Looking to create a great online marketing campaign? Whether you’re an enthusiastic advocate of online marketing and the rewards that it can reap for businesses, are beginning to plan an online marketing campaign for your business or are just beginning to understand the power that digital marketing has to support growth for your company; these basic steps will help you to create a campaign that produces results for your business.
This may sound obvious to most but many business owners and marketers still miss this first basic step. Establishing the specific purpose for your online visibility and knowing the exact outcome you want to achieve before you begin, will help you create a campaign led by that outcome. Having a specific direction is vital. As a digital strategist, part of my role is to ask this question so that business owners can clarify what it is they want from utilising social media, SEO, PPC, etc… It’s paramount to clearly decide whether they want to increase the sales of something, launch a product or create brand awareness.
Online marketing can incorporate a labyrinth of techniques and methods that all have the potential to reach your desired audiences in a plethora of different ways. There are several options that can be utilised such as SEO, Blogging, Video, PPC, Social Media and various combinations from the aforementioned. The effectiveness of these techniques will depend entirely on the online habits of your audience. A combination of these techniques usually works best. If you don’t understand the pros and cons of each technique make sure that you’re hiring or consulting with someone that can explain them fully. A good place to begin is to conduct some research into which methods provide the biggest conversion rates for your industry.
Understanding the way your audience thinks and how they may perceive your message is vital to creating something that resonates with them, ultimately leading to action. Many business owners make the mistake of thinking that their audience will perceive their message in exactly the same way as themselves. Effective marketing managers need to have a high level of empathy and also need to be able to understand the needs and perceptions of others to be successful. Creating a current model of your audience’s values will ensure that you have the raw data to create a message that will viscerally resonate with them, creating an impulse that should be directly related to your specified call to action.
It’s time to decide how you’re going to make an impact. Remember that your message has to take your audience on a journey. Psychologically, videos generally provide the biggest impact on consumers, especially when the message appeals to their purchase values. The message needs to be strong enough to initiate an emotional response, yet clear and succinct enough for your audience to understand in a matter of seconds. Ideally, you’ll want to make the ‘message’ to the buying or action process as simple as possible.
Demographic and market research into the online buying habits of your prospects will help to specifically target where your audience exists online. Every message you display online whether by an illustration of the benefits of your products via video content, images through PPC on Facebook or an article with a hyperlink at the end of a sentence, needs to be in the right ‘place’ to reach your audience. For example, targeting young mothers through articles on Net Mums and Facebook PPC – good idea! Targeting finance directors through Vine – bad idea!
Once you’ve decided on the methodology of your online marketing campaign, you’ll need to establish a way to continually monitor how your strategy is performing. There are many ways to do this. Some simple methods include measuring your increase in enquiries, specific product sales, and the increased engagement through your social media channels and your website. Online marketing can become expensive when combining video, PPC and social media management, so prioritise your outcome monitoring to ensure you’re receiving the return you desire. The earlier you can establish whether something is or isn’t working, the less investment you’ll waste on something that doesn’t work and the more you can invest in something that does.
Now you need to go over everything we’ve just discussed and decide whether your marketing strategy makes sense. Are you thinking from your audience’s point of view and not your own? This may sound like an obvious question but sometimes we can rush into things with the best of intentions not realising that our idea is, for want of a better word, rubbish. Go through the steps a few times and create some options. Don’t just run with your first idea. Once you have some choices, pick the one that seems to make the most sense to your audience.
If you’re keen to start a valuable online marketing campaign that will see tangible results, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us here at Mantra Media.