Oh hey, everyone. It’s us again. Back on our marketing soapbox because we have some very important info to share with you.
Today we are chatting all about a little something called a “digital marketing campaign,” which just so happens to be our wheelhouse, bread and butter, and the apple of our eye combined.
You can consider us a darned pig in mud when it comes to SEO, PPC, content strategy, website builds, brand messaging, and so much more—the list of potential channels involved in a digital marketing campaign goes on. Keep reading for the 411 on all things need-to-know about how to create a digital marketing strategy and execute a campaign.
What is a Digital Marketing Campaign?
If digital marketing is the practice of marketing to a particular audience or audiences online, then a digital marketing campaign is just a more specific, goal-oriented instance of digital marketing efforts. For example, a company could run a digital marketing campaign that focuses on specifically boosting its total sales of a particular product, or on increasing clicks to a website it just launched. But what would that sort of campaign look like, and how does strategy play into it?
Digital Marketing Campaign vs. Digital Marketing Strategy
A digital marketing campaign is the actual boots-on-the-ground execution of digital marketing genius, while a digital marketing strategy is the intentional reasoning behind the execution of the various parts of a campaign. And trust us, there are no bones about it: Digital marketing campaigns are nothing without a thoughtful digital marketing strategy to guide their execution.
Digital marketing strategies are the road maps marketers use to guide the execution of a digital marketing campaign. They are overarching and consider every aspect of thoughtful and successful marketing (think audience psychology, strengths and weaknesses of certain channels, and budget limitations.)
We talk more about the importance of having a digital marketing strategy in this blog here, so head over if you want to know more about creating a digital marketing strategy. For now, let’s cover the different types of digital marketing campaigns and their various parts.
Digital Marketing Campaign Types
There are several different types of digital marketing campaigns, and which one you use will depend, once again, on the end goal you have in mind for your marketing efforts.
Some campaign types are centered around a particular channel that a company wants to utilize to reach a target audience or release a certain type of marketing material, whereas some aim to capitalize upon a certain time of year or event that might appeal more to their customers. Still others are set based on some sort of metric that a company is looking to boost, such as engagement, number of sales, impressions, clicks, etc.
Alright, let’s hop to it and take a look at what these different types of digital marketing campaigns could look like.
Channeled Campaigns
Types of digital marketing campaigns can be broken out based on marketing channels, such as paid Facebook ads, organic social media, etc. An example would be an email marketing campaign, where a strategy is built and executed in a series of emails sent out to subscribers to promote a sale or new offering.
Another example of this type of digital marketing campaign would be an ad campaign where ads are run on certain platforms frequented by members in a company’s target audience/s in order to boost impressions and/or conversions for a company. The end goal for this type of campaign is often to deepen the awareness of the brand for which the campaign is being run.
Here are some examples of creative social media assets we built for our past clients in the vitamin industry. They were looking to promote their new CBD vitamin skin patches, and since their target audience was younger, we decided to promote this new product through organic social media posts that sought to educate, while also remaining lighthearted, entertaining, and aesthetically pleasing:
Themed Campaigns
A different type of digital marketing campaign are those run based on a certain overarching theme. Sometimes these campaigns are driven by a strategy that aims to take advantage of a shift in consumer behavior; for example, Black Friday. Brands can craft a digital marketing campaign around different holidays as well, coming up with creative assets that match the time of year.
As an example, here is an ad campaign we ran for one of our clients based on the time of year (particularly getting ahead of the ball game when it came to planning for Christmas time) that was run on Facebook:
Goal-Oriented Campaigns
A third type of digital marketing campaign is those that are goal-oriented, crafted based on boosting brand awareness, conversions, email subscribers, etc. The channels and themes used for a goal-oriented campaign can vary, but the end goal is the central and constant focal point of this type of digital marketing campaign.
Below are some LinkedIn image ads that we created for a past client that wanted a marketing campaign that increased their demo sign ups. We chose LinkedIn ads as a channel for this campaign because of the nature of their product and industry; as they were a B2B SaaS company, most of their target audience would be found scrolling through LinkedIn.
Digital Marketing Campaign Tactics
Different types of digital marketing campaigns exist to help companies achieve different, specific goals; tactics are the broader categories of the different formats in which a digital marketing campaign can take place.
You might be wondering, what’s the difference between types of digital marketing campaigns and digital marketing campaign tactics? The type of campaign will define what campaign tactics a company should deploy. But it’s not the difference between the two that we want to focus on. It’s the synergy produced by taking a campaign type and choosing the tactics that make it sing that is really the gold mine here.
At Marketwake, we generally like to think of the segmentation of digital marketing campaign tactics as such:
Website Creation
The importance and impact of a company’s website simply cannot be understated. Although it may be strange to think about the re-vamping or creation of a website as a “campaign,” it could be the most important thing a business does to boost its KPIs.
Websites are the way a member of your audience gets to know your business. Making sure your brand voice and tone is cohesive and resonates is important, but it is even more important to ensure that information about your company and your product and/or solution is easy to find and explained in simple ways.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization, known more colloquially as SEO, is a relatively new kid on the block in the digital marketing world. But man, does everyone want to get a load of this guy.
For some barebones background information, SEO basically entails optimizing your online content by utilizing “keywords” and particular search terms in your copy to ensure that your business’s content shows up when members of your target audience search for something related to your industry or solution.
Need some fresh new tips to buff up your content’s SEO? Check out these tips for the latest and greatest on keyword usage and optimization.
Content Creation
Content can be created on a myriad of platforms and in a plethora of formats, but two of the most general and common are blogs (These are hosted on a company’s website. Need an example? You’re reading one.) and organic social media posts.
Blogs can be thought of as mini deep-dives on a certain topic relevant to a company’s industry or addressing a specific concern of their target audience. The production of blogs is often strategized in their own right in a content strategy. Blog content strategies use keywords to SE-optimize the content on a website to get the attention of more relevant visitors.
Organic social media posts differ slightly from blogs in that they don’t always have an educational component to them. Whereas most blogs attempt to answer some sort of query or inform a user, a company’s social media content can have more interactive, quick, and fun content than a blog can. And regardless of a business’s industry or audience, having some sort of social media presence is pretty much expected these days.
Content creation, whether on a website or on a social platform, is really important to a digital marketing campaign for several different reasons.
First of all it is one of the main ways, besides good website copy, to consistently humanize your company through the formation and utilization of a brand voice and tone. Writing social and blog copy consistent with your brand’s voice and tone is one of the best ways to connect with your audience and humanize your brand.
Secondly, it helps your company get found. Creating content on a regular basis, on relevant subjects, and with relevant keywords will improve your chances of appearing at the top of Google search results, which can sometimes prove to be a herculean task.
Second to last in our list of parts of a marketing campaign is email. Email campaign tactics can come in the form of newsletters, nurture series, new product pushes, and more. Although it may seem as though many people roll their eyes at marketing emails from businesses, on average, email marketing tactics have an ROI of $36 for every $1 spent producing them.
Email is a cost-effective, personalized piece of the digital marketing campaign puzzle that puts your brand right in front of people, as studies show that more than half of people check their email more than twice a day. Email marketing is useful for promoting deals or new thought leadership material to previous clients to get them coming back to your site, to build brand loyalty by encouraging re-engagement, or to introduce a new product.
Here is a series of emails we did for a company to introduce their new spice blends to their customers in a set of email releases to build excitement for the reveal:
PPC (Pay Per Click)
Pay per click, also known as just plain ol’ ads, can be a part of a campaign on a multitude of platforms. There are Google search ads, Google display ads, Facebook ads, LinkedIn Ads, Instagram ads, TikTok ads, the list goes on.
However, there are a few extra challenges that come with utilizing PPC in a digital marketing strategy. By nature of ad formatting and ads themselves, companies have a lot to say, with very few characters, and very short attention spans on the other side. Whereas blogs have the advantage of answering a question a user sought out, ads are throwing information at a user that they did not ask for. It elicits a different response and therefore must be that much more persuasive.
Ads can do this by speaking the language and using the terms of their target audiences, and seeking to say a lot in very few words.
Paid ads can have a staggeringly powerful effect on a digital marketing campaign; just take a look at the results some of Marketwake’s clients have seen thanks to our account managers’ thoughtful digital marketing strategies.
Now, let’s zoom out a bit again.
Each of these components can be a part of a digital marketing campaign. There are combination PPC and SEO strategies that aim to boost visibility on Google through both paid and organic efforts. There are social digital marketing campaigns that involve firing on all cylinders, pushing out TikToks, Instagram carousels, and tweets to connect with a company’s intended target audience/s. But these efforts are nothing without a statement of purpose to state the ‘why’ behind the marketing efforts put into certain digital channels. That, my friends, is the job of a digital marketing strategy.
So before we cover how to create a digital marketing campaign, we must cover the ‘how’ of creating a digital marketing strategy.
How to Create a Digital Marketing Strategy
Identifying your target audience is almost a painfully obvious part of developing a digital marketing strategy and campaign. But we want to get more granular with it and talk about the importance of identifying buyer personas.
Buyer personas are a fictional (but realistic) representation of your ideal customer. In order to be able to define the goals of your strategy, it is imperative to always keep in mind who your target audience is, and buyer personas act as a good tool to always have them top of mind.
Next comes defining the goals of your campaign. This involves considering who your audience is and the various ways they see ads, as well as the various tactics and messaging that would resonate with them depending on their age, location, buying habits, etc.
Once you have your ideal persona and goals in mind, it’s time to actualize these efforts by choosing ideal marketing channels. These channels will probably be from the list we have above, and will be chosen based on which channels have the best chance of reaching your target audience.
Finally comes choosing a few KPIs or metrics to track to gauge how effective your efforts will be. These can be things like cost per click (CPC), conversion rate, engagement rate, bounce rate, the list goes on.
How to Create a Digital Marketing Campaign
Creating a digital marketing campaign involves combining all of the things we just covered. Here are the steps needed to craft a truly thoughtful, powerful, and long-lasting campaign:
- Begin creating a digital marketing strategy by crafting a buyer persona or two
- Then, define the goals and objectives needed to signal the successful end of the campaign
- Choose a few marketing channels that will best reach your target audiences and carry the message you want to send the best
- Identify KPIs to track the success of your endeavor (good marketing means always tracking and leveraging digital marketing analytics!)
- Execute the strategy and thoughtfulness spent in the planning period with the roll-out of your digital marketing campaign, including:
- The creation of creative assets such as image-based ads and landing pages for PPC ads, blog writing, and other content creation
- Writing, designing, and building out a new website
- Search engine optimization of existing and new content
- Building out a social media or emailing schedule to consistently contact clients and potential clients
Easy, right?
Build Your Marketing Campaign with An Award-Winning Agency: Marketwake
If all of that most certainly does not sound easy, consider outsourcing some of this lift to the experts. We have over four years of experience in the realm of digital marketing and specialize in SEO services, paid media, Salesforce services, website creation, social media, and branding projects.
Have an idea for a digital marketing campaign for your business but don’t quite have the expertise or the resources to execute? Contact us here at Marketwake for some guidance.
