As a small business, marketing is essential to reach your customer base. It helps you promote your products and services, enticing consumers to purchase from you. A marketing campaign refers to the organized set of actions taken to market your business. To market your small business successfully, you need to have an effective campaign. Read on to learn how to do so.
Setting a strategy and campaign goals
Before starting your campaign, it's essential to create a strategy to give your campaign proper direction. Ask yourself first what you want to get from this marketing campaign. Are you looking to increase your customer base, or do you want to promote new products? Answering questions like these will help guide you in building a strategy.
Next, you need to decide what your budget will be. It may be wise to create a low-risk and high reward strategy if you're new to designing a marketing campaign. Try investing a small amount of money in your campaigns initially so that if all doesn't pan out the way you expected, it won't harm your business too much. Remember that just like with any new endeavor, there will be trial and error. Don't let one failed strategy or campaign deter you from trying again.
Establish your target audience for this campaign. This will inform a lot of actions and decisions you make when designing your marketing campaign. Consider demographics like age, gender, location, and income bracket.
When creating goals for your campaign, a helpful guide to follow is the SMART criteria.
S - stands for specific. Keep your goals focused on your particular areas of improvement.
M - stands for measurable. Make sure that your goals can be measured by data.
A - stands for attainable. Make sure your goals are possible to achieve.
R - stands for realistic. Establish realistic goals to ensure that you have success.
T - stands for time. Create a timeline for your campaign.
The different types of marketing campaigns
Now that you understand what a marketing campaign is and can create a strategy and goals for one, the next step is figuring out what type of campaign you want to run. Here is a brief overview of some different styles.
Social media campaigns - These days, most people are on social media, so this a great way to reach a broad audience. You can run ads on platforms like Facebook and Instagram for a relatively low price. You can also design a series of posts meant to engage viewers in whatever you are promoting. A caveat to this type of campaign is the importance of having a following. If you're posting to social media with no one following your accounts, then you aren't reaching anyone.
Product launch campaigns - This type of campaign is excellent for promoting new releases your business has. Build buzz around a new product or service, and it may get consumers interested in your business overall.
Brand awareness campaigns - This type of campaign can be done through email or social media. If you want consumers to be aware of your brand and that your business exists, this is the campaign for you. It's perfect for small businesses just starting.
Re-branding campaigns - On the other hand, if you're looking to change people's perception of your brand, a re-branding campaign may be for you. You can use it to promote a new look, message, and more.
Educational campaigns - If you want consumers to understand the product or service you offer, an educational campaign would be helpful. By providing clarification or further information on your offerings, you will interest consumers in buying from you.
Referral campaigns - This is a great option to engage your current customers and find new ones. With this type of campaign, you can ask your customers to refer you to friends and family. In return, you offer an incentive to them like a discount or exclusive promotion to thank them for their loyalty.
With these various campaign types, there's a myriad of mediums available to run them on. You can choose more traditional media like television and print or go digital with email or social media. Keep in mind that you can also combine different mediums and campaign types. Just make sure that everything is ultimately serving the goals you set beforehand.
Designing your campaign
When you're ready to create your marketing campaign, keep the following in mind.
Research your competition
Subscribe to their email lists or analyze their strategies. Is their messaging effective? What are some things they do successfully that you can employ, and what can you improve upon in your campaign?
Understand your customer needs
When choosing a means to deliver your campaign, make sure you know the demographic. To reach your target audience, you need to know the channels they prefer to consume information.
Show them your unique value proposition
It is vital to show your customers what unique value you are bringing to their lives. What are you offering that others do not? For your campaign to be effective, the answer to this question must be clear.
Make a connection with your customers
Engaging customers is just the first step. If you want to reach your campaign goals, form relationships with your customers, Make your audience feel like more than just a number and talk to them directly in your campaign.
Get ahead of their questions
Make sure that you provide vital information like contact information and pricing. You don’t want to run a campaign that leaves customers with more questions than before. Make it easy for customers to purchase or engage with your business once they decide they're interested.
Dispel myths
If there are any perpetuated myths about services or products like yours, take the time to show the truth. You can provide testimonials or usage statistics to help consumers understand your business more. When you take the time to do this, you can turn skeptics into believers of your business.
Monitor your progress
Make sure you monitor the progress of your campaign. How many people viewed your email? What was the click-through rate on the ad you ran? This will give you insight into how successful your marketing campaign was.
See where you can improve
Whether this is your first or hundredth marketing campaign, constantly evaluate the campaign's performance and find areas of improvement for the next one. As you gain more experience running campaigns, you'll be able to determine your strengths and weaknesses, and it will be easier to set up another campaign. Like we mentioned before, this is a trial and error process. Also, remember that marketing and capturing consumers' attention is an ever-evolving process, so your campaigns have to evolve as well.
As a small business, you must promote yourself effectively. With all this information on setting up an effective marketing campaign, you should be well on your way to achieving your business goals.