Best Campaign Management Practices and Strategy in 2024

Campaign management is not an easy task. First, you need to consider several factors: budget, technology, people, resources, channels, timeline, and strategy, among others. Second, you need to meticulously go through several phases: planning, production, execution, monitoring, analysis, and reporting. For you to be able to carry out a successful marketing campaign, you will need to leverage a campaign management software solution.

With campaign management software, the overwhelming task of managing an entire marketing campaign is more doable. When combined with campaign management best practices—as discussed in this article—your marketing efforts will be sure to pay off.

In the next sections, you’ll learn about the best strategies for campaign management, which when combined with great talent and the right technology can produce optimal results for your company.

1. Set SMART Goals

Among the most important campaign management best practices is to start planning your marketing campaign with specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals. Writing an actionable statement following the SMART approach will help your team get a better idea of what you want to achieve together. It will clear up ambiguities and get everyone on the same page.

At the same time, it can help you tie your marketing efforts to overall business goals. As yet, we are seeing that more than half of organizations do not have their marketing content tied to a specific revenue goal (Parse.ly, 2022). This can be a problem because marketing campaigns can be quite expensive, and if they’re not measured in terms of revenue, then, no one can know what their real impact on companies is.

If done properly, goal-setting can have a positive impact on every stage of the marketing campaign and bring success to a business in general. Here are some examples of SMART goals that you can follow for your next marketing campaign:

• Work with five influencers to increase the number of followers on Instagram by 25% by the next quarter.
• Increase engagement rate by 3% on YouTube by producing 10 quality videos by the end of this month.
• Increase the number of social mentions by investing 5% more in paid advertisements this year.
• Create three lead magnets in form of ebooks this quarter to grow the company’s email list by 10,000.
• Start offering a money-back guarantee to boost conversion rates by 3% this quarter.

2. Build Customer Profiles

Your marketing efforts will all be for naught if your content does not resonate with your target audience. This is why it is important to define who your audiences are early on and conduct extensive research about them prior to implementing your marketing campaign.

A marketing analytics software can help you find relevant customer data such as age, sex, location, history, preferences, and behavior. You can use this data to create a customer profile and craft campaigns that target the same prospects.

For 99% of marketers, creating a universal 360-degree customer profile is either important or extremely important to increase marketing results (SuperOffice, 2021). Customer profiles can help you refine and focus your marketing efforts to create marketing campaigns that work for ideal buyer types.

The benefits of learning about and profiling your customers go beyond marketing, too. In fact, the process teaches you how to better serve your customers. By learning about them, you will be able to identify their needs and pain points. You can use these insights to improve your products and services and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

3. Perform Audience Segmentation

In addition to customer profiling, you can also leverage audience segmentation to further drive revenue as a campaign management strategy. Audience segmentation is the process of grouping customers and prospects based on their commonalities. To do this, you can look at the following data:

• Geographic data, or where the person is located; segments under this may include city, region, country, or continent, among others
• Demographic data, or the person’s age, gender, education, occupation, family status, income, religion, nationality, and others
• Behavioral data, specifically in relation to your brand; the person’s awareness of your brand, rating, previous purchases, and purchase patterns
• Psychographic data, or the person’s lifestyle, values, interests, and other information that speak to his/her personality

You can also layer several data points if you want to create campaigns based on very specific customer preferences and needs. For instance, you can create hyper-segments such as “24- to 30-year-old females using their mobile devices to look for car transportation services in San Francisco, California.” By narrowing your target audiences like this, you can create more relevant, more personalized campaigns.

Today, more than 6 in 10 marketers are already creating content for three to five market segments (HubSpot, 2021). If you are not yet segmenting your audience, you are definitely falling behind your competitors.

4. Establish Campaign Performance Metrics

It is important that you have clear key performance indicators early on so you’re able to measure your success as you move forward with implementing your campaign. There are many marketing metrics and KPIs out there. Among them are incremental sales, total visits, customer attrition, purchase funnels, and cost per action.

Clearly, metrics will vary depending on your overarching goal. It will also vary in terms of your marketing channel or form. In content marketing, for instance, the most popular metrics are organic traffic, search ranking, leads, conversion rate, and social shares (Semrush, 2022). It’s quite a different story for email marketers who look for subscriber reaction, omnichannel influence, and email engagement when measuring their success (Litmus, 2021).

Needless to say, it is essential that your metrics indicate how close you are to attaining your SMART goal.

5. Select Marketing Channels

There are various factors to consider when choosing the marketing channels on which you’ll run your campaign. These include your budget, your brand engagement, the preferences of your target audience, your competitors’ channels, and more. At the end of the day, it all goes back to your SMART goal, or what you want to achieve with your marketing efforts.

Marketers can reach their target audience in more ways than ever today. While most rely on digital marketing channels such as social media, websites, and email, you can also explore the possibility of running your campaign on traditional mediums such as print, radio, and television.

Given the many options available today, the task of the marketer has only become more complex. Thankfully, there are models out there that can guide your decisions. One such model is called PESO, which groups marketing channels into four categories: Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned. Below is a summary of each category’s definition, examples, and benefits.

Paid

Definition: These are channels on which you’ll have to pay for the distribution of your content.

Examples: Pay-per-click, paid advertisers, display ads, sponsored content, native advertising

Benefits: Scalable, reliable, fast (Brilliant Metrics, 2022)

Earned

Definition: These are channels on which you’ll have to produce valuable content in order to get featured.

Examples: PR outreach, media relations, influencer relations

Benefits: Authoritative, cost-effective reach, long-term benefit (Brilliant Metrics, 2022)

Shared

Definition: These are channels that are available for everyone’s use and consumption.

Examples: Social media sites, forums, referrals

Benefits: High trust, low cost (Brilliant Metrics, 2022)

Owned

Definition: These are channels on which your business has complete control over the messaging.

Examples: Your company’s blog, website, social media profiles, email campaigns, and newsletters

Benefits: Low-risk, long-term asset (Brilliant Metrics, 2022)

6. Create a Campaign Calendar

Creating a marketing calendar helps you to stay on top of your campaign marketing strategy while running multiple campaigns. It also allows you to stay consistent in terms of content frequency. Further, it allows you to bring out campaigns that are working together on multiple channels because their content is carefully planned out and laid out on a calendar.

There are many different software systems on which you can host your calendar. The most basic include Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Google Sheets. It would also be a good idea to explore calendar software that doubles as a project management tool such as monday.com, Smartsheets, and Wrike.

When creating your calendar, keep your SMART goal in mind. You need to make sure that important dates are marked, including milestones, company events, and holidays. Considering all these data, you need to make sure that you’ll meet your target deadlines by distributing the work on the days between the start and end of your marketing campaign.

7. Tap the Right People for Content

Perhaps one of the most crucial steps in the marketing campaign process is finding the right team to work with for content creation. This is because your campaign can only be as good as the minds of the people behind it.

The first question you could ask yourself is: Do you have people in your company who can execute the entirety of your marketing campaign? If not, you can always look for agencies, freelancers, or contractors and outsource content-related tasks.

Almost half of the organizations (49%) also rely on outsourcing for content creation (Semrush, 2022). However, it’s always good practice to start thinking about how your in-house team can contribute first as they already have a better understanding of your brand.

In any case, make sure to delegate tasks properly so you know who’s accountable for which aspects of the campaign. This is especially important if you’re dividing the work between your in-house team and an outsourced team.

Collaboration can become a challenge if some or all of your marketing team members are working remotely. Make sure to check out our guide on remote work best practices to prevent communication hurdles when implementing your marketing campaign.

8. Consider Campaign Automation

Marketing automation is an emerging trend that helps marketers today work successfully with limited resources and manpower. Some of the top benefits of leveraging marketing automation for marketers are improved customer experience (43%), better use of staff time (38%), and better data and decision making (35%) (Ascend2 and Research Partners, 2022).

Recent marketing automation statistics show that 81% of organizations are already using marketing automation (Salesforce Research, 2021). Of those who are using it, 86% reported being either somewhat or very successful at achieving their most important marketing objectives (Ascend2 and Research Partners, 2022).

By leveraging marketing automation, you can make sure that you are one step ahead of your competitors. Plus, you will be able to benefit from streamlined and more efficient marketing processes that will power your marketing campaigns.

9. Leverage Campaign Monitoring Software Solutions

For campaign monitoring, you will have to go back to the metrics or KPIs you have established during the planning phase. It’s a good idea to invest in a campaign monitoring software solution to make sure you are on the right track. With software dedicated to campaign monitoring, you can learn how your customers are responding to your campaigns and which of your strategies are the most effective.

Campaign monitoring software solutions enable you to respond to customers in real-time and generate more conversations around your campaign. For instance, you can track social and web mentions to see how people are responding to your campaign messages. In this way, you will be able to manage both positive and negative responses accordingly.

If your campaign is not working as effectively as you intended, you may need to make some adjustments along the way. A software solution can also make these adjustments easier for you. It can empower you with the information you need to move forward with better campaign strategies.

HubSpot MarketingVISIT WEBSITE

HubSpot Marketing is a popular all-in-one marketing system created for businesses of all sizes. It offers features for blogging, email management, lead management, SEO management, and marketing automation. With this at your disposal, businesses can optimize marketing campaigns and increase lead conversion. The platform also comes equipped with analytics tools, allowing businesses to gain insights into their campaigns.

monday.com

monday.com is primarily a collaboration system for teams but as it is built as an all-in-one digital workspace, this platform is also a great for campaign management. It comes with tools like unified dashboards, Gantt timelines, Kanban boards, and other task management tools to help teams monitor campaign workflows. It also has custom notifications which makes it easy for businesses to stay on top of urgent tasks.

WrikeVISIT WEBSITE

Wrike is designed to be a project management solution but many teams also use it for their campaign management options. With its task management tools, workload management solutions, and built-in discussion systems, businesses can easily map out campaign plans and ensure that no process is overlooked. It even comes with customized reports, allowing businesses to gain in-depth insights into their campaigns.

Mayple

Mayple is a digital marketing platform built to help businesses monitor campaigns across channels. It can support SEO, PPC, social media marketing, and more so you can rest assured that this platform can handle any type of marketing campaign that you roll out. In addition, it comes equipped with performance monitoring, quality assurance, and conversation optimization tools.

Marketing Creatio

Marketing Creatio is a multichannel marketing platform built to streamline customer journeys. This out-of-the-box, no-code solution can automate campaigns and customize lead management workflows to help you boost your marketing strategy. Among its functionalities include website behavior tracking, team collaboration, email marketing, and resource management.

10. Recalibrate Future Campaigns with Data

Campaign management comes in full circle as you end one marketing campaign and start another. This time, you are better equipped with data about your target audience, marketing channels, and strategies. You may have also met some amazing marketers from your previous campaign and can tap them to participate in the next ones.

As you move forward on another campaign, make sure to review the data you have gathered from your previous ones. Ask yourself which campaign messages have been well received, what time did your audiences engage with your content most, and which channels have generated the most engagement. You can use these data when you create another SMART goal for your next campaign.

When in doubt about your next move, consult digital marketing statistics and know your benchmarks.

Optimize Your Marketing Campaigns

In this article, you have gleaned the importance of knowing your goals, audience, metrics, channels, and timeline. You have also noticed that there are different software technologies that you can leverage to achieve a successful marketing campaign. Most importantly, you have learned that in order to optimize your campaigns, you need to rely on research and statistical data.

From creating your SMART goals to measuring your campaign performance, there are campaign management best practices that can guide your decisions. As a marketer, one of the most basic topics you can explore is digital marketing trends. From there, you can move forward and learn about the statistics and trends for different marketing types.

By Jenny Chang

Jenny Chang is a senior writer specializing in SaaS and B2B software solutions. Her decision to focus on these two industries was spurred by their explosive growth in the last decade, much of it she attributes to the emergence of disruptive technologies and the quick adoption by businesses that were quick to recognize their values to their organizations. She has covered all the major developments in SaaS and B2B software solutions, from the introduction of massive ERPs to small business platforms to help startups on their way to success.