Even a small business executes multiple marketing campaigns in order to achieve short-term and long-term objectives.

It is essential to understand that managing marketing campaigns is not a matter of proper execution only. A high-performing campaign is all about proper planning first and then execution. Which aims to achieve all the objectives of the campaigns.

The Importance of Proper Management

In many cases, businesses often either do not have a strategy for marketing campaigns or worse, do not prioritize effective management of marketing campaigns. In such cases, the focus is on the activities of the campaigns rather than the impact or expected outcomes.

So you can imagine the importance of proper handling of marketing campaigns. with an eye toward measuring the outcome and deploying the assets as and when required.

For that, the first question is: what types of campaigns a business could execute for gaining a bigger market share and higher revenue.

Three Marketing Campaigns Every Business Runs

Let’s start with a brief overview of the marketing campaigns a business can opt for. In general, a business usually executes three types of marketing campaigns.

Search Engine Markeing Campigns

These campaigns are focused on improving the visibility of the brand in search engine results. The focus is on producing content with the right keywords that interest the target audience. These campaigns are often executed throughout the quarter, and the results are measured after every quarter.

Social Media Marketing Campaigns

These campaigns are focused on grabbing the users’ attention and driving traffic towards the landing pages quickly. These campaigns are generally executed over the course of weeks (not more than a couple of weeks, at most). The good thing about these campaigns is the number of options available for creating engaging content.

Content Marketing Campaigns

Content marketing campaigns are focused on building the reputation of the business. These campaigns are based on producing and marketing content that brings the brand to the attention of the audience and places the business at the forefront of the discussion.

All businesses should opt for a mix of these three types of campaigns because together, these three make up the digital marketing for any brand. In many cases, businesses opt for a long-term search engine marketing campaign that is supported by content marketing and social media marketing campaigns. The exact ratio of the three types of campaigns differs from industry to industry.

The Question of Metrics

Everyone knows about the importance of measuring the performance of the campaigns and the role of metrics in the management of the marketing campaigns.

Many business owners do not pay enough attention to choosing the right metrics for a campaign and thus have trouble measuring the outcome against the efforts expended in the efforts applied during the campaign.

Here are a few tips for selecting the metrics for the three types of marketing campaigns a business can run.

In the case of search engine marketing campaigns, the key metrics should be the SERP positions of the landing pages, the quality of the website’s backlink profile, and the clickthrough rate from the search engine results.

To solve social media marketing Challenges, businesses should focus on the reach of the brand’s official accounts, the engagement on official posts, and the increase in the number of followers. Note that these metrics could vary according to the social media platforms the business is targeting.

Finally, for content marketing campaigns, businesses should focus on popular vanity metrics (traffic, sessions, bounce rate, and time per session), and the leads generated through content (usually, subscribers or signups).

A brand can opt for a wide array of tools for the proper execution and measurement of metrics. This means a brand should have a “toolkit” that helps in the planning, execution, and postmortem of the campaigns.

While the choice of tools is specific to the brand and the industry, some categories of the tools are common to all. As such, if budget is a constraint, businesses should search for alternatives to popular tools to discover the right tool for the right price point. For instance, a simple search for Coschedule alternatives would lead to a list of social media management tools that you can use for social media marketing campaigns.

Tips for Effectively Managing Marketing Campaigns

Planning and executing business campaigns requires close attention to several important points that cover all aspects of the campaign.

Here are some actionable tips that you can apply to manage your marketing campaigns and see significant results.

Know what you want to achieve

The success of any campaign is based on a clear understanding of the expected outcomes. Generally, marketing campaigns have three outcomes: increase brand visibility, grow organic traffic, or bring in more customers.

Understand the audience

Brands should keep the target audience in mind when creating all campaign collateral (ads, videos, and emails). All content should be focused on delivering the right message to the audience.

Get the Tools Ready

The right tools can help reduce the workload and help in the planning and execution of the campaign. Always make sure you have the tools.

Start with Impact First

All marketing activities should be selected and incorporated into campaigns based on the expected outcomes. This means that there should not be any activity in the campaign lineup that does not contribute toward the target.

Collect all the data at the right time

Brands should focus on collecting the data through the right channels at the right time (at the end of the campaign). Note that you should determine the data points that you think are relevant to the success of the campaign.

Brace for (delayed) impact

Sometimes, the impact could get delayed and might not be visible at the end of the campaign. This is often the case with content marketing and search engine marketing campaigns that span a quarter.

Make Prompt Changes

No campaign plan is carved in stone. If you think the direction of the campaign is not as intended, the team should be ready to make changes in order to achieve the targets.

Prioritize Quick Wins

Small measurable wins boost the confidence of the team and encourage them to go the extra mile. For this, measure the progress of the campaigns and post the needle movement on the team’s dashboard.

Plan Reusable Resources

Some resource types (for instance, landing page templates and email templates) can be reused with minor changes. This is an important hack for the quick deployment of campaigns. Templates, in particular, speed up campaign planning and execution and improve the outcomes of the campaigns because of consistency.

Brand Your Campaigns

Remember to use brand colors and logs throughout the campaign tasks. Often, teams overlook the importance of brand colors because of either the haste of deployment or lack of time for designing proper resources. This is where having branded templates pays dividends.

Always Opt for Quality

The number of activities has little correlation to the impact of the overall campaign. Thus, in all cases, always plan for more impact for as few activities as possible.

Search Engine Marketing requires attention to detail

SEO campaigns as tempting as they are, it is always a good practice to avoid shady practices because, in the longer run, these could hurt the final outcome of the campaigns.

Continuous Learning

Always do a follow-up of each campaign to understand what went right (and wrong). Additionally, focus on improving your knowledge by reading social media marketing for small business and industry-specific literature to discover the latest trends and experiments.

Stick to the Plan

It is always tempting to change the activities line up mid-way of the campaign execution. However, remember that once a list of activities has been finalized, you should follow through and do not change the activities because this will severely impact the execution.

Do More Of the Right Thing

Once you have determined that a set of activities work for your brand, make it a regular part of all campaigns. This will simplify planning and speed up execution as your team members would gain competency through repetition.