timing will change depending on who you’re targeting. That’s why it’s crucial to know exactly who you’re trying to reach. This part of the process requires research into current and potential customer groups. Who already knows your brand? Who have you missed? Are there segments that you’ve neglected in the past? The more you know, the better.
- Choose the right digital channels
Once you know your audience, you can look at their online habits and choose your channels. Social platforms, ads or content on specific sites, Google ads – each campaign needs a unique mix of channels and creative assets.
- Create and co-ordinate
Creative comes next, targeted at your audience and adjusted to suit each of your chosen channels. Every social platform has its format and word count, and other channels have specific guidelines as well. There are also the social expectations of each channel. LinkedIn has a professional feel, Twitter values quippy wit and Instagram is all about the hero image. Once you’ve adjusted messaging to fit each placement, you can launch a co-ordinated, consistent campaign.
- Launch, test, tweak
In a world of customisation and instant feedback, the launch is just the beginning. When you send your campaign out, you should be testing and measuring results at the same time. A/B testing is one of the most common forms – you launch two options through the same channel, and measure which gets the best response. For example, you might send a short-form eDM, and another, more detailed version. The data you gather helps you make decisions about future content.
- Measure every moment
Continual tracking and tweaking are now a standard part of the digital campaign process. Rather than simply letting your work run and reporting on the results after the fact, you set specific metrics to measure performance throughout. This gives you valuable information about how your audience responds to your content. How many people are clicking through from your ads and buying the product? Is social content or paid advertising more effective? Are most customers going straight from ad to conversion, or are there more steps involved? As you gather data around customer behaviour, you can use it to tweak ad placements and content during the campaign, maximising the effectiveness of your spend.
Building digital marketing success
Running a successful campaign means considering business strategy, audience, ad placements, content, and performance all at once. Rather than working through a campaign and then measuring outcomes, customisation and adjustment happen during the campaign. While this type of management offers better outcomes, it also means more juggling and complexity for your marketing team.
That’s where Acquire comes in. We offer end-to-end service throughout the campaign process, from goal setting and channel selection to responsive content placement. It’s about cutting through the complexity and maximising the value of your digital spend.
Want to do more with your ad budget? Get in touch.