Campaign Strategy

I am a planner. I have always been. Well, maybe not always, but I realized at a young age that if I had a plan or strategy, I would be a little more successful at what I was trying to do. It might go without saying, but campaign strategy is paramount to any advertising plan you might employ. Without understanding what the strategy is or the “why” behind what you are trying to accomplish, you are pretty much feeling your way through the dark. I don’t particularly love the dark. And whenever I try walking through my living room in the dark, I am taking a 50/50 chance of stepping on a toy. Don’t take that chance with you business and marketing dollars.

Start with a trackable goal.

In developing a campaign strategy you have to first know what your number one goal is. It sounds simple, but often people have trouble clearly identifying primary and secondary goals. Once you have identified the North Star, you can start planning on how to get there.

For example, imagine you are a gift retailer and have a brick and mortar store and an eCommerce shop online. After a lot of consideration you have decided your number one goal is to have customers walk through the doors at your brick and mortar location. Now you like online sales as well, but those are growing organically at a steady rate so your focus is on foot traffic. Your marketing strategy might include in store specials, events, and exclusives, as well as promotion of the great customer service you receive when coming in store. Your ad campaign strategy might include geo fencing display ads that show to potential customers in a preset geographical area and track foot traffic into your store. Yes, you can actually do that! You might also flight your ads so that the majority run on Saturdays (which is your best shopping day) or during store business hours. You might also host a Facebook event for your in store event that people show interest in going to or can check in to.

And really, I am just scratching the surface. Digitally speaking, ad campaign strategies can be complex and multi-layered. (which is what I really love about them and what some people hate about them, ha.) Because most digital advertising is 100% trackable, it allows you to collect tons and tons of data to sift through and analyze. You can adjust your campaign strategy or ad layers to it. You can do A/B testing with ad creative or product promotions or personalize website visits to increase conversions.

Make sure you are tracking data.

Once you are running your campaign, you have to track, track, track. All of this information will tell you important things. Things your marketing team should be looking at. It will tell you what to do. I always tell people to dig for data. If you are wondering if something is an efficient use of dollars or you think you might need to shift some things around but you aren’t sure what to do, get back in the data and keep digging!

The takeaway – you can have several strategies and they can be layered and shift and change (and in fact should change over time), but HAVE a strategy. It is your pathway to success in reaching your goals. And will make your life easier, I promise!