Running a digital marketing campaign can be an overwhelming task, especially running a successful one. Savvy business owners, such as yourself, recognize the importance of marketing campaigns and the huge boost it can provide.
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What is a Digital Marketing Campaign?
Because there are many directions you can take with a digital marketing campaign, hiring a digital marketing agency like SEO Design Chicago would be your best economic decision. Especially when it comes to saving your own time. Although it is highly recommended to hire an agency, it doesn’t hurt to learn the ropes of a successful digital marketing campaign.
In this article we will discuss what exactly is a successful digital marketing campaign, steps to launching one, different approaches in running a marketing campaign, and some helpful tips.
Internet Marketing vs Traditional Marketing
Before we get into the nuts and bolts of digital marketing campaigns, let’s discuss the difference between marketing on the internet and traditional marketing.
The difference between internet and traditional marketing the way it is broadcasted to an audience. For instance, traditional marketing broadcasts through magazines, newspapers, billboards, and television ads while internet marketing uses social media, emails, and websites.
Even though more and more companies are utilizing digital media, especially through social media, you can never underestimate the power that traditional marketing holds.
For example, television ads are still seen by millions of viewers everyday and companies pay millions of dollars to have them broadcasted during prime TV time. From an artistic perspective, there’s a lot of thought and creativity that go into commercials and usually under a strict time limit. Undoubtedly, there is something special about a 20 second television ad that still leaves a long lasting impression on its viewers.
But what makes internet marketing particularly better? Now that we are in the golden age of digital media, marketers are starting to shift their focus on a more targeted approach.
An example is sponsored ads that you see on your news feed on social media. Let’s say that you Google searched for flights out to Puerto Rico, you will most likely see a sponsored ad from third-party sites to book a hotel in Puerto Rico with them.
Pros of Digital Marketing Campaigns
More likely to get impressions and engagement
Statista found that internet users makeup 53.6% of the global population today, with people spending around 170 minutes online a day. This means that digital marketing campaigns are more likely to be seen or get impressions from internet users, rather than say from a billboard. Another important thing with digital marketing is engagement. If your ads or marketing campaigns are being shared, liked, and have positive comments, then you’re doing it right.
It’s easy to track your campaigns
Unlike traditional marketing, digital marketing provides the tools to keep track of how your campaign is doing. This is a great way to measure its success. It will also be a good way to tell whether certain tactics or strategies work or don’t.
You can tailor your content to a specific audience
With traditional marketing, ads are usually bombarding a mass audience rather than targeting one. Digital marketing is intended for targeting a specific audience so that your business will be seen by potential customers that would already be interested in your product/service. This can bring in a lot of leads while also saving money.
Cons of Digital Marketing Campaigns
First impressions are important
There’s no doubt that internet users have short attention spans due to the overload of information and content they see everyday. This is why it’s important to have a digital marketing campaign that’s attention grabbing.
For example, many businesses use social media for promoting or brand awareness. Because social media is visual, having high-quality content is important for creating good impressions and engagement. Digital marketing agencies provide services such as social media content creation because content creation is a whole thing in of itself.
Negative feedback is seen easily and spreads fast
Unfortunately, digital marketing campaigns can get negative feedback. The internet is frequented by billions of users everyday. That means besides your target audience, your marketing and advertising will be seen by other users. The problem with digital marketing is that the message you’re trying to deliver might be interpreted differently by others. This can either have a very good or very bad effect on your audience. Another thing to keep in mind is that negative feedback can spread like wildfire on the internet. This can hurt your company’s brand if you’re not careful with your copywriting or strategy.
For example, Gillette’s “We Believe” ad campaign received backlash in 2019. From the company’s perspective, they believed that taking a social activism route would resonate well with its audience. Instead, people viewed it as “toxic” and “tone deaf.” Marketing fails such as this shows that delivery is just as important as content.
Success relies on search engines
Besides content, digital marketing relies on many factors such as SEO. Unlike traditional marketing where it’s 80% content creation and 20% placement, digital marketing revolves around search engines and its guidelines. This means that digital marketers will cater its strategy and plan to what Google favors the most whether it be using certain keywords or social media. Because Google’s algorithms are constantly updated, your effort might go to waste if you’re not keeping track of your marketing campaigns or updating it as well.
What Makes a Successful Digital Marketing Campaign?
Behind every successful marketing campaign, there is a good marketing strategy. Your marketing strategy is the general plan of your campaign. Typically you organize your campaign plan with a goal, targeted audience, and the actions you will need to take in mind. Ultimately, your strategy should be doable and realistic. Staying within budget and using resources, such as a digital marketing agency or marketing tools, are also important.
So, what exactly makes a good campaign?
A good marketing campaign leaves a strong impression on its target audience and brings them to a call-to-action. Whether it’s increasing brand awareness or driving demand for a product/service, a good marketing campaign will make an impact.
Steps to Creating a Successful Digital Marketing Campaign
Define Your Marketing Goals
First, you need to define your goals. Why? So that you will have a more clear and focused approach to a successful campaign.
When deciding what goals you want to pursue, think about what would help your business in the long-run. Is it ranking higher on Google search results? Improving conversion rates? Increasing organic engagement on social media? There’s a large number of choices.
However, consider these goals if you need some ideas on what your business can improve on.
Increase Brand Awareness
Having a strong internet presence for your business is important, especially for search engine results. All businesses should strive to be the definition of its products or services, where its brand is one of the first that comes to mind. Where would you go for fast food? McDonald’s, Taco Bell, or Chick-fil-a. Google Trends is a great way to measure brand awareness.
Increase Social Media Followers
Another common goal is increasing organic followers on social media and the rate of it. The benefit of having a steady or exponential increase in followers can greatly impact your conversion rates. This means that being more active on social media or creating higher quality content will gain interest from current and potential customers.
SEO
Improving your SEO is another good goal that businesses should constantly be working on. Whether it’s increasing your rank on search results, increasing backlinks, or just increasing website traffic; SEO will always be vital to a good digital marketing campaign. It’s important to see where your website’s SEO is lacking, which is why doing an SEO analysis helps a lot.
Identify Your Target Audience
It’s important to know who you are trying to sell your product or service to in order to have an efficient and cost-effective campaign. Doing research on who would be interested in your business and studying its demographic will give you a better idea on how to cater your marketing strategy around your target audience. This makes digital marketing more cost efficient than traditional marketing because it focuses on a target market rather to a mass audience.
Build a Realistic Budget Plan
Your budget will be one of the biggest things you evolve your plan and strategy around. It’s important to set a realistic budget. This is because it will be a deciding factor on how you allocate your resources and what you will ultimately do with your marketing campaign. Fortunately, digital marketing is a lot cheaper than traditional marketing. Digital marketing gives give you more creative freedom while not breaking the bank.
Decide On a Campaign Message
Once you’ve defined your goals, identified your target audience, and set a budget; now it’s time to choose what message you want your campaign to deliver. This is another big factor in how you will structure your plan and strategy around. Ultimately, your campaign message should have a purpose and be able to drive your audience to a call-to-action.
Strategize and Execute Your Plan
Now it’s time to get into the details of your digital marketing plan and strategy. This step shouldn’t be too complicated as you are simply putting your plan into action. For example, if you’re doing a social media campaign, all you need to do is create your ad, post it on the intended platform, and then track its results.
Contact SEO Design Chicago for Your Digital Marketing Needs
SEO Design Chicago offers many services that can help with your digital marketing campaign. Whether it’s for content marketing or social media marketing, we have experts that can create a strategy that cater to your goals and needs.
Contact Us Today!