Creating successful marketing campaigns isn’t easy, but with the right amount of time and resources, you can develop an effective campaign that builds brand awareness, customer loyalty, and better communication with your customers in order to nurture them down the sales funnel. This guide on how to create a successful marketing campaign will walk you through planning your campaign, developing your message and content, acquiring customer feedback along the way, and finally measuring results to ensure that you’re making the most of your marketing budget.
SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is about making sure your web content is discoverable, readable, and shareable by users. The goal of SEO isn’t to trick Google but rather to provide users with what they need and want from your website so that they can share their experience with others. At its core, search engine optimization is a strategy used to market your business online by increasing organic traffic through user-friendly content that addresses peoples’ needs and wants. By employing effective SEO tactics you will be able to elevate your site’s position in major search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo!
So what does this look like in practice? Simple things like having your keywords in your title tags, content, image and page names can go a long way towards improving your search ranking. Beyond that, though, it’s not always clear how you should approach SEO. It’s difficult to tease out which tactics will be effective (and when), and many of them conflict with one another. This makes it very difficult for someone who isn’t extremely familiar with SEO (e.g., copywriters) to know how they should integrate these strategies into their writing process or content strategy.
I think that we need more emphasis on creating user-friendly content that addresses peoples’ needs and wants from day one of any given project—not as an afterthought.
Online Advertising
If you’re looking for new customers, then it’s safe to say that at some point you’ll also need to use paid advertising. There are various types of online advertising that may fit your business needs. One type of online advertising is social media and search engine marketing (SEM). SEM can help grow brand awareness, increase website traffic, and increase conversions from customers. If you are interested in using social media and SEM for your campaign, start by deciding what goals you would like to accomplish with it. Are you trying to get more followers on Twitter? Would you like more website visitors? How do you plan on tracking these results? Decide what works best for your business. Good resources for learning about social media include Hootsuite or BufferApp; both tools offer free starter plans if you want to try out their platform but don’t have a large budget.
Social advertising is useful for increasing brand awareness. In social advertising, companies pay to advertise in a variety of ways on platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. While there is an upfront cost associated with social advertising, they can be used in conjunction with other marketing tactics (such as SEM) in order to create campaigns that are well-rounded and cohesive. To get started using social media for your marketing campaign, first decide what your main goals are; these may include gaining more followers, likes, finding new leads.
SEM advertising includes search engine ads, or PPC (pay-per-click) ads. If you have ever searched online for something and noticed that your results included an ad before they returned search results, then you have seen search engine ads in action. Just like social media marketing, there is an upfront cost associated with search engine marketing; however, if used correctly and done for long enough period of time, SEM can help grow leads for your business.
Keep in mind that there are many ways of doing things when it comes to running campaigns; these are simply two options that we recommend starting with. If budget is not a concern, we recommend combining both tactics in order to reach more people across multiple platforms.
Email Marketing
There are so many ways to communicate with your customers that it’s tough to know which channels are going to give you results. If you just want traffic, SEO and SEM (search engine marketing) will be worthwhile investments. To grow sales, nurture leads, and generate repeat business, email is still one of your best bets. You can integrate social media (including SEO and SEM), email marketing, web copy and more all under one roof using a CRM or email marketing platform—if you know how. For most people, it’s worth hiring an agency if you don’t have time or skills in-house to build out an automated email marketing campaign.
Social Media
Developing an interesting, relevant and dynamic social media presence is crucial. By creating a presence that consistently offers helpful information, you position yourself as an expert in your field and build trust with your audience. Many people say they want to hear from you regularly. It’s up to you how often you communicate with them; however, once-per-day posting is recommended for several different platforms. Try sharing news (and other pertinent industry tidbits), offer resources and occasionally ask for their input or feedback. Don’t forget about retweets; these have shown great results for many brands.
