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How to build your first marketing campaign as a startup

By Robin Anderson

As a startup, making your presence known in the marketplace is a challenge. You can leverage friends and family - but are they really your target? How do you reach the very important people who are? Run a targeted marketing campaign.

The goal of a marketing campaign is to make a connection. 

Definition of a marketing campaign

Marketing campaigns are organized, strategy efforts to promote a specific company goal. That can include raising awareness of a new product or capturing customer feedback. They typically involve a combination of media, including email, print advertising, television or radio advertising, pay-per-click, and social media.

There are a variety of reasons why you may choose to run a campaign. Here are a few:

1. Gain brand recognition

2. Generate awareness for your product

3. Obtain leads

4. Drive sales

5. Obtain valuable feedback

SMART

Pick ONE goal when designing a campaign to have the maximum impact on achieving that goal. If you try to accomplish more, your campaign will come across as confusing. It will not resonate with anyone as the communications of your promotion will be too broad. To help you set the goal along with metrics to measure the effectiveness of your reach, use the SMART method as part of your planning process.

S: Specific

Specifically, what area do I want to focus on or improve?

M: Measurable

Set a number, such as reach, as a way to track progress.

A: Attainable

What are the actions to implement the campaign, and who is responsible?

R: Realistic

Given the resources what results are realistically attainable.

T: Timely

This is your timeframe for running the campaign to achieve results.

The purpose of SMART goals is to set criteria for your campaign that are achievable and have meaning. By providing specifics - the focus of your campaign, what are the desired metrics and how the campaign will be built, you’ll put in place the elements you need to be in a better position for success.

One study found 76% of participants who wrote down their goals, made a list of goal-driven actions, and provided weekly progress reports to a friend achieved their goals — which is 33% higher than those with unwritten goals.

One of the greatest benefits from running a campaign including learning whether or not your messaging was on target - did your prospective customers respond with an increase in engagement? Another benefit of having a positive impact is establishing or increasing credibility among your target. 

How to build a marketing campaign

One of the biggest factors to success of your marketing campaign will be the resources that are available to you for setting up the campaign, managing the campaign in process, and measuring the campaign during and at the end. Market automation systems are a great way to automate much of this process, particularly if you have minimal staff.

Plan: Run a campaign to drive awareness for a company product

Create a plan that identifies:

1. Goals: Identify your main goal and how you will measure the results (SMART)

   Approach: Increase the number of followers on LinkedIn by 20% in the next three months.

2. Type of Campaign: Given your main goal, what is the appropriate medium to execute your campaign? Social media, email, paid promotion?

   Approach: Social media through LinkedIn.

3. Resources: Identify the budget that is needed to run the campaign, the people that will need to be involved in building, executing, and managing the campaign. And include the tools that are available to you to help. Many market automation tools are free and are extremely helpful in delivering and measuring your efforts.
   Approach: Budget $2,500 to apply towards our marketing campaign targeting our primary persona. We will need one content writer, one designer for creative assets and one project manager to tie the campaign together and execute. With market automation tools, one person can easily accomplish all of the above, particularly for a small company or a startup.

4. Content required: Given the type of campaign you are running? What are you offering to your target (ex. Demo, white paper, webinar)? What content do you need to write for each step of the campaign process? What creative assets need to be designed?

   Approach: Types of content needed include a social media Promotional Post with an offer that takes a user to a Landing Page. From there, the user fills out a form, submits to download a specially-designed offer, and finally a window pop-up with a Thank You message. Creative needs include: Imagery/video for promo spot, and landing page, and sample cover for the offer provided. The Thank You pop-up will consist mainly of copy plus branding.

5. Process: From the creation of your campaign to managing and reporting results, document each step of the process. 

   Approach: The process: Build campaign assets, apply promotional campaign budget, launch campaign, manage by monitoring analytics, report final results.

6. Manage: Monitor the campaign analytics throughout making adjustments if needed. That may consist of rewriting content, or changing the design/imagery to increase engagement.

   Approach: Monitor results on a daily/weekly basis to tweak where necessary if necessary.

7. Report Results: Deliver a final report of the results that are compared to the KPIs established at the outset, along with the learning that took place.

   Approach: Write a report that includes your initial strategy and projected metrics, any adjustments made throughout the campaign, final numbers, and learning about the process and customers.
   

Designing, creating, running and reporting on a marketing campaign can seem to require many resources. However, the reality is that creating a strategy, leveraging tools and other resources, a successful campaign can be created and delivered with limited budget and people. To help ensure success, simply do a bit of planning.

Need help creating, building and managing a marketing campaign for your startup? Contact Us for a free 30-minute consultation.

Fun Fact Friday

In 2004, Dove created their Real Beauty advertising campaign. It was founded based on research that indicated that only 4% of women considered themselves beautiful. The campaign used photographs of regular women rather than models. The goal was to "[create] a new definition of beauty [which] will free women from self-doubt and encourage them to embrace their real beauty.” The campaign went viral and successfully doubled their sales over a period of 3 years.