Marketing is a vital element with regard to the success or failure of your business or brand. It doesn’t matter how great your product or service is if nobody can find it. You also need to provide adequate information about said product or service.
Depending on your specific business, your marketing department may actually be pretty complicated. If you are a brick-and-mortar business, chances are your online marketing is complex. Online marketing efforts include digital marketing, print marketing, event marketing, and various forms of optimization. These elements are important to success but also call for a cohesive plan of action.
Good preparation is essential to the success of any marketing endeavor. Remember, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” You can’t wing it. Marketing is such a vital part of the ultimate success or failure of your enterprise. You want an effective campaign that guides as much web traffic and business as possible.
This means a well-designed and integrated marketing campaign is essential to success and this campaign will combine all the most important aspects of digital marketing. The marketing campaign should include social media marketing, content marketing, and email marketing. It should also include the use of various SEO techniques to help bolster your content on the front and back end.
To have a cohesive marketing campaign, you need a well-structured marketing plan. For most of us, writing marketing plans is something we haven’t done since college, if we ever did it at all. This makes this process seem even more intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be.
The following are a few fundamental steps when it comes to beginning your marketing campaign template:
Know Your Target
Have you figured out what target audience you wish to reach and which niche you want? You want to narrow your audience down, so you can attract more of the people you need to attract. Casting a bigger net doesn’t always mean that it is better for the business.
You want a smaller target, so you can focus your attention on the overall strength and impact you can have. You are trying to show the right people that you are knowledgeable in the areas they are most interested in. For example, if you wanted a birthday cake, you wouldn’t seek the help of a grill master. You would rather narrow down your choice to an experienced baker who is knowledgeable about what you are looking for.
Create a Strong Call to Action
You will also need to determine what it is you want your target audience to do. Is there a product you want them to buy? Then you need to be clear about what your company has to offer and then market the value of your products and services.
Make sure that the consumer has all the contact details they will need and provide a simple and straightforward way for them to make the purchase. You want to eliminate any and all obstacles that may end up frustrating the consumer enough during their buyer’s journey to leave and take their business elsewhere.
Next, there is a basic structure or template for your marketing campaign plan that you can follow. It will guide you to incorporate the most vital and important elements, so you are not at risk of leaving out any details.
Here is a basic content marketing plan template to follow when trying to structure your marketing campaign.
Goals
First things first, you will need to make a list of goals. These are goals that will vary depending on your company, the time of year, the product or service you offer, and so on. A list of actionable goals should be the first piece of your strategic marketing plan.
When determining your goals, you need to ask yourself a few questions:
- Are you trying to generate leads?
- Are you trying to attract people and inspire them to purchase your products or services?
- Do you plan on driving your brand awareness to reach your goals?
Answering these questions concerning the goals of the company will effectively help launch a marketing campaign that includes planning, distribution, and conversion.
Research
You will need to explain how you are going to research and then measure the outcomes of any initiatives. Next, you will need to explain the types of research you are going to undertake. This will include a competitive analysis and demographics about customers.
Who is your target audience or target market? Customer analysis should include details about their buying cycles and habits.
You should also identify the scope of your projects. How long will it take? What resources are you going to need, which part of the marketing funnel and sales funnel will you be targeting, what kind of content will you need to provide for your target audience, and which key performance indicators will matter to you the most when analyzing future results?
Strategy
Next, you need to come up with a marketing strategy and action plan. How will certain efforts effect movement towards your goals, and how much time do you need? This is where you can bolster your ideas. Define your goals more.
You need strong brand recognition, SEO (search engine optimization), a content marketing strategy, good distribution, and more. Which of these action items should you focus on in your campaign? This is the part of the marketing plan where you explain how you plan to achieve all these elements.
Will it be an email campaign? A blog post with a call to action? Include these details in your marketing proposal.
Acquiring this information will be the foundation of any marketing campaign. Once you know what to do, you can put it into action. A cohesive plan will allow you to begin planning for real steps towards your goals.
Statistics and Budget
You will need to measure the progress your company is making towards your company goals. For this, you’ll need to figure out how to measure your progress. You will need to establish a baseline figure that you can use to measure your progress against. Derive this information from statistical models, or previous marketing campaigns and success rates. Steady analysis is important.
Tactical Plans
Tactical plans are the actual action plans. How will you put these strategies into action? What do you need to get started? How can you track progress? You want to keep your tactical goals to an attainable level. Try a few short-term goals and one long-term. Be as detailed as possible in the planning stage. Think about ongoing campaign management as well. An editorial calendar is a very useful tool.
General Reminder:
A marketing campaign can make or break your company. Potential customers find out about your product or service through marketing. Plus, the way that you connect with existing customers is as important. Ensure customer retention for the long-term with marketing campaigns.
These plans are important but shouldn’t intimidate you. You can follow the basic formula laid out here, which takes a lot of the guesswork out of the equation.
This is a basic template that you can follow to structure a cohesive marketing plan. Start the template with the goals you hope to achieve with said marketing plan. Then define how you are going to bolster your brand, content, SEO, and website design.
You can focus on other elements later. Then, detail your new marketing strategies, with plans on how to meet said goals. Don’t forget to track progress along the way to see how successful your campaign is.
We hope this basic guide can help you get started on reaching your next goal!