After you’ve determined your overall inbound marketing strategy, you can begin to create individual marketing campaigns. These campaigns will be designed to guide your visitors to a certain end point, like a content offer, a newsletter sign up, or a consultation request. By following specific steps, these marketing campaigns will successfully guide your leads towards completing the desired marketing goal.
Often times, we see marketing campaigns with no specific end in sight. The path these campaigns take leads on is murky and confusing at best. Because of this, leads will often give up, turn back, or head to another business. The answer is not simple or easy to find, so they choose to find it elsewhere.
One of the biggest themes across any business in today’s world is people want to interact with companies who make the process simple and straightforward. This concept applies to your marketing campaigns. Once you have determined the goal of your campaign, you need to make it as simple and straightforward as possible for your lead to reach the end goal.
Steps to a Successful Marketing Campaign
We’ve developed some guidelines to follow when creating marketing campaigns to ensure they are simple and straightforward.
1. Develop a Buyer Persona
The first step to any successful marketing campaign or strategy is to create a buyer persona for your ideal customer. This persona will allow you to get in the mindset of the person you are targeting for this campaign.
Once you have created this persona for your ideal customer, use it to help you create your marketing campaign.
Some helpful questions to consider are:
- What is the specific problem my buyer has?
- Why would they be searching for a solution to this problem?
- What answers have they found before coming to me?
- How can I provide the solution to this problem?
- What is the best tool I can offer my persona at this specific stage in their purchasing journey?
After you have determined who your persona is, what their problem is, what your solution is, where they are in their purchasing journey, and what specific tool you have to offer them, you will be able to determine what the main offering is for your marketing campaign.
2. Create a SMART Goal for the Campaign
After you have developed your buyer persona and decided what your ideal customer will be looking for at this point in their purchasing journey, you must then come up with a goal and an offer for your campaign.
This offer and goal can be any tool you have in your marketing materials that you would like to put in front of your potential leads and customers.
For example, it could be:
- An eBook
- PDF or Template Download
- Newsletter Subscription
- Social Media Follows
- Google or Yelp Reviews
- Free Consultations or Phone Calls
There are many options available to you depending on what stage your ideal customer is in on their purchasing journey while you are trying to reach them.
Once you have decided the end point (what you are offering), you need to create a goal around the campaign. The best goals are always SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound), so be sure the goals you create for each marketing campaign follow that structure.
It doesn’t have to be any long, drawn-out process to create these goals. Once you have an end goal or offer in sight, simply turn that offer into a smart goal. For example, you could say:
“Our goal for this campaign is to get 20 new email subscribers from our Facebook advertisements in a 3 week period.”
By setting these goals for each campaign, you will be able to see how you are doing, if your goals are too high or too low, and come up with a strategy for any subsequent campaigns based on the progress of this current goal.
3. Map Out a Pathway for Your Lead to Follow
Once you have chosen an offer and created a goal, you can then begin to plan out your marketing campaign. Remember, the goal of every campaign is to be as straightforward as possible so your lead can follow an easy path from attraction to conversion to closing.
We’ve found the best pathways for leads to follow is this:
- Call to Action
- Specific Landing Page
- Information Exchange
- Offer Delivery
- Follow-up Information
By using the above pathway for each marketing campaign, you create a smooth process and easy transition from the initial advertisement to the end goal.
This can work for any kind of marketing campaign, whether it be Adwords, Social Media, Website or Blog Offers, Email Marketing, or even in-person or print marketing.
The basic premise of this map is to create a clear call to action (click here, download now, learn more, etc.). This CTA will lead to a landing page with specific information about your offer.
It is important that you create a landing page that is dedicated to each marketing campaign. If your leads have to search through your entire website to find the information they were promised, they will quickly lose interest and move on.
Once they have arrived at your landing page, you can then have an area where they will give you any information required to receive the offer promised. This can be a form, a survey, a review request, or more.
After you have received whatever information you require, you can then deliver the promised offer to them and enter them in any kind of continued marketing campaign if it is part of your strategy.
4. End by Promptly Giving Your Lead the Requested Information
One of the most important steps in your marketing campaign map is the delivery of your promised offer or information. Be sure to take the time to plan out exactly how you will deliver this information.
When you are delivering your offers, there are two options:
- Automated or instant delivery
- Manual follow up delivery
The first type, instant delivery, is for information. This could be an eBook, a PDF, a template, etc. These can be delivered right away, either through a download on the site or through an automated email that is immediately sent after a lead fills out a form or send in their information.
If you choose to send the information through an email, be sure it goes out promptly after you receive the information. If you can automate this process, that is the best course of action. People will lose trust in you and your company if they request simple information and it takes hours to days for them to receive it.
The second type, manual follow up delivery, would be used if they requested a phone call, a meeting, or some other type of consultation. While people are more understanding that this will not be instantaneous, you still do not want to leave them hanging with no communication.
Clearly state when a team member will be in touch. Do not use phrases like “shortly” or “a few days.” Try instead using a statement like “a team member will be in touch with you in 1-2 business days. We look forward to speaking with you!”
This gives your leads a clear picture on when they will hear from you. Make sure that you follow through on contacting the leads within that stated time frame or they will again lose trust in your company.
Conclusion
By taking the time to plan out your marketing campaign to ensure it is straightforward and clear, you will have a higher conversion and close rate from each campaign. People have many options for services, so you want to be sure that the path to yours is frictionless and simple to follow.
Don’t make people work to learn more about you and what you have to offer. You worked hard to create your marketing campaigns and materials, so make sure your leads have the easiest way to find them!
Ready to get started developing your own successful marketing campaigns? Start off by developing your own buyer persona. Learn more about creating a buyer persona here:
