A Brief Guide on Crafting Successful Marketing Campaigns (2024)

Marketing campaigns are one of the most important elements of business success. They’re valuable in promoting your business, driving brand awareness, strengthening your reputation, and generating interest in your products and services.

In short, you need marketing for business growth, whether a small startup or a Fortune 100 company.

As marketing campaigns continue to evolve due to changes in consumer behavior and advancements in digital technology, your business must be ready to rise to the occasion. Being left in the past allows your competitors to surpass you, which will undercut your audience reach and sales.

In this blog post, we’ll explore the different types of marketing campaigns. Also, you’ll learn what goes into planning a great campaign, the components needed for success, and tips for measuring your results, with case studies and examples to inspire you.

Table of Contents

Types of Marketing Campaigns

First, you need to understand the various marketing campaigns you can explore to reach your target audience depending on their needs, budget, and areas of expertise.

Digital campaigns

Today, all marketing has gone digital. While that’s not 100% the case, it would be a huge error to ignore the tidal wave that is digital marketing. Data finds that ad spending in digital marketing will achieve a stunning $667 billion in 2024, proving that more marketers are focusing on it than ever before.

Digital marketing encompasses a variety of marketing disciplines that ought to be familiar to you, including:

Content marketing

Lead generation can increase as much as 74% due to content marketing. You can rely on this form of marketing to share your brand story, strengthen your brand awareness, educate and inform your audience, drive conversions, and maintain customer retention. Here are content marketing methods to explore:

- Blog posts
- Videos
- Long-form articles
- Webinars
- Podcasts
- Infographics
- eBooks
- Checklists
- Reports

Email marketing

The conversion rate for B2C companies that use email marketing is 4%, and for B2C brands, 2.8%. Email marketing can help you connect with your audience, drive engagement, and nurture leads.

SMS marketing

In 2024, 80% of businesses use SMS marketing, a 45% increase from 2022.

Texting offers directly to a customer or lead’s smartphone ensures a great rate of deliverability, and this form of marketing is also cost-effective.

PPC

Pay-per-click or PPC ads are another digital marketing measure for startups to consider. You pay a publisher every time an internet user clicks your ad.

The range of placement options for PPC ads, not to mention the allowable targeting, make them popular, as does their average ROI of 200%.

SEO

Then, there’s search engine optimization, or SEO, which influences your website’s ranking in search engine results pages. SEO has many elements, and focusing on them can help you elevate your rank and drive more website traffic. They are:

- Keyword research
- Technical SEO, such as schema data
- Backlinking
- Enhancing the user experience
- Improving your website loading speed
- Building a crawl-friendly website architecture
- Using alt text, metadata, and title tags
- Internal linking
- Modifying URLs
- Removing duplicate content
- Improving content quality
- Optimizing for mobile

Print campaigns

Did you do a double-take here? Remember, I said not all marketing and advertising campaigns are digital, and I meant it. Print campaigns are another option to explore, especially considering this is a form of marketing not many of your competitors are thinking of.

Up to 73% of modern consumers prefer print advertisements, while 75% said they made them feel special. This makes sense, considering what rarity print ads have become as digital marketing has risen to the forefront.

It’s also been found that the trust rate for print advertisements is high, meaning you can drive more purchasing decisions by exploring this form of marketing.

Hybrid campaigns

What many more businesses do is combine digital and traditional marketing. This way, they can have that unique edge their competitors lack while using measurable marketing strategies.

While you can review your digital campaign with an eagle eye as the results happen, the same cannot be said for traditional marketing. If you get a print ad in a magazine with 10,000 readers, you can expect at least 10,000 people to see your ad, but even that’s not guaranteed.

And even if they did see the ad, you wouldn’t know it, nor would you have any way of connecting the dots between website traffic and your print ad. You’d assume your print ad led to increased traffic, but if you’re also using digital marketing measures, the lines become muddier regarding who’s coming from where.

Social media campaigns

With 5.17 billion people on social media worldwide in 2024, businesses have naturally gravitated toward social platforms as an extension of their marketing campaigns.

You have many ways to promote your business on Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube, such as:

Post on social media content consistently, sharing valuable content daily that enhances your users’ scrolling experience.
Pay for social media advertising to reach new segments of your target market.
Host a contest or giveaway on social media.
Partner with an influencer to broaden your marketing channel reach.

How to Plan Marketing Campaigns

Alright, are you ready to get your marketing campaign off the ground? Here are all the elements you need to plan for before you launch.

Goals

What is the point of this campaign? Do you want to drive more brand awareness? Increase the number of leads or improve their quality? Elevate your rates of sales or conversions.

You may focus on only one goal to start or several, but you can’t have a successful campaign without knowing what you want to achieve. Once you have your endpoint in mind, you can connect the dots from beginning to end and determine how you’ll reach your goals.

Target market

Next, you must find the right target market for your marketing campaign. That requires segmentation, which you can do manually or use digital marketing or AI tools.

Once you have your segments, build customer avatars or personas for each. Then, sit down with several team members to determine which segments to focus on to achieve your marketing goals.

Budgeting

The most important part of a successful marketing plan is the budget. This is also where many businesses can go astray if they accidentally allocate too much money. Then, whatever profit you make from your other marketing efforts is chewed up by your budget, meaning you ultimately don’t earn a profit.

I don’t want that to happen to you, so let’s chat more thoroughly about marketing budgets, shall we?

A handful of factors will influence what a marketing campaign can cost, including the type of marketing, the audience you’re reaching, and the extent of your campaign.

You should only dedicate a portion of your revenue toward marketing to avoid the unenviable situation where you lose out on profits because you spent too much on your campaigns.

How much of your income you need to set aside depends on your business type. If you’re in B2C, you should spend five to 10% of your revenue on marketing. And for those in B2B, it’s a smaller, more streamlined budget of two to five percent.

Marketing channels

You’ve finished most of your campaign tasks, but the last one is also a doozy. You have to consider which marketing channels you’ll use carefully.

Will you go 100% digital marketing? If so, which tactics will you use? If you decide to take a hybrid approach, are we talking about a 50-50 split or more like 60-40?

Remember that each type of marketing has its upsides and downsides. For example, digital marketing is easy to track results for, but it can be costly, and it’s also bordering on oversaturation.

Traditional marketing is impossible to track, social media marketing can be costly, and hybrid marketing strategies can have mixed results.

Ultimately, the only way to gauge whether your campaign succeeded is to track metrics, which I’ll talk about later.

Key Components of Successful Campaigns

You’ve got your plan, so it’s time to pepper in the following elements to make your marketing campaign more efficient and effective.

Compelling copy

Without arresting copy, do you have a campaign?

Copywriting is the backbone of marketing, utilized in social media content, content marketing, emails, advertisements, and almost everything. It’s a fine art; copywriting is about persuading someone to act without banging them over the head with sales tactics.

Today, you can work with freelancers, in-house copywriters, or AI tools to produce copy (although a human editor will need heavy polishing for accuracy and uniqueness).

So, what does it take to write spellbindingly enough to motivate someone to buy your product or service? Here are some elements of copywriting to incorporate:

Understand your audience, including who they are, what they can spend, and what they need.
Weave your brand story into the copy compellingly and naturally.
Present your unique benefits according to the pain points identified when you segmented your audience and built customer avatars.
Write strong headlines or subject lines, using elements like curiosity or FOMO to inspire more opens.
Keep your copywriting concise. This isn’t a novel, so only use as many words as required.
Make sure to use at least one call to action.
Write with a sense of urgency so your audience knows they shouldn’t buy your product/service tomorrow, next week, or three months from now but right this moment.
Keep your sentences short so they’re easier to read.
Stick to active voice, not passive voice.
Skip the technical jargon, as it will only confuse your reader.
Have a second set of eyes proofread before the content goes online.

Strong CTAs

The call to action is one of the most important parts of any campaign. You just spent all that time and effort telling the reader about why your product or service is the best. Now, you need the CTA to help them take the next step.

There are several elements of a CTA to plan for:

Type: You can select from button-style CTAs, traditional links, or a mix of both.
Color: If you opt for a button CTA, color is a major consideration. The hue you select should be complementary to your webpage’s main color(s) yet provide enough contrast that it stands out. Look at the opposite ends of the color wheel for inspiration.
Shape: Most CTA buttons are rectangular, square-shaped, oval, or circular. While you could explore other shapes, this decision might be too unconventional and cost you conversions.
Copy: You need to keep your copy short and sweet. However, the copy should also be informative, so rather than saying “Click here,” which tells the reader nothing, try something more like “Click here to learn more” or “Click here to explore our collection.”
Placement: Multiple CTAs are allowed on your web pages; one should always be above the fold. Other popular yet secondary placements are in the middle of the page and down at the bottom.

Media

Marketing and media go together like peanut butter and jelly. Various forms of media can jazz up your marketing materials, drive a message home, and create more memorability.

The most common materials are images and videos. You should always create them 100% originally rather than use stock materials. After all, this is your campaign, so it should have your blood, sweat, and tears (not literally).

Branding

The last element of your campaign is your brand. Including your brand colors, tone, and logo in your marketing materials will increase your business’s recognition over your competitors.

How to Execute and Monitor Campaigns

With all the parts coming together, you’re ready to execute your first campaign. Here are some considerations as you get to this point:

Confirm your marketing budget, ensuring you stick within the parameters you set.
Determine the precise launch date (and time) for your campaign.
If automating the launch of your campaign, double-check that the automation workflow is good to go.
Determine how long your campaign will be live.
Begin measuring results.

That last point is important, so I want to unpack it further. For better or worse, your campaign will get results. Sometimes, they’re lackluster and, in other cases, exceptional. Ideally, you should be able to predict how your campaigns will perform, but you need historical data.

As you track results, do so in real time.

Marketing campaigns are living, breathing things in that they don’t have to stay the way they were at launch. If your campaign is underperforming in the first four weeks, you don’t have to stand by and watch it flounder for three more weeks. You can tweak it now.

How to Measure Success and ROI

So, when you track your campaign, what exactly are you looking for?

That’s a good question, especially if this is your first marketing campaign. The KPIs associated with marketing run the gamut depending on which type of campaign you launched, so here’s a complete rundown.

Digital marketing metrics

Customer Lifetime Value or CLV
Customer retention rate
Customer acquisition cost
Sales-accepted leads
Sales-qualified leads
Marketing-qualified leads
Goal completion rate
Cost per lead
Churn rate
Conversion rate
Organic website traffic
Inorganic website traffic
Returning visitors
Bounce rate
Cost per acquisition
Return on investment or ROI
Return on advertising spend or ROAS
Returning visitors
Page views
Web traffic sources
Clicks
Impressions
Brand awareness

Email marketing metrics

Open rate
Click-through rate
Subscriber rate
Unsubscribe rate
Soft bounces
Hard bounces
Revenue per subscriber
Revenue per email
Overall ROI
Mobile click rate
Mobile open rate
Email forwarding/sharing rate
Engagement over time
List growth rate
Spam complaints
Bounce rate
Conversion rate

SEO metrics

Website health
Pages crawled per day
Core Web Vitals
Top keywords ranked
Index coverage errors
Referring domains
Backlinks
Indexed pages
Average page load time
Organic traffic conversions
Pages per session
Traffic value
Exit rate
Search visibility
Click-through rate
Keyword rankings
Organic traffic

Social media marketing metrics

ROAS
Social sentiment
Web conversions
Social share of voice
Cost per click
Net Promoter Score or NPS
Click-through rate
Customer satisfaction score
Video completion rate
Cost per thousand impressions or CPM
Social shares
Cost per click
Reactions and likes
Retweets
Comments
Conversion rate
Post engagement rate
Brand mentions
Audience growth rate
Audience sentiment
Video views
Website traffic
Impressions
Social media referral traffic
Reach
Conversions
Virality rate
Reviews
Amplification rate

Traditional marketing tips

I know I said you can’t measure traditional marketing campaign success the same way you can with digital campaigns, but you have a few tricks up your sleeve you can employ.

For example, post pop-up surveys on your website or try a widget survey to solicit feedback from first-time and returning website visitors. Alternatively, you can add your website link or a QR code to your technical marketing materials so users can visit your website.

Call tracking is yet another good measure. Your sales reps could quiz the caller on how they discovered your business.

5 Examples of Successful Marketing Campaigns

Marketing campaigns are a dollar a dozen, but it takes a truly special one to stick in people’s heads, especially years later.

I know these are big shoes to fill, but I want to share some of the most impactful campaigns from over the years to help you see that the sky’s the limit regarding marketing.

1. It Has to Be Heinz

There are so many ketchup brands, but Heinz is synonymous with ketchup. That’s why the brand has made its trademark “It Has to be Heinz.”

The commercial above shows how far people will go for their Heinz ketchup, including carrying small packets under their clothes for a night out to dinner and getting the classic glass Heinz bottle tattooed on them.

There’s also this fun quiz to see how obsessed you are with Heinz. The smart thing is that Heinz asks for your email address at the end of the quiz to get your results.

2. Snoop Dogg and Solo Stove

This was a recent ad that I remember, and it got a lot of people talking, myself included.

In case you’re not up to date on your ‘90s hip-hop culture, Snoop Dogg has always been known for smoking marijuana. Therefore, when he began posting that he was “giving up the smoke,” people became rightfully concerned.

I remember chatting about the ad with others, too, because who would Snoop be at that point?

A while later, the full campaign revealed that Snoop was giving up the smoke because he partnered with Solo Stove, a fire pit that reduces the amount of smoke generated.

This was such a clever marketing campaign! It proves you don’t have to go over the top to be effective.

3. Buy the World a Coke

Yep, I’m throwing it way back here, but in 1971, a Coca-Cola commercial hit the airwaves with an emotive song called “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke.” The commercial debuted during Coke’s “It’s the Real Thing” marketing period.

This ad predates “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing in Perfect Harmony,” which was inspired by the song. There’s a reason that people still talk about this marketing campaign all these decades later.

4. Got Milk?

This expansive marketing campaign was featured in publications and on television commercials everywhere. It was bolstered by celebrities holding glasses or jugs of milk and proudly showing their milk mustaches, as shown below.

Got Milk ad featuring Stone Cold Steve Austin — *Image courtesy of Reddit*

The point of the marketing campaign was to promote the health benefits of drinking milk by showing athletes, actors, singers, and heck, even Batman, at one point, all sipping it.

The California Milk Board debuted the ads, credited to Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in 1993. Later, in 1995, the National Milk Industry jumped on board.

The marketing campaign kept up for 20 years, which is crazy!

5. Shot on iPhone

Another long-running campaign is Shot on iPhone by Apple. These short- and long-form videos showcase what iPhones are capable of. Many ads have appeared on television, and they go back years.

You can check out the full YouTube playlist here.

How to Leverage Technology and Innovation in Your Marketing Campaigns

The forward march of technology is always interesting for a business owner/marketer, as you can see innovation play out in real-time.

The following tech trends are worth more than paying attention to but implementing them into your campaigns.

Forward-thinking social media

TikTok is one of the biggest social platforms on the market. It doesn’t quite have the same reach as Facebook, which is still the social media king, but it’s quickly catching up. It turns out that people can’t get enough of the short-form videos on the platform, which has led to TikTok growing huge.

Building a TikTok presence is in your business’s best interest. Fortunately, EngageBay has a guide full of innovative video ideas you should check out here.

Machine learning and AI

AI is leading the digital revolution. Today, machine learning capabilities enable AI to learn just about any marketing exercise you wish for it to perform. It can segment your audience, help you brainstorm ideas, write email copy, produce social media captions, handle copywriting, generate images, and make videos…it has a lot of appeal.

AI is like a shiny new toy right now. It has great potential, but remember that your audience still values the human element above all else.

Voice search

With an estimated 8.4 billion voice assistants sold by the end of this year, the days of saying “Hey, Siri” or “Hey, Alexa” are here to stay. This means changing tact when it comes to your SEO marketing.

You need to research long-tail conversational keywords and massage them naturally into your content like any other long-tail term.

Augmented Reality (AR)

Another major element of effective marketing technology is augmented reality or AR, especially if your business is online-based. You can help your audience familiarize themselves with a product by trying it on “virtually,” which can hasten purchasing decisions and minimize the risk of returns.

Challenges and Solutions

Does marketing get easier the more you do it? In some ways, yes, but in others, no, because the market is always in flux. But here’s a bit of good news. Whatever challenges you run into can be solved, so let’s discuss how.

Overspending

Marketing budgets exist for one reason: to be abided by. However, I recognize that that’s sometimes easier said than done. You might need to expand or change your original marketing plan or pivot, which means spending more money.

While it’s okay to go over budget once or twice if your campaigns perform well, if you’re still in the formative stages where you’re gaining your footing, it behooves you to stay within your budget. It exists for a reason: to maximize your ROI.

Fortunately, there is no shortage of business budgeting tools to help you stay within the required parameters, such as QuickBooks, Coupa, and Tidemark.

Changing consumer behaviors

This one is inevitable. As time passes, consumers will have different needs and preferences, and it’s not always easy to guess what they’ll be. AI can predict your customer’s next moves using historical data, which I think is a good starting point.

Otherwise, you must stay abreast of changes in your industry and how your audience reacts to them, then be ready to respond accordingly.

Measuring metrics (especially ROI)

It’s easy for beginner marketers to fall into the trap of measuring metrics incorrectly or focusing on the wrong ones. With today’s marketing technology, you can request reports on the KPIs you want to see most.

Review the above list of the top metrics for social media, email, and content marketing campaigns to see what to prioritize.

Standing out in a competitive market

As an increasing number of businesses across all industries and niches realize the value of marketing, your competition will only increase. Even if a few direct competitors fall back or cease operations, others will fill in their place and then some.

You need to be in tune with your brand to stand out. You’re the only one with your story, so use that to your advantage, harnessing your unique elements and connection to your target market to differentiate yourself from the competition.

Conclusion

A well-planned and executed marketing campaign is one of the most substantial assets in your business growth. You must be ready to innovate and continuously adopt strategies in response to market feedback and technological advancements.

You, too, could have one of the most memorable marketing moments in history.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. How do I determine the right budget for my marketing campaign?

You need to start with your income above all else, then calculate a percentage (based on whether you’re a B2B or B2C business) to put toward your marketing budget.

2. What are the most cost-effective platforms for digital marketing today?

One platform that stands out for its digital marketing expertise and affordability is EngageBay. You can use its CRM for free, and it also has a Free plan that’s never more than $0. The rest of the plans are geared toward startups and cost little compared to the competition.

3. How can I ensure my marketing campaign is aligned with my brand values?

Put together brand guidelines, then compare your marketing materials against them. If you feel like there’s a misalignment, finetune your marketing message until it slots into what you want your brand to represent.

4. What metrics should I track to measure the success of my marketing campaign?

Boiling it down to just a few, pay attention to your ROI, ROAS, open rate, click-through rate, sales, and conversions.