No digital marketing campaign can be a guaranteed success. But you can certainly increase your chances of netting decent results with these eight steps.
The digital landscape is as noisy as ever, with everyone competing to capture some of that all-important share of voice. So it’s probably not surprising that one of the most common questions I’m asked at events is how to create a digital marketing campaign that stands out and delivers results.
Since starting Pounce, I’ve worked with a diverse range of clients, from startups to established enterprises, each hoping to use various digital channels to achieve their business goals. Here are the steps we follow to guide our campaign planning, backed with insights and anecdotes from my own experiences.
1. Ensure strategic alignment
Does your digital marketing campaign align with the broader goals of your organisation? A campaign that’s out of sync with the company’s overall strategy is destined to fail.
I once worked with a client whose stated goal was to increase brand awareness, but their sales team was entirely focused on driving immediate sales. This misalignment led to confusion and mixed messaging. Of course, Sales should be focused on sales, but you don’t want them undermining or actively working against Marketing’s brand awareness efforts.
According to Hubspot’s 2024 State of Marketing & Trends Report, when Sales and Marketing aren’t aligned, “budgets are wasted, sales and leads are lost and customers end up receiving a poor experience”.
PRO TIP: Get all your key stakeholders into a room to agree on the campaign goals and objectives, define what success looks like and collaborate on realistic timelines to get everything done by the launch date.
2. Allocate a budget
Many of the businesses I speak with have little idea what a campaign budget looks like. You want to allocate your budget wisely to maximise your return on investment (ROI), focussing on those channels, keywords and audiences likely to generate the most business value.
I recall a project where the client allocated a significant portion of their budget to social media advertising, with little left over for potentially more effective activities such as content creation and SEO. This imbalance resulted in suboptimal campaign performance.
PRO TIP: As a rule of thumb, B2B companies allocate 2-5% of revenue on marketing, while B2C companies allocate 5-10%. However, for more aggressive growth, we’ve seen clients allocate as much as 10-20% of total revenue to marketing campaigns.
3. Define the target audience
Without a clear understanding of who you’re targeting, your efforts will be scattered and ineffective. Worse; you risk wasting valuable budget chasing after people unlikely to ever be potential customers.
With their campaign struggling to generate meaningful results, a luxury brand approached Pounce for help. The initial campaign targeted a broad, largely undefined audience without any geotargeting, so we tightened the audience criteria to target high-net-worth individuals within a 20km radius of their store. While the size of the potential audience was smaller (minimising spend), the campaign’s effectiveness skyrocketed (maximising results).
PRO TIP: Use data analytics, market research and your own CRM data to create detailed buyer personas, tailoring your messaging and tactics to appeal to each one.
4. Develop the campaign messaging
Your campaign’s messaging is what will capture attention and compel potential customers to take action. It needs to be clear, consistent and aligned with your brand’s voice. Powerful messaging often uses storytelling or rhetorical techniques to create an emotional connection.
Ask yourself the following questions: What do we know about the people who want or need this product (customer truth)? What’s happening in mainstream culture relevant to the brand or product (cultural truth)? What does the product offer that others might not (product truth)? Your answers can guide you towards the messaging sweet spot.
I once worked with a tech startup with a very technical product. Their messaging was full of jargon, alienating most of the audience. We simplified the language and focused on the benefits customers would experience by using the product, significantly improving engagement.
PRO TIP: Test different messages to see what resonates best with your audience.
5. Identify the channel mix
Social media platforms, search engines, email, TV and radio ads … the list of potential channels for your campaign is a long one. And each channel has its own characteristics, strengths and weaknesses. One may be perfect for one campaign and terribly ineffective for another. For example, one of our B2B clients saw limited success with Instagram, but achieved tremendous results through LinkedIn and email marketing.
Evaluate each of your channels and select those which align with your audience’s preferences and your campaign’s goals.
PRO TIP: Select a mix that aligns with your audience’s preferences and your campaign’s goals.
6. Integrate with your CRM
A good CRM is about more than capturing leads and managing follow-ups. It should be your single point of truth – where you can not only build a thorough picture of your customers but also analyse the impact of your various campaigns on the business.
Any campaign can be a goldmine in business intelligence. But this is harder to achieve if all of the data is scattered across various platforms in incompatible formats.
Ensure all of your marketing technologies (or as many as possible) are integrated with your CRM (customer relationship management platform).
PRO TIP: A fully integrated CRM can help you to create highly personalised, even dynamic campaigns, with emails and other content triggered by certain interactions. If you don’t have a CRM, book a demo with the Pounce team today.
7. Measure and optimise
Once the campaign is launched, your work isn’t done. The biggest mistake in any campaign is failing to track interactions and measure the effectiveness of your efforts. By continually monitoring the performance of your campaign, you can tweak and optimise various elements according to the data in a process of continuous improvement.
I recall one client campaign where the initial results were underwhelming. By analysing the data, we identified the underperforming areas and made adjustments that ultimately led to a successful outcome.
PRO TIP: Use analytics tools to track key performance indicators (KPIs) such as conversion rates, click-through rates (CTR) and return on ad spend (ROAS). Regularly review the data and be agile in making adjustments to improve performance.
8. Follow up, follow up, follow up
The success of a campaign will often depend on how many of those clicks and leads eventually turn into paying customers. Unfortunately, following up on those opportunities and leads is often the most overlooked aspect of any marketing campaign.
Many potential leads need multiple touches before they convert, and this is particularly true in B2B. Plan your follow-up strategy in advance with just as much rigour as your planning for the actual campaign, to ensure no opportunities are missed. Equip the sales team with all of the campaign-specific collateral, email scripts and messaging trees they need to act swiftly and consistently on every opportunity.
I once worked with a client who saw a significant increase in conversions simply by implementing a structured follow-up process.
PRO TIP: Develop a follow-up plan that includes multiple touchpoints across various channels, such as email, phone calls and retargeting ads to keep prospects engaged and moving down the sales funnel.
Preparing for success
By following these steps and learning from both successes and failures, you can craft campaigns that drive meaningful results for your business.
Yes, there’s a lot to think about, particularly when you’re planning your first campaign. In your impatience to get your message out and start selling, you might be tempted to cut a few corners or skip a couple of steps.
But don’t mistake careful planning for being slow and overcautious.
“Every battle is won before it is ever fought.“
Sun Tzu: The Art of War
Sun Tzu’s book of ancient wisdom, The Art of War, is often cited as a manual for modern business, full of aphorisms that apply just as neatly to marketing as they do to the battlefield. The above quotation is no exception, highlighting that success is the product of strategy and diligent preparation.
Thankfully, it does get easier. Your subsequent campaigns should be able to draw upon at least some of the same research, customer personas, processes and frameworks you’ve already established.
Remember, digital marketing is as much an art as it is a science. Stay curious, keep experimenting and always be ready to adapt to the ever-changing digital landscape.
