A digital marketing campaign is not an activity; it’s a process or a project, which means that it needs to take place in some order and according to a pre-established plan. Now, the term digital marketing, in general, is pretty broad and all-enveloping, which may end up confusing newcomers to the industry. With that in mind, here is a brief breakdown of how you can conduct a successful digital marketing campaign in seven simple steps.
- Picking the right tools
The first thing you have to understand is the complexity of an average digital marketing campaign. There are so many different tasks to handle and so many different specialists working on them at the same time.
For instance, you cannot write an article before you agree on terms with bloggers. You cannot edit or check the article and its content before it’s written, and it can’t get published before all the work is done. The ad cannot be launched before its content, which involves design, writing, etc., is done.
The first step is always knowing your customer, and there are different types of CRM software that can help you get there in no time. Then, you need to organize this work, which usually involves some kind of project management software, not to mention that you also need the tools necessary for content creation.
This means that you have to work on the right coordination and cooperation. The easiest way to handle this is with the right project management tools. This way, you get a single dashboard that allows you to centralize an entire project.
- Doing research on the local market
Every product is meant for a local market, and the last thing you want is to promote something without being aware of the rules and regulations related to it. A perfect example of this is controversial fields like online games, where local regulations drastically differ from region to region and where you need the right approach to keep things in check.
Sure, this is something that has to be done before you even decide to penetrate the market, but your marketing team has to do it. Why? Because they’re the best trained and have all the tools and practices to do it right.
The last thing you want is to enter the market where your product is illegal or where everyone knows that there’s an impending regulation that might change everything. Sure, these things can happen unexpectedly, but this is often not the case. This is one of the reasons why one of the best practices is to hire a local marketing business to assist you. That’s right, assist, not conduct independent research because they might have an interest in persuading you to start.
- Leveraging the power of AI
AI is essential to modern digital marketing, and this innovative technology has many uses in this field.
First, AI can be used for market research, seeing as how these AI tools have incredible computing power and, with enough data, can gather insights that even the most experienced human researchers wouldn’t be able to find. Still, it’s best to combine real human experience with the right tools.
Second, the use of AI tools in content generation is just unparalleled. Sure, in some forms, AI content is penalized but search engines are getting more and more lenient toward it as of late. You don’t even have to use it to create an entire piece of content. Instead, you can use it to outline and inspire.
Lastly, you can use captioning, translation, and subtitling tools, as well as AI voice-to-text tools, to make your content more accessible to people who are hard of hearing or who can’t see.
- Create compelling content
Content creation takes a lot of time and effort. On average, it takes a competent writer about four hours to produce a blog post. Just keep in mind that you shouldn’t settle for average.
Even with the use of AI tools, you need humans behind the scenes pulling strings. You need them to adjust the prompt, check the content, and curate it so that it has all you need.
One thing that people always underestimate is the quantity of content you need for a successful marketing campaign. Every time you open a guide, you see that quality is king. While this is true, it’s not the whole truth. You also need the right amount of content. If you’re running a blog, you need at least 1-2 pieces every week. If you’re running a link-building strategy, you need a lot more.
- Utilize SEO
Ranking will affect your visibility, which will directly impact your revenue in more ways than one. It will drive more traffic to your site, which means that you’ll get more revenue with the same conversion rate. It will also increase your authority, which means that people will be more willing to pay (and have a higher average order value).
The right SEO strategy takes a lot of time, and it’s best to outsource your SEO to cut the time short. There are a lot of guides out there advocating DIY SEO but the results are never the same.
Most importantly, you want to combine your SEO campaign with other processes like social media marketing and paid marketing methods like PPC. This way, you’ll drive more traffic to your pages, amplifying all the great work you’re doing to boost your organic reach and traffic.
- Automate email marketing
Even today, email marketing is arguably the most relevant form of outreach in the business world. Sure, personal interactions now take place via DMs, but when first reaching out to a new party, it’s customary to do it via email. It’s less spammy and suspicious, and when you know how to craft efficient emails, you’re looking at a far greater CTR.
An average outreach specialist can send hundreds of emails every day. On the other hand, with the right email marketing automation tools, they can send tens (even hundreds) of thousands of emails every single day.
The level of customization and personalization in this form of email marketing is just unparalleled. Now, with the help of AI automation tools, you can almost reach the scenario where all the emails feel like they were personally hand-typed. If you supply your automation tools with the data you’ve gathered with CRM software, you’ll get this level of efficiency and precision with ease.
- Monitor and analyze data (continuously)
No marketing campaign is ever really complete. Instead, it has cycles.
You devise a strategy, gather data, analyze it, and pick outreach methods. Once they’re out there, they live lives of their own. If your research and projections were good, you’d get an approximate response to what you were hoping for.
However, no battle plan ever survives the first contact with the enemy. So, you need to monitor the results and adjust your strategy accordingly. If anything, Google is regularly rolling out updates, some of them major, which means that, from time to time, you’ll have to readjust.
Just avoid making the mistake of jumping the gun. Some results take a while to roll in, so prematurely deciding to make a change will make things worse instead of making them better.
A successful marketing campaign requires a systemic approach
Ultimately, you need to understand the importance of using a step-by-step approach in order not to miss anything crucial. The thing is that the first part of the list sets you up for a long-term campaign, while the latter steps imply using concrete methods without which no digital marketing campaign can ever be deemed complete.