A marketing campaign defines marketing activities to achieve goals for a business within a timeframe. Goals for the campaign are typically to maximise impact and response for include short term tactical initiatives such as:
- A product launch
- A seasonal promotion
- A marketing event such as a tradeshow attendance or webinar
More strategic brand campaigns to build awareness and shape attitudes or opinions are a different type of campaign used to impact brand metrics like brand awareness, favorability, familiarity and purchase intent.
Some may also use campaigns to structure Always-on marketing activities like Google Ads campaigns, SEO campaigns and automated email campaigns which have similar objectives.
Marketing campaign plan structure
Stages in structuring a marketing campaign. In the Smart Insights guide to campaign planning and our campaign planning template we recommend these stages and these questions which must be answered structured around our RACE marketing model:
- 1. Campaign goals and tracking. What are we trying to achieve through our campaign and how will we know when we achieve it?
- 2. Campaign insight and targeting. Which audiences and customer persona are we trying to reach and influence to achieve our goals?
- 3. Key campaign messages and offers. Which campaign storytelling ideas, content and product-related offers will engage and convert our audience? How are we trying to position our company, products and services?
- 4. Reach: Campaign media plan and budget. Which media channels will you use to reach and influence your target audience? What will be the sequence and integration of media activities?
- 5. Act: Audience interaction and participation. How will we encourage interest and engagement in our campaigns using the content assets and creative which we host on campaign landing pages on our sites and seek to share via social networks? How do we generate leads that we can then convert to sale.
- 6. Convert: Optimise and test. How do we link interaction and engagement with the campaign assets through to purchase intent and sale which may happen online if we have a transactional E-commerce site or offline through phone, in store or by mail order.
- 7. Engage: Advocacy and Sharing. How do we encourage engagement for existing customers and advocacy to share the word about the campaign?