How to plan marketing campaign activities

How to create a marketing campaign

1. Set goals for your marketing campaign

   What are you hoping to achieve from your marketing campaign? How will you measure success? You must ask these two critical questions during every marketing campaign planning session you have. Your marketing plan needs to be organized around a series of campaign goals, such as:
   
   - Promoting a new product
   - Increasing brand awareness and attracting new customers
   - Increasing sales of an existing product or service
   - Demonstrating continued value to your current customers
   
   Establishing clear, measurable campaign objectives can help you stay focused throughout your marketing campaign. It will also help you determine whether your campaign plan is working or not.

2. Determine your marketing campaign budget

   How much are you willing to spend on your marketing campaign? This is important to decide early in your process, as your campaign budget will shape the look and feel of your entire campaign.
   
   So, for instance, if you have a large budget, you might look into creating high-quality digital content to use on your website or even outsource large portions of your marketing campaign to a professional marketing firm.
   
   Of course, most small business owners can't afford a lavish marketing plan, which means you might want to organize your campaign around free options such as social media or other digital marketing tools. The good news is that even if your campaign budget is limited, modern tools make it easier than ever to reach new customers through social media posts and other forms of online content.

3. Learn your target audience

   What is your target market? How much do you know about your customers' ages, lifestyle, and buying habits? A successful marketing campaign depends on how well you reach your target audience. Customer data can be used to generate a "buyer persona," a simple guide to reflect the identity and behavior of your average customer.
   
   You may be able to find some basic market research online by checking out companies that are also in your industry. But if you want to learn the most about your specific customer base, you can gain information by conducting customer surveys.
   
   Businesses commonly collect customer data such as:
   - Age
   - Gender
   - Geographic location
   - Marital status
   - Household income
   - Preferred social media channels (if any)
   
   You can also use sales records to determine the average transaction size for your business, which can help you evaluate your existing customers’ spending habits.
   
   Understanding your target audience's interests will help you connect them to the right products. Understanding their digital habits will help you select the best marketing channels to reach them. For example, suppose your customer base includes a lot of Millennials and members of Generation Z. In that case, you'll want to use multiple social media channels to reach them, rather than relying solely on Facebook.

4. Delegate responsibilities

   Solo entrepreneurs should maintain a simple marketing strategy that they can easily manage without getting overwhelmed. Thankfully, a digital marketing campaign can be created and run with relative ease from your office computer or even your phone.
   
   But if you have employees, you'll want to pull together an in-house team that can handle your marketing activities. Your marketing team can help you during the marketing campaign planning phase. You can delegate tasks to team members to divide the workload and streamline the process.

5. Establish a campaign theme

   Next, you'll want to determine a marketing campaign theme. This is slightly different from your campaign goals, though the theme should reflect your campaign's goal or key message.
   
   In other words, while your marketing goals were clear, specific statements, your campaign theme relates to how you'll creatively communicate with your target audience.
   
   This is where you can think of a product or a campaign slogan to help reveal the need among your customers. You can also think about specific talking points that relate to how your product or service uniquely satisfies a need that your customers experience.
   
   You'll also determine any specific creative assets (video cameras, web platforms, etc.) you'll need to implement your campaign ideas.

6. Choose your marketing channels

   Does your company already use social media? Most companies maintain their social media presence through a Facebook page, but others also use Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and up-and-coming social media platforms to engage specific demographics.
   
   Don't forget that many social media platforms have free and paid features. You might consider devoting some money to Facebook Ads or a similar service to promote your business.
   
   How do you know which is the best for your business? Just go back to Step 3! Find out where your audience likes to hang out online and focus your efforts on these platforms. Alternatively, you can branch out beyond these usual channels to build brand awareness with an entirely different customer base.

7. Create a content calendar

   Before your official campaign launch, you'll need to have some content ready to share. This content should be oriented around your marketing goals and reflect the campaign concept you created with your marketing campaign planning team in Step 5.
   
   To manage this content, you'll want to establish a clear calendar. This can be integrated with your existing social media marketing calendar if you have one. Your calendar can also help you decide how often to share digital marketing content with your audience.
   
   The actual content you create depends on your target audience, of course. Remember: many of today's younger audiences would rather watch a video than read a blog post, so keep that in mind during your marketing campaign planning sessions.
   
   Pro tip: Build anticipation before officially launching your marketing campaign! Start sharing digital content about a new product and build anticipation among your existing customers. When combined with your digital marketing campaign, you may find that your current customers like and share your content, giving you a broader reach than before.

8. Analyze and adapt

   In the best-case scenario, you'll create a great marketing campaign and have near-instant success. But in the real world, this is unlikely. Instead, you might have to constantly revise your marketing strategy and adapt to a changing business climate.
   
   Every marketing plan will move in a circle, so you'll constantly revisit your goals. Are you reaching these goals and objectives? Where are you falling short? How can you revise your marketing campaign to compensate for what you didn't expect?
   
   You can use this insight to make course corrections to your current marketing plan or use these lessons to plan for your next campaign.