Planning, Development & Management
There are several major stages and steps in building a digital marketing campaign:
- Planning: Outlining goals, target customers, and campaign length
- Development: Determining a strategy, including voice and messaging, target keywords, and offer strategy; reaching the audience, including making campaign location and marketing decisions; integrating with all channels; and creating consistency
- Management: Determining the success and value of the campaign
Digital Marketing Campaign Example
Let's build a digital marketing campaign based on a product release for a new line of crossbody style bags from an organization known for totes, weekend bags, and convertible day bags. The fictional company releases new products once a month. The campaign is to be called Good Vibes + Peaceful Drives.
The first step in the planning process is to outline goals for Good Vibes + Peaceful Drives. On the surface, the company wants customers to know about a new crossbody bag and generate sales for this new style. The typical questions to answer in this stage and their answers for this example are as follows:
What are we trying to achieve?
The company would like crossbody bags to represent 20% of their monthly sales within three months of the launch.
What is the budget?
The marketing budget for this campaign is 10% of total monthly sales, which is $10,000.
What is the target audience?
The two primary target audiences for this campaign are existing customers and customers in the same age range of 25 to 40 that have shown interest in the brand but have not made a purchase. This bag is at the lowest price point yet.
- The company will target customers, specifically return customers, who have purchased within the past year.
- The company will target potential customers who are 25 to 40 that have visited the site before but have never purchased.
What is the estimated length of time?
90 days.
The company will also use a previous competitive analysis in the Good Vibes + Peaceful Drives marketing campaign. While they aren't changing the market, they would like to obtain more of the market share in the women's handbag industry.
Once goals are set, the development of the Good Vibes + Peaceful Drives campaign begins. For an established company, voice and messaging should remain consistent with past brand efforts. A purse company with a campaign called Good Vibes + Peaceful Drives has a fun and young voice, so ad campaigns should follow this.
Ad focus is also addressed now. Because the company is reaching out to people that are already familiar with them, price point should be an important place to start. Customers that haven't purchased before will get price point ad copy, and return customers will get product feature-focused copy. Be sure writing is benefit driven copy, which is writing to focus on the benefits of making a purchase. Good Vibes + Peaceful Drives will be relaxed in tone but also authoritative on the industry. Price-focused writing: this is as simple as Introducing our lowest priced bag yet - the crossbody!
After the voice has been narrowed down, the company must determine what the marketing tools will be. The most typical strategy should include:
- Keyword phrases: These relate to search engine optimization. Also called SEO, this is a strategy used to increase traffic to a company website. For this campaign, the phrases to use throughout are 'crossbody purse' and 'stylish crossbody.'
- Social media marketing: For this campaign, the company will meet customers on certain social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. All of these will be through posts and advertisements featuring the Good Vibes + Peaceful Drives graphics.
- Contests: In the campaign's second month there will be a contest for a free crossbody for portraying the #GoodVibes or #PeacefulDrives mentality.
- Pay-per-click campaigns (PPC) Internet ads: Can be used to drive traffic to websites. When ads are clicked, payment occurs. PPC ads for this example will be run on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Google.
- Email marketing: After segmenting the customer base into repeats and site visitors without purchases, three separate emails will be triggered through email automation. Email automation is a series of emails triggered based on customer behavior.
- Affiliate marketing: An arrangement where a retailer pays a commission to an external website for traffic or sales generated from a referral. In this case, the company will reach out to several influential bloggers.
- Content marketing: Marketing of online material that does not explicitly promote a brand but stimulates interest in a product or service. Good Vibes + Peaceful Drives will primarily focus on social media posts and blog posts to be written one time per month about the new crossbody.
After all of these decisions have been made, the company will integrate it and follow the schedule, running a total of seven to ten PPC ads over the 90-day period, email marketing through triggering and once per week, and affiliate marketing with any channel. They'll also run blog posting once per month for the crossbody, and social media marketing with five posts a week about the Good Vibes + Peaceful Drives experience.
The management of the digital marketing campaign should be fairly simple as long as the development process is properly set up. It's advisable to check PPC campaigns, social media ads, and site traffic on a weekly basis. On a monthly basis, revenue numbers should be checked and repositioned as necessary. It always comes down to the numbers. In this case, the primary goal of Good Vibes + Peaceful Drives is about revenue. The crossbody product should be representing a growing share of revenue for the company or the campaign won't be successful.
Lesson Summary
A digital marketing campaign is an online marketing effort put forward by a company to drive engagement, conversions, traffic, or revenue. The stages of building a digital marketing campaign include planning, development, and management.
Under planning, a company outlines goals to be met. During development, the company begins their campaign, including writing benefit driven copy to focus on the benefits of making a purchase and using search engine optimization. Email automation is a series of emails triggered based on customer behavior. Affiliate marketing is defined as an arrangement where a retailer pays a commission to an external website for traffic or sales generated from a referral. The company will use social media platforms for contests, marketing, pay-per-click campaigns and content marketing to read their audience.
Management should keep weekly tabs on social media ads, PPC campaigns, and site traffic. They should also check revenue numbers once a month to make sure goals are being met.
