10 Tips for Creating a Powerful Marketing Campaign Strategy

It's time to solidify a marketing campaign strategy for 2020 that will launch your business to the next level. Sounds good, but how?

In 2018, 72% of marketers said that having a good content strategy was the key to their success. A good content strategy will not only help you generate leads but nurture them as well. Developing lead nurturing strategies will help guide your marketing campaigns to converting leads to customers, reducing the cost per customer acquisition. With all the different possible strategies out there, where do you start? How can you improve your campaign strategy, and make 2020 your biggest year yet? Here are ten tips you can start with.

1. Lean Towards Influencer Marketing Instead of Celebrity Endorsements
2. Don't Underestimate What Social Media Can Do
3. Use Technology to Best Understand Your Strengths
4. Continue or Start to Publish on a Company Blog Regularly
5. Host an Event
6. Understand Current Cultural Tensions
7. Remember Your Existing Customers
8. Bring in New Ideas
9. Follow Through with Stakeholders
10. Look Back to Look Forward

1. Lean Towards Influencer Marketing Instead of Celebrity Endorsements

While similar in nature, influencer marketing, and celebrity endorsements were not created equal. 

Influencer marketing is similar to celebrity endorsements in that it employs a recognizable figure to instill trust and interest in a target audience, but is also successful in ways celebrity endorsements are not.

To start with, influencers are specialists in a niche, not just recognizable names.  

Influencer marketing, because it is based on a smaller, more intimate fan base than that of a true celebrity, instills more trust in the consumer. Here’s an example influencer post by Forrest and Jameson, two Goldendoodles with more than 75,000 followers: 

Source: Instagram

2. Don't Underestimate What Social Media Can Do

Social media is, of course, an excellent way to advertise to new and previous customers. 

Beyond this, and not to be ignored in your revamped 2020 marketing campaign, is that it is also a perfect medium for building a relationship, and thus brand loyalty, with your target audience. 

How to Craft the Perfect Social Media Message

With the help of  Megan Ptaszenski, Associate MarCom Manager from Association Headquarters, we’ve come up with three steps in crafting the perfect social media message.

1. Identify and Get to Know Your Target Audience
2. Create and Conduct Social Media Audits
3. Develop a Content Calendar

1. Identify and Get to Know Your Target Audience

Nowadays, everyone is on social media. While this is great, it also means that it’s easier to have your message lost in the sea of users. So how do you create a strong social media strategy that will help you build customer relationships and brand loyalty with your target audience? First, you’ll have to find out who your audience is, where they’re from, when they’re online, and which channel they use. According to Megan, you can discover this information by using free online social media analytics tools, including:

• Buffer - A tool that helps you drive traffic, increase your social media engagement and understand your followers. The free version helps you track major engagement stats.

• Tweriod - A free Twitter tool that helps you find the best time to Tweet based on when your followers are online.

• Facebook Page Insights - Available to all page admins, Facebook Insights give you the stats behind your posts, your fans and the reach of the content you are posting. Bonus: You can also get to know your competitors by placing them in the “Pages to watch” category.

• Twitter Analytics - Twitter provides users a 28-day overview of how their tweets have performed: # of retweets, # of mentions, # of favorites, and # of clicks.
  

Many platforms, such as Instagram, have made it incredibly easy to gain insights on your audience:

Source: HubSpot 

2. Create and Conduct Social Media Audits

As you’re gathering data about your target audience, create a social media audit to better understand what the data is telling you and how to best navigate your channels. The audit should include information on the different platforms you are active on. More specifically, this audit should list links to your profiles, identify who is responsible for these accounts, key social media metrics, key audience demographic information, and the best performing posts based on engagement. Here’s an example of a social media audit from Hootsuite:

This audit should also include information about your followers such as which day of the week and at what time they are most active on these platforms as well as the type of posts they resonate with most (i.e. posts with pictures, posts that contain videos, posts about giveaways/contests, etc.). Use this audit as a way to complete a “SWOT” analysis of your social media channels. Pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses of your current social media strategy, capitalize on your opportunities to grow your brand, and mitigate threats based on your market/followers. 

3. Develop a Content Calendar

In order to ensure your content is well planned, interesting, and timely, we recommend developing a content calendar. Based on the information you gather from your social media audit, develop a content calendar on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis. This will help you track the frequency of your posts and the content that you will use based on the channels you are active on. This calendar will ensure that you are creating consistent, timely messages across your channels. Don’t worry, there are many content calendar templates that you can download. Each has its own way of organizing information and most of them are customizable. Here’s an example from HubSpot:

You’ve completed these steps…now what?

Now that you know your audience and you have set a solid foundation for a social media strategy, you can now begin crafting the perfect messages to get (and keep) your followers engaged!

Here are some quick tips from Megan in creating the perfect message for the top 3 social media platforms:

 Facebook

• Facebook posts with visuals receive the highest amount of engagement.
• Optimize your images to fit the proper specs. Standard news feed image: 472px x 374px.
• Engage your followers by providing just enough information to make them click.

Twitter

• Try to keep your message at 250 characters or less.
• Allow 20 characters for retweeters to add content.
• Unlike Facebook, images are automatically scaled to fit it your Twitter feed.

LinkedIn

• Post about breaking news, deadlines, events, sneak peeks, or other timely industry related information.
• Keep your link title to < 70 characters to grab the reader’s attention.
• Edit your link description and keep it as brief as possible.

For All Three Channels (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn)

• Use hashtags wisely.
• Don't bend any grammar or spelling rules to make your message fit the space. Doing so could tarnish your credibility with your followers.
• Use images or videos to grab the reader’s attention.
• Ask the readers a question to get more engagement.
• Provide just enough information for the reader to know what your content is about but still make them want to learn more.
• Use bit.ly or another link builder to create a unique, trackable link.
• Provide a clear call to action including a shortened, unique link to track effectiveness.
• Post at a time when you know your followers will see it. Use the data in your social media audit to determine your best days/times to post.
• If your best days/times to post are not during regular business hours, you can use free scheduling tools such as Hootsuite or Buffer to upload posts and schedule them accordingly.

Overall, try interacting in a way that isn't too sales-oriented. Strive for a 70:30 special interest to promotional content ratio. Keeping the sales pitch dialed down let's customers relax and connect with your brand, and later, want to purchase from you.

3. Use Technology to Understand Your Strengths

Take what was popular last year, and use it to make this year even better. 

Google Analytics and HubSpot Analytics makes it easy to track what your followers have enjoyed. Follow this analysis to publish more engaging content, and gain more authority, loyalty, and exposure in your niche.

But your 2020 marketing campaign strategy doesn't just include online marketing. So how do you track the efficacy of your offline efforts?

Kissmetrics used URLS and coupons codes to track traffic to your site, so you can see what came of all those flyers or brochures.

4. Continue to Publish on a Company Blog Regularly

Publishing regularly to a professional blog gives you great exposure. In fact, businesses that blog have 55% more visitors to their site. 

But other than creating interest, blogging regularly creates trust and loyalty in consumers, as your business and brand become part of their regular exposure.

This is a great aid in lead generation, as prospective customers can come to value you first as a source of information and entertainment.  If you're new to blogging or looking for some new ideas to up your campaign strategy in 2020, check out this article here.

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5. Host In Person or Online Events 

Holding events is not only a great way to interact with your customers and humanize your company, but they give tangible worth to your business. 

Over 90% of marketers agree that hosting events is an important practice to form in-person relationships and connections in an increasingly digital world. Being able to put a face to a company makes clients more comfortable than a voice on the phone or online.

If you aren’t able to host an in-person event, a virtual online event can be just as beneficial in providing value to your customers. One of the key benefits of hosting an online event is the expanded audience reach around the world. 

Deliver even more value during events by providing exclusive information, workshops, complimentary samples, or special discounts. Vans did this by hosting a skateboarding workshop in celebration of International Women’s day: 

Source: Vans

6. Understand Current Cultural Tensions 

Not every product or service is explicitly political, but every brand can have an impact in culture. To find out what impact your brand can make, ask yourself: what problems or affairs today are addressed or exacerbated by my industry? 

With this information, you can find success in the exact middle of the two opposing sides of your product's relevant issue and market from there. Marketing from the middle allows you to appeal to the largest number of consumers while marginalizing the fewest. 

Need an example? Dove encourages women to feel beautiful in their skin naturally while simultaneously telling them the way to achieve this beauty it is to buy their product. This way, beauty enthusiasts and naturalists alike see the appeal. 

Source: Dove

7. Remember Your Existing Customers

While expanding exposure and customer base is great, don't neglect the customer base you have grown already. It's easier to make a sale to a repeat customer than acquiring a new one.

So for your 2020 marketing strategy, dedicate some of your funds to retaining old customers with up-sells or cross-sells.

Provide great customer service and rely on traditional email marketing to nurture that relationship. Increase your customer base more holistically by offering discounts for referrals. Also, try using social media as a customer service channel.

Existing customers aren't the only focus for your marketing campaign, but neither should they be forgotten. 

8. Bring in New Ideas

Creating a marketing campaign strategy doesn't have to be the brain child of you alone. Don't shy away from asking input from important stakeholders, like sales or product managers. 

The whole team is invested in the success of this venture. As a bonus, by making their voices heard, they'll be more likely to support your own ideas in the future.

9. Follow Through with Stakeholders

After you've gotten their input, don't forget to follow through!

Maintain open communication with major stakeholders by setting up meetings weekly or monthly to keep an eye on what is developing well and what is not.

Besides just helping develop a killer marketing campaign, keeping the channels of communication open and flowing builds trust between you and your team.

10. Look Back to Look Forward 

To round out your new marketing campaign, review what strategies were successful in 2019. What did you achieve, and how? Were any events you hosted particularly successful? What pitfalls should you watch out for? Look for times when opportunities for sales or prospective clients slipped through the cracks, and ways to fix this. 

Lastly, track everything. There is no way to guarantee that everything you try will work, but if you track what does and what doesn't, you will develop a better understanding of how to get more things to succeed.