Plan An Online Marketing Campaign
Starting any kind of online marketing campaign requires meticulous planning and numerous strategic and creative decisions that may seem intimidating at first. But don’t despair just yet: every campaign requires some kind of approach that works – one way or another!
At first, it may feel overwhelming, but we’re here to offer an 8-step plan for planning out and executing an online campaign in an efficient manner!
Step 1: Define and Understand Your Target Audience.
Determining who the audience for your campaign will be is one of the first and most crucial steps of its development. Only once you know who you’re targeting can you choose which channels, objectives, and keywords that best meet their needs?
One approach would be to break your target audience down into smaller segments based on purchasing intentions, interests and subculture affiliation. Google Analytics or Facebook Insights can be particularly helpful here as they break this information down in an easily understandable format.
Social media analytics are also of great assistance here, enabling you to see which type of posts your audience finds most appealing – this helps target specific groups more precisely and efficiently. Just keep in mind that each platform may attract slightly or significantly different audiences.
Finally, data collection involves directly engaging with your audience and soliciting feedback on what has been done so far. This allows you to get an understanding of what works well and doesn’t work well, and how best to engage each segment.
Once you have collected and segmented all this data on your audience, you can identify which groups to focus on when planning your campaign!
Step 2: Examine the current marketing environment.
For this step, conduct what’s known as a SWOT Analysis to understand both internal and external factors influencing marketing success. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT).
Strengths are internal factors; these include what your business does well and any advantages it holds over competitors. Weaknesses, on the other hand, are areas in which it struggles or needs improvement; for instance, your social media strategy might be strong (a strength), while branding colors or logo could use some tweaking (weakness).
Opportunities exist both internally and externally, including new trends to incorporate into your strategy, previously untapped market segments to pursue, or innovative technologies or marketing practices that present themselves that you could take advantage of.
Supply chain issues, competition and other obstacles are perfect examples of external threats in terms of SWOT analysis; these forces could potentially have detrimental effects on your business from outside forces. These threats can also directly relate to weaknesses within your organization so it’s wise to be wary.
After conducting your SWOT analysis, keep its findings in mind as you continue to plan. Be particularly mindful if any opportunities present themselves to address any weaknesses during your campaign.
Step 3: Define Objectives, KPIs, and Metrics.
Once you understand who your targets are as well as the status quo of your business, you have enough information to start setting objectives for your campaign. A good approach would be to start off broad and narrow it down as needed until reaching S.M.A.R.T. goals (these acronyms refer to goals which are:
(1) Specific;
(2) Measurable;
(3) Attainable;
(4). Realistic; and
(5) Timely
These goals may range from promoting specific products or services you offer, driving sales, gathering customer feedback and retargeting existing customers to simply increasing sales for a book title (not necessarily) by 3 percent in two months (for instance). Just ensure they meet certain criteria: make them S.M.A.R.T.
Next, determine which KPIs and metrics you will use to track the success of your campaign. There are various performance measures you could monitor such as sales per month (or another time frame), revenue per month, etc., rate of new customers over a set period, organic traffic and leads in a given time period, amount of audience engagement during specific time frames and conversion rates on specific platforms over specific time periods.
Which elements you focus on most will depend on the goals you set.
Step 4: Which channels and content types will you use?
There are numerous channels and content types to use in your marketing, even with these steps helping narrow it down. Some examples include:
- Social media platforms (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn etc).
- Your business website.
- Blogs.
- Pinterest (a visual search engine).
- Email marketing.
- Influencer marketing.
- Paid search ads.
Each channel offers different content types. Instagram allows for Stories, carousel posts, video posts and live videos; on Pinterest there are regular pins, Idea pins carousel pins or video pins – each offering something different!
Each channel and content type works best at fulfilling specific goals; find those which best meet yours.
Step 5: Keyword research.
Conducting keyword research is integral to any campaign’s success – regardless of goals, channels or target audiences! Keywords play a huge role.
Keywords, or search queries, are what users type into search engines when seeking information.
Tools like Google Trends and SEMrush’s Keyword Magic Tool can provide great assistance during this step. Google Trends in particular is extremely helpful as it not only gives SEO keywords for Google searches but can also optimize YouTube searches – giving it greater versatility.
Google Trends provides general trends information, but you can also use its search bar to research specific terms. When you do, a list of related terms will appear alongside yours and there will also be a “compare” button for comparison between data from different keywords you entered.
Google Trends measures keyword popularity and relevance over time instead of measuring keyword volume, providing global views as well as localized options that allow you to select country, subregion, city etc. filters.
As you do your keyword research, be sure to compile a list of those you plan on including in your content as well as any noteworthy discoveries you make during this phase. That way, everything will be at hand and you can better track keyword usage over time.
Content wise, make sure to utilize as many keywords as possible while still creating an engaging experience for readers and audience members.
Step 6: Calculate Costs and Budget.
Upon having determined your overall marketing budget, this step involves breaking out a portion of it specifically to cover this new campaign.
As part of your planning for your campaign, when creating the budget you must determine how much of the overall marketing budget remains available and which funds have already been alloted elsewhere.
Estimating how much each element of your campaign is going to cost can also help you create a realistic budget plan.
Once these details are in place, you can get a clearer sense of your available budget and allocate each portion accordingly.
Step 7: Take Action To Implement Your Plan
Now is the time to put all your hard work into effect! One effective method for doing so is using one of the many scheduler tools available – rather than trying to post all at once manually, they allow you to preschedule things automatically when their due dates arrive.
As is often the case, consistency is paramount and setting a schedule is absolutely essential to this goal. Relatedly, quality should always take precedence over quantity – placing too much focus on pushing out as many posts within a limited amount of time can drastically decrease its quality and make your posts less effective overall.
Schedule your posts so you can put as much quality into each one, although no single schedule fits all situations – base your decision on what works for your campaign and its content.
Step 8: Monitor and Adjust as Needed.
Your work doesn’t end when scheduling and posting content! Now is when it really pays off to consult all those metrics and KPIs from before, to make sure that everything runs as efficiently and successfully as possible.
This step also includes monitoring the budget you established for this campaign and revising any parts as necessary to make sure that it remains within your means and you don’t overspend. If there is something about your campaign that is underperforming, now is the time to adjust and optimize!
We hope this guide helps you plan the details for your campaign. If you need online marketing assistance, don’t hesitate to contact us now. At Digital Muzes, we are here to help small business flourish online!
