Steps to Launching a Successful Marketing Campaign

For a small business owner, launching a marketing campaign can be a challenge. By following these steps to launch a marketing campaign, you will increase your chance of success and allocate your marketing budget strategically:

DEFINE MARKETING GOAL

– A marketing goal is set to guide the development of the campaign and to evaluate the campaign’s performance. A marketing goal should be measurable, attainable, and adaptable. A measurable goal helps you to visualize and assess your progress. For example, “we will increase our website’s conversion rate by 15% in three months.” You can measure your conversion rate and see how it increases over three months.

An attainable goal has realistic results; at the same time, be sure to challenge your team and not set the goal too low. An adaptable goal is one that can be reevaluated an altered based on your performance. In theory, the purpose should always be changed positively. For example, if after two months you notice that you have already exceeded the 15% conversion rate increase, then you can reset the goal to a 20% increase in three months.

DEVELOP MARKETING STRATEGY

– Developing a marketing strategy is done in two parts: 1) identify an audience, and 2) decide the most effective method to reach that audience. For example, if you offer a product or service to senior citizens and you have identified your audience as over the age of 65, then you wouldn’t choose to concentrate your resources on social media advertisements.

Instead, you may want to advertise on TV, magazines, or the newspaper – mediums that are statistically used more frequently by your target audience. You could further narrow down your medium of advertising by selecting a TV channel or newspaper section that is appropriate for your audience.

EXECUTE MARKETING PLAN

– A marketing agency and the advertiser typically execute your marketing plan. The marketing agency creates the content to be displayed while the advertiser publishes the content. In both cases, these services can be contracted with a Marketing Agreement.

A Marketing Agreement sets forth the terms and conditions under which a Marketer will assist a Client in selling their goods and/or services by creating materials that promote their products and engaging in activities to introduce the Client’s products to new customers. Use this free Marketing Agreement template to get started.

EVALUATE THE RESULTS

– After executing the marketing plan, it is essential to evaluate the effectiveness of the campaign. Simply put, you should keep doing what is working and stop doing what isn’t working.

For example, if TV ads are getting fewer conversions than an advertisement in a magazine, then you should put more resources into the magazine advertisement.