The 5 Key Elements of a Marketing Campaign
By Olivia Roehm | Account Executive
It all starts with a goal. Most of the time, the answer to my question, “what is the goal?” is “sales!” Yeah, we know. Let’s dig a little deeper on how to identify the goal and what key elements are crucial to building a marketing campaign.
Every business begins with a great idea of how to fulfill a need. When you fulfill a need, you make a sale. Your marketing goals must be focused on how to achieve the decision of that consumer to fulfill their need with your product or service; this is where your expert knowledge of your purchasers, your business, and your industry comes in. You know how people usually purchase your product or service, and possibly why they chose it too; use that to drive the focus of your marketing goal.
Once a goal is set, these 5 key elements must be considered before jumping into any campaign.
1. Past Results
Before moving forward with any new marketing strategy, don’t neglect a little history lesson. It’s so important to recap what you’ve tried before and what has or hasn’t worked – the most important discussion, though, is WHY they did or didn’t work. This will confirm the focus of the goal you’ve chosen.
2. Target Audience
Who your audience is must be the next item to think through; knowing your goal and what marketing campaigns have worked in the past helps with the assessment. Will it be a general audience? Will it be a niche group of your audience who tends to be repeat customers? If so, how targeted does the message need to be to create personalization?
3. Budget
Once the audience profile is designed, you’ll need to decide the budget question. How much do you have to spend? Normally, directors I work with have an idea of what their full marketing budget allows quarterly or annually; if you don’t have a budget in mind, consider the highest you’re willing to test based on past marketing campaigns, your knowledge of the brand awareness level needed to purchase, and the size of your audience.
4. Timeline
Once you’ve considered the campaign budget, knowing WHEN your audience is likely to purchase is key. Take a look at your data history again, consider the seasonality of your industry if there is one, and how long it may take your audience to make the decision to purchase. Is your product or service commonly purchased daily, or does your consumer research over a longer time period? What testing time will you allow for the campaign to prove itself? (Here’s where a little industry best practices on testing campaigns comes into play!)
5. KPIs
This is the part of the campaign that usually is toughest to answer. Most CMO’s, VP’s of Marketing, and Marketing Managers I work with need to answer the ROI question. The good news is that if you’ve gone through the above steps in a detailed manner, you should already have an idea of your KPIs; they are the key elements in the campaign report you are betting on being high, leading to higher sales in the end.
Due diligence. That’s the main requirement in preparing for a new marketing campaign, test campaigns, or in scaling a current marketing initiative that’s working!
