We spend a lot of our time online. This love of the digital space has completely changed the way we reach customers and our approach to marketing.

Digital marketing campaigns are now an essential piece of any company’s well-rounded advertising and awareness strategy.

You can analyse how your campaign is performing and make tweaks, as necessary. You can track how many times ads were clicked, visits to landing pages, and conversions on your goals in a way that isn’t possible with traditional campaigns.

However, it can be a little daunting to understand all the moving parts involved in making a campaign a success.

We’re breaking down seven questions you should be asking yourself if you want to launch a successful digital marketing campaign.

1. What are you aiming for?

Is your campaign geared towards raising brand awareness? Are you trying to attract customers to a new product or service?

You need to define the goal of your campaign and how it ties into your overarching marketing goals. The campaign’s goals will help to inform the tactics − email, pay-per-click ads, social media ads, etc. − you implement and the content you’ll need.

Get SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound) with the goals of your campaign and set realistic KPIs.

Determine the key metrics that you’ll need to analyse and plan how you will measure each. For example, if one of your aim is to drive traffic to a specific landing page, you will use Google Analytics to track the number of users who visit the page.

2. Have you explored the past?

You shouldn’t plan for the future without taking stock of the past.

One step that will help you set achievable targets for your campaign is by delving into your past marketing efforts. Analysis of previous campaigns, their successes and failures, can help you to set the best KPIs for your efforts and tailor your goals.

Examining past efforts will help you better understand what you need to do with your current campaign plans and avoid setting your expectations too high.

3. Who are you aiming at?

It’s not enough to decide what you’re marketing and what your own performance goals are; you cannot forget who you’re marketing to. Knowing the audience you need to reach is one of the most important aspects of planning and launching a successful digital marketing campaign.

Start with your buyer persona. Who is your audience? What interests them? Where do they spend their time online? What might be their pain points, and how can you help them? A well thought out, thoroughly fleshed out buyer persona is crucial. Your strategies and tactics should be based on your audience.

If you don’t have detailed buyer personas, now is the time to start creating. Begin with basic information such as location, age, and gender. Dig into your customer database and get feedback from sales. You can go further by looking at your audience’s interests, occupations, income, and buying habits. You can find useful data in the Audience Reports in Google Analytics, Facebook Audience Insights and the reporting tools of other social platforms.

Does your audience read your blog content? Prefer to watch videos? Are they engaging with ads? Understanding who you’re trying to reach will allow you to target them more efficiently, allocate your resources more effectively and better tailor your content.

4. Where will your campaign be?

There are many options: Facebook ads, Twitter ads, Instagram ads, LinkedIn ads, etc. You also have pay per click advertising as an option as well. Wherever your target audience is, that’s where you need to be.  

Spreading your campaign efforts across multiple sites and channels where your customers spend time is going to be most effective.

5. What’s your value proposition?

So, you understand the customers that you intend to target with this campaign. What makes your offer unique? Why would they buy what you’re selling, subscribe to your newsletter, or like your page? Determine the unique selling point you offer and why you’re the best solution to your audience’s problem.  Keep this in mind when crafting your assets and content. It’s important to remember, however, that you should focus on the customer and not what you’re selling. Successful ads use copy that appeals to the customer’s emotion and is relatable.

6. What are you working with?

Having an elaborate plan is great − unless you don’t have the team or the budget to pull it off. You need to start by assessing both your monetary and human assets.

How much of your budget can you realistically put into your digital marketing campaign?

Set a realistic budget as this will be your compass guiding what you can do with your campaign and how you can allocate your resources.

Let’s take a break from money and talk about people. What is your team like? Do you have enough people to complete all the tasks, and complete them well?

If your team is small, you’ll need to set realistic goals and ensure that no one will be stretched too thin.

Your people are your most important resource! It’s crucial that you give them manageable tasks. Decide if everything can be done in-house or if you will need to engage an agency for some aspects.

7. Are you always monitoring?

You should be routinely monitoring the success of your campaign efforts. Are the goals you’ve set being achieved? The beauty of digital marketing is that you can observe, measure, and assess what’s working and what isn’t in real-time. You can modify ads if needed across your various promotion channels.

A successful digital marketing campaign is carefully planned, multi-faceted, and aimed at the right audience. It also considers budget and staff constraints and is closely monitored and analysed. Yes, there are a lot of moving parts! Start your planning by answering these seven questions, however, and you’ll be on your way to success.

Need help with a digital marketing strategy that converts your audience into leads. Our team of Media Sales Consultants and Certified Google and Facebook Experts are here to help.  Click here for support with a Complete-Done-4-U Service

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Sources: Digital Agency Network, Digital Marketing Institute, The Balance Small Business, HooteSuite, HubSpot, The Next Scoop