A Business Consultant's Step-By-Step Process to Planning a Successful Marketing Campaign

As a business and marketing consultant, marketing campaigns are kind of my “thing.” I’ve spent countless hours helping clients create memorable, long-lasting campaigns that lead to increased visibility, sales, and customer loyalty. When you are looking to achieve a specific goal for your company, a smart marketing campaign is typically the way to go.

But I won’t beat around the bush with you — in order to actually make an impact with your campaign, you need to have a strategic plan in mind. In today’s blog post, I’ll be walking you through exactly what that plan looks like (with step-by-step guidance, of course) so that you are equipped with the knowledge you need to execute an incredible campaign that will help you achieve all of your marketing goals.

Let’s get started…

What exactly is a marketing campaign?

The term “marketing campaign” is used a lot in the business world, so it’s totally normal to be a little unclear about what exactly it means. A marketing campaign is simply a set of organised, strategic efforts to achieve a specific company goal, such as raising customer awareness, promoting a product or service, or capturing customer feedback. Marketing campaigns make use of multi-media channels (such as email, print advertising, TV/radio advertising, pay-per-click advertising, and social media) to reach consumers and maximise impact.

Types of marketing campaigns

Below are some of the types of marketing campaigns you may come across or execute yourself:

Product Marketing Campaign
A product marketing campaign is focused on introducing or promoting a specific product to a brand’s audience.

Brand Development Campaign

A brand campaign puts your company’s story and message in front of an audience, with the goal of increasing brand awareness.

Social Media Campaign
A social media campaign is an integral part of your marketing strategy as a whole and involves leveraging the power of social media platforms to reach a specific company goal.

Email Marketing Campaign

An email marketing campaign uses a set of coordinated emails to get the recipients to take action, engage with your business, and make purchases.

Content Marketing Campaign

A content marketing campaign is used to attract, engage, and retain an audience by creating and sharing relevant content (such as social media posts, videos, podcasts, and other media).

User-Generated Content Campaign
A user generated content campaign is aimed at getting fans, followers, and customers to create social media content (especially photos and videos) featuring your products and/or services. This builds trust with your audience through “word-of-mouth” marketing.

Public Relations Campaign

A public relations campaign is a marketing campaign with the purpose of raising awareness of a product, informing the public of company news, reaching a larger audience, or improving the brand’s reputation. It is less focused on sales and more geared towards brand awareness as a whole.

Direct Mail Campaign

A direct mail campaign involves directly reaching your audience through physical mail.

Affiliate Marketing Campaign

An affiliate marketing campaign is a strategy in which you collaborate with another company and promote their products/services on your website, email, and/or social media channels in exchange for a commission.

Acquisition Marketing Campaign

An acquisition marketing campaign is a marketing campaign with the goal of getting your business and products/services in front of a new audience and acquiring new customers.

Paid Advertising Campaign

A paid advertising campaign allows you to purchase advertising in order to specifically target audiences, instead of waiting for them to find you organically. Typically, paid marketing is displayed on search engine results pages and social media channels.

Sometimes, a single marketing campaign may rely on a few of the above campaign types.

Important marketing campaign components

Once you know the type of marketing campaign you’ll be running, there are a few other factors to consider. Let’s take a look at them below.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Key performance indicators are a quantifiable way of measuring your progress towards the specific goal of your campaign. They typically include important trackable metrics, such as views, clicks, sales, etc.

Marketing Channels

You’ll also need to determine where your content and messaging will be distributed. This will relate closely to where your audience spends the most time. For example, if you’re running a social media marketing campaign geared towards a younger audience, you might specifically prioritise TikTok because it is the most popular social media app for Gen Z audiences.

Budget

If your marketing campaign is 100% organic, you won’t need to set aside a budget for it. If you are planning to use influencer marketing or paid advertisements, you’ll need to factor these expenses into your budget and ROI analysis for your campaign.

Content Format(s)

Determine what kind of content you will be creating to include in the campaign. It’s common for marketers to include multiple content formats in a singular campaign — for example, email marketing, social media posting, and paid advertising may all occur under the umbrella of one campaign.

Team

If you have a marketing team, make sure your team knows who is responsible for what throughout the duration of the campaign. To maximise efficiency and impact, you should assign people to work on every aspect of the campaign, from copywriting and design to media buying and reporting.

Your Step-By-Step Marketing Campaign Creation Process

Creating an entire campaign is a big task, but the process is pretty straightforward. Below is the step-by-step process I turn to when it comes time to create and execute a stellar marketing campaign for either myself or my clients.

Set a purpose and goal for your campaign.
The success of your campaign all comes back to your desired goal or outcome, as this is what will determine the actual material within the campaign. So, let’s start simple. Think about why you are running this campaign — what do you want to achieve? What action does your audience need to take in order for this to happen? Here are some sample goals to think about:

Promoting a new product/service
Increasing brand awareness
Gathering customer feedback or user-generated content
Driving leads
Generating revenue
Boosting user engagement

Determine your key performance indicators (KPIs).

Once you have a goal in mind, you’ll need to find a way to measure your progress. This is where those KPIs I mentioned earlier come into play. Depending on your desired outcome, KPIs will look different for everybody, but here are a few examples of what to look at based on the example campaign goals outlined above.

For promoting a new product/service: Pre-orders, sales, upsells
For increasing brand awareness: Social media mentions, press mentions, traffic
For gathering customer feedback or user-generated content: Social mentions, engagement, form/content submissions

For generating revenue: Leads, sales, upsells

For boosting user engagement: Social media engagement, email interaction.

It’s 100% possible that your campaign will involve multiple marketing channels. If this is the case, I recommend defining KPIs for each campaign channel that you use.

Define your target audience.
You can create an incredible marketing campaign with all of the correct components, but the facts are that you will hear crickets if your campaign isn’t optimised to resonate with your target audience. So that you know exactly who you are marketing your campaign towards, make sure you have a clear answer to the following questions:

What stage of the buyer’s journey is your campaign targeting? Are you trying to bring in completely new customers, or are attempting to reach existing audience members/customers? Are you marketing to those who recognise your brand or are you introducing your brand to a new audience altogether?

What are your audience’s interests and pain points? What do they enjoy doing in their spare time? Where do they hang out online? What type of content gets their attention? What cultural references would they understand and appreciate? What problems do they have that my product, service, or brand could solve?

If you aren’t sure how to answer these questions, you should go back and complete market research to hear from potential customers in your market as well as your existing customers.

Ensuring that you are well-acquainted with your campaign audience will help you confidently create a campaign that they love and respond to positively!

Create a campaign concept.
You know the expression ‘it takes a village’? Well, it is definitely true for marketing campaigns! The best campaigns are a huge collaborative effort and require a cohesive mission, vision, and visual identity to conceptualise.

When creating campaign assets, some businesses use an in-house team while others opt for an agency. Another alternative is hiring a freelancer or contractor to complete a specific portion of the project, such as the copy or design. Your #1 priority during this stage is making sure that you have the help you need to complete every element that is necessary to the campaign.

Choose your marketing channels.
Where you actually run your campaign will depend on a number of factors, such as: audience preference, your own budget, and brand engagement levels. I recommend taking a look at the media channels you currently use to promote your company and assess which of them have the most successful day-to-day performance.

If you want to widen your reach and have a little extra cash to spend, you may also consider entering the world of paid advertisements in addition to your organic marketing efforts.

Set a campaign timeline.
You’ll want to decide on a timeline for your campaign so that you know exactly what you should be doing throughout its duration. The length of your campaign will depend on your desired goals and marketing channels, though it has been said that 45 days is the ideal length for a successful marketing campaign.

Once you know how long your campaign will run for, you can work backwards from your campaign end date to figure out how often you should be promoting your campaign. If you wish, you can even map out what content is going out when on your calendar and schedule it in advance.

Monitor your metrics & analyse the data.

You should be monitoring the KPIs you decided on throughout the entirety of the campaign. However, your job doesn’t end when the campaign is over! The post-campaign stage (when you measure and analyse your data) can shed unique insight on what worked and what didn’t work to help you improve future campaign performance. Remember, a worthwhile marketing campaign gives you an ROI that’s proportionate to the time and energy you put into it.

I know that the thought of creating and executing an entire marketing campaign may seem stressful, overwhelming, or downright impossible — but I promise you, dozens of my clients have reaped the incredible benefits of highly successful marketing campaigns (including a major increase in sales, visibility, and engagement) having thought the same thing at first. What made it possible for them was having a step-by-step proven process and expert guidance on their side!

As a business and marketing consultant, I can help you develop a marketing campaign that will help you reach your #1 desired outcome, no matter what it is. To move forward, click here to book a triage call.