How to Create a Campaign Plan that Wins

How to Create a Campaign Plan that Wins

If you want your campaign plan to be successful, you can’t afford to have a poor plan.

A digital marketing campaign is driven towards a specific goal. For example, let’s say you are launching a new product. The campaign could be aimed at promoting awareness for the product and subsequently, making sales.

So, how do you create a campaign plan?

The first thing you need to know is that the length of the document or a complicated process doesn’t determine a successful campaign. You simply need a plan with the right steps.

So, with a definite objective as the earlier example, your campaign plan will contain actionable steps that will help you achieve it.

If you follow the steps I outline in this article, you can be sure your campaigns will begin to “serve you faithfully.”

Let’s get right in.

Analyze the Competitors

While I don’t mean they are invalid, the idea you have of the market needs to take a back seat here.

Your first task in putting up a campaign plan is to study the activities of your competitors. And by this, I mean successful players in your industry. This could save you years of testing, as you could freely know what’s working and what’s not.

Check their websites. What’s the design like? What entices you to it? From websites of some of them, you will discover trends and best practices.

The second place to go is the social media. Find out how your competitors are using the channels. Some of the things you should note are:

• Types of content being shared such as videos, testimonials, photos, live videos or articles.
• Kind of contents with the best engagements.
• Frequency of sharing

By learning from successful brands in your industry, you will be able to craft a perfect strategy. It informs you of the need to remove unnecessary steps.

Decide the Channels

Now that you know how your competitors execute their campaign plans, you should pull out your choice.

You might have found LinkedIn marketing and AdWord in trends. But, you can decide not to use them, if they are not the best fit for your market.

While it’s important to check out industry standards, you should take a closer look at your audience. Ensure you deploy strategies that speak to them clearly.

So, you’re going to decide where to implement your campaign plan. There are two factors to consider here. The first is your budget, while the other is your audience.

You can choose to use a website. This depends on your kind of service or products. If it will require an e-commerce, that’s exactly what to use.  You should also consider the need for landing and sales pages.

What about social media? To choose the appropriate social media channels, you should find out which is the best place to find your prospects. Are they the conversation lovers of Twitter or professionals on LinkedIn? That’s why you won’t necessarily need all social media channels.

Guest blogging is another option. If you produce high-value contents, you could publish them on popular blogs in your industry. This approach could drive massive traffic more effectively than ads will.

That’s because the audience there are specific. They are mainly your prospects looking for solutions already.

You have a whole lot of channels to consider, including search engines. The key is to research the best place to meet your prospects.

Sort Your Products

Let’s talk sales.

There is a way with selling in digital marketing. You will need to sort your products based on price and quality. By this, I mean you should know which products you can afford to put on flash sales. Some other products might be highly priced.

So, decide which could sell low or high. With that, you would have clarified what to sell first. We call this tripwire offer. Then, there would be the core offer, which is also the follow-up offer.

If you sell information products, you will definitely have some contents you could give away freely. The objective is to place a definite value on each product to foster consistency and business growth.

Create a Marketing Funnel

Do you know that you have full control of your prospects on their journey to conversion? That is just to say that an effective funnel makes it easy to convert prospects.

A marketing funnel is a path you want your audience to take until they reach you. Be it cold audience or other kinds, you want to make it easy to walk.

Let me explain it with a beauty products e-commerce.

• You can have your cold audience read up your blog posts.
• From there, you can push a discounted product to them through retargeting (50% Off Facial Cleansers). Those that happen to buy that have become customers already.
• You can up sell them with a “core offer” such as an executive spa.

That’s the peak of the funnel. We are left with milking the customers’ lifetime value (let’s leave that for another day).

So, you need to define yours.

Create a Content Calendar

You use content at every stage of your customer journey and the marketing funnel. It’s your tool on social media and your blog. Now, you should create a strategy for your use of contents.

The place to start is your content map. You should clearly decide what type of content you will be sharing because of consistency. It could be articles, videos, photos or a combination of all. Remember to use the clue from your competitor analysis.

Again, at what frequency? If you will be publishing articles on your blog or videos on YouTube, how many would you have in a week? Note that consistency is important. So, you should choose what is realistic.

The same applies to your social media activities. Your calendar should include what you will post to each channel and at what frequency. It’s great to have this laid out ahead of time. This helps you maintain a straight head, so you can concentrate on other things.

Social media management tools like SocialPilot, Buffer, and HootSuite have made this a lot easier. You can schedule your posts for weeks ahead.

This is equally important. While creating your content publishing plan, you should keep in mind the conversion path. The contents should be arranged in a way that walks your prospects through their journey until they buy.

That’s how to make the best use of contents.

Have a SMART Goal

As clichéd as SMART goals seem to be, they determine your success on any task, including digital marketing. You need to connect your campaign efforts to a specific goal. Are you out to increase sales? Be specific as much as possible.

How do you measure progress? You should have KPIs that you give an overview of your campaign’s performance. There could be a note on the number of leads, sales, and social engagements.

Also, your campaign should be time-bound. If it’s going to run for six months, conclude on that. So, at the end of six months, you aim to have 1000 new sales. The time factor is crucial.

There you have it. Go ahead and create a winning campaign plan.

Remember, you need to:

• Analyze your competitors.
• Sort your products into lead magnets, trip wires, and core offers.
• Create a marketing funnel.
• Create a content calendar.
• Have a SMART goal.

If you find this information valuable, please share with friends.

What strategy have you used for a successful campaign? Feel free to use the comment box.