Marketing strategy has been a long-time business approach to selling a product or service. Its primary goal is to create a sustainable and successful business that connects with customers in real ways and continues to grow in real-time.

A good marketing strategy will help you realize your business goals and build a strong reputation for your brand. It usually involves you creating one or two ignited ideas to call awareness and sell your products or services.

In this article, I will share with you eight(8) Ultimate steps to developing a marketing strategy that will help you make the most of your marketing investment, keep your marketing focused, measure and improve your sales results.

#1 – Identify Your Business Goals

Identify your business goals enables you to precisely define a set of marketing goals needed for your marketing strategy.

Your business goals might include:

• increased sells
• increased brand awareness
• winning new customers etc.

No matter what your goals may be, it’s helpful to set your business goals as targeted as possible so you can effectively measure the outcomes against your achievements.

A simple criterion for goal-setting is the SMART method:

• Specific: state clearly what you want to achieve.
• Measurable – choose helpful metrics so you can measure your results better.
• Achievable – set goals that are within your capacity and budget
• Relevant – set goals that are relevant to your business dealings
• Time-bound – set goals that are achievable within the set time limits.

If you’re seeking high-quality goal-setting tips plus tactics for a successful marketing strategy from a proven firm, consider Harveyteck.

You’ll learn how to define and set achievable goals for your business, access the needs and motivation of employees at all levels, enhance your skills in both giving and receiving customer’s feedback, and learn how to effectively resolve workplace conflict.

#2 – State Your Marketing Goals

Its time to define a set of specific marketing goals based on the business goals you listed above. These goals will motivate you, your team and help you benchmark your overall business success.

Two key examples of marketing goals include:

• increased market penetration
• increased market development

These marketing goals might be short or long term and in most cases take a few years to successfully achieve. However, the bottom line is that there should be set time frames for achievement.

Make sure your marketing goals are practical, measurable and consistent – a good marketing goal should not be changed at will but revised when your marketing strategies have been completely achieved.

Also, you may need to amend your goals if there are observable market changes due to a new competitor or new technology, or if your products or services substantially change.

#3 – Research Your Market

Research is a key part of your marketing strategy. You need to put together relevant information about your market, such as its size, growth, social trends and demographics (population statistics such as age, gender, and family type).

Therefore, it is important to keep an eye on your market so you are aware of any changes over time so that your strategy remains relevant and targeted. You can develop strong marketing strategies based on what you find out about your products and services, your customers, your competitors, your industry and the challenges in your marketplace.

Most importantly, when you’re determining your pricing, you should have plenty of data to back up your decision. These may include industry reports, competitor ads, and comparisons that demonstrate the research you conducted and how you came to the conclusion in pricing your product or service correctly.

#4 – Profile Your Potential Customers

The idea of trying to sell something or offer services that solve 100% of the problems for 100% of the market is totally wrong.

Use your market research to develop a profile of the customers you are targeting. Your customer profile should not be too broad.

The profile will give you a description of a customer, or set of customers, which includes demographic, geographic, and psychographic characteristics, as well as buying patterns including how they buy, where they buy, when they buy and what they buy, creditworthiness, and purchase history.

Thus, you may end up solving a few problems for a few people. Again, review trends regularly so you don’t miss out on new opportunities or become irrelevant with your marketing strategy.

While you try to find new customers, make sure your marketing strategy also allows you to maintain relationships with your existing customers.

#5 – Profile Your Competitors

Similar to profiling your potential customers, as part of your marketing strategy, you should develop a profile of your competitors as well by identifying their products, supply chains, pricing, strengths, weaknesses, relationships with customers and marketing tactics.

These pieces of information can be obtained from many different sources starting with their website information, brochures, press, trade publications industry surveys, and annual reports about their capabilities, resources, and plans,

It will help you know your:

• competitive advantage – what sets your business apart from your competitors.
• strengths and weaknesses – what areas of your own internal processes need improvement for performance compared with your competitors.

However, different categorizations apply to different industries. These categories are often being defined during the profiling itself because the process helps to develop the best ideas of what is important and what is not.

See a list of the most common segments to use:

• Competitors with an identical product
• Competitors with similar products
• Competitors holding the major market share
• Competitors that also enters the market
• Competitors growing significantly
• Competitors slowing down significantly
• Competitors with higher or lower prices

#6 – Use The ‘7’ Ps of Marketing

If you can choose the right combination of marketing across the 7 Ps of marketing – product, price, promotion, place, people, process and physical evidence, your marketing strategy is more likely to be a success.

The 7 Ps:

• Product: This refers to what you are selling, including all of the features, advantages, and benefits that your customers can enjoy from buying your goods or services.
• Price: This refers to your pricing strategy for your products and services and how it will affect your customers. You should identify how much your customers are prepared to pay, how much mark-up you need to cater for overheads, your profit margins and payment methods, and other costs.
• Promotion: These are the activities you use to make your customers aware of your products and services, including advertising, sales tactics, promotions, and direct marketing. Generally, it is referred to as marketing tactics.
• Place: This is where your products and services are seen, made, sold or distributed. Access for customers to your products is key and it is important to be visible such that customers can find you easily.
• People: These refer to the staff and salespeople who work for your business, including yourself. Providing excellent customer service, you create a positive experience for your customers, and in doing so market your brand to them.
• Process: Process refers to the activities involved in delivering your products and services to the customer. It is also about being ‘easy to do business with’.
• Physical evidence: Physical evidence refers to everything your customers see when interacting with your business. These may include – the physical environment where you provide the product or service, the layout or interior design, your packaging, your branding, etc.

#7 – Develop Strategies To Support Your Marketing Goals

List your target markets and devise a set of strategies to attract your audience and retain them. As an example; your goal could be to increase the awareness of your products for young people.

Your corresponding strategies could be to increase your online social media presence by posting regularly about your product on social channels like Twitter and Facebook;  or even advertising in local magazines targeted to young people; and offering discounts as well.

This simply shows that your strategy supports your goals targeted to your audience.

However, whenever you analyze your business overall marketing efforts against your goals, it’s crucial to first take an inventory of the existing marketing assets.

This will help you provide helpful answers to these 3 questions in developing strategies to support your marketing goals:

• What’s currently contributing the greatest amount to top-line sales
• What’s currently contributing the most to profit margin
• What’s currently contributing the most to sales growth velocity (that is what segments of existing products and services are growing the fastest)

This is important to the overarching strategy for marketing the business considering that the data is already strongly pointing to certain key areas of your business goals.

#8 – Test Your Ideas

You will need to choose a number of strategies that will meet your customers’ needs, reach the customers within your target market and improve your sales results.

In deciding your strategy, do some online research, test some ideas and approaches on your customers and staff, then review what works.

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Marketing will keep evolving. The way marketers reach and engage with their customers has drastically changed, same as the way customers find businesses that satisfy their needs.

You’ve got your killer product or service ready, you’ve started your business and everything is moving as expected. You’ve set your goals, your staff has the requisite training and now all that’s left to do is to start growing profits and striking the goals.

But how exactly can you make that happen?

Only one way – Marketing magnetism; Attracting customers who are ready, willing and eager to pay. Marketing magnetism is a strategy to get customer/consumer and brands drawn together at the right time and place.

“Like a magnet, the customer and brand come together naturally because the mutual attraction is that strong,” – says Callari.

The picture above is a perfect example of a business with a classic marketing magnetism – pancake pantry. There is a line of customers every morning whether it’s raining or not, sunny or not.

Of a truth this is what every business aspires to have – customers that are so loyal and enthusiastic about your business. Ready and willing to stand in rain or sun to give their money.

This  is no magic. Marketing magnetism help you achieve this result. Attracting flood of customers to your business like a magnet.

Let me ask

What’s working right now to attract new clients, expose your value, get people talking, and differentiate your business? Do your clients know all that you do?

So stop running after business. Instead of running and focusing on sales results. Attract clients to your business. Give them what they’re attracted to, actively searching for or value most. They will be left with no option than giving their money in return.

You attract customers when they learnt that you understand them better. If your business is having trouble finding clients,  make it easier for clients to find your business.

Your brand is your secret weapon. It makes you stands out of others, not just because you are different from others, but HOW and WHY you’re different.

Let your customers Know the HOW and WHY you’re different from others.

In this article, we will take a deep dive into your marketing magnetism. You will learn how to brand your business that will make it magnetize customers quickly just like pancake pantry.

Our key focus is on:

Creating Value For Your Customer

Delivering value to customers is the reason any business exists. When your business provides products or services that give your customers an opportunity to accomplish their goals, they receive value.

When your business adds true value, customers are willing to pay for that value. They also come back for more, follow your company’s website, blogs and social media posts to stay informed, and even refer your business to people they know.

Value creates loyal customers that generate revenue which enables businesses to survive. By shifting your focus to providing value that focuses on your customers’ wants you start helping and stop selling.

Here are five steps to help you create great value for customers:

Step 1: Know What Drives Value For Your Customers

Step 2: Understand Your Value Proposition

Step 3: Customer’s Segmentation

Step 4: Create a Win-Win Price

Step 5: Focus on your most valuable customers

Step 1: Know What Drives Value For Your Customers

Today’s Customers have an overwhelming abundance of choice. They have high expectations (value) and little loyalty to spare if brands fail to meet them. It’s very much a buyer’s market than a seller’s market.

Knowing what drives value to your customer is the first step to your marketing magnetism.

If you provide enough value, then you earn the right to promote your company in order to recruit new customers. The key is to always provide value. – Guy Kawasaki

Customer Value is the level of satisfaction of your customer towards your business. It is a measure of what aproduct or service is worth to a customer against the possible alternatives.

Value for one customer may not be the same as another.

However, value, or perceived value, can change over the course of the customer’s journey. They’ll have some idea of the value you offer when they’re first introduced to your product or brand, and this will change once they begin to interact with you and your product or service, your people, and even other customers.

Talk to them, survey them, and watch their actions and reactions. In short, capture data to understand what is important to your customers and what opportunities you have to help them.

This is far easier than you can imagine. Your customers already know what interests them. They already have subconscious and conscious drivers. They already know the problems they have, and may even know the solutions they need.

You just need to understand what drives value for your customers. Good customer research including talking to them, taken surveys, and watching their actions and reactions, can help you discover what matters most to them.

In short, capture all data to understand what is important to your customers and what opportunities you have to help them.

This is important because the results of your efforts to create value are measured in the customers’ perception of that value.

Step 2: Understand Your Value Proposition

A value proposition is a statement that answers the ‘why’ someone should do business with you. It should convince a potential customer WHY you’re different from others and HOW your service or product will be of more value to them than similar offerings from your competition.

“Make something people want and sell that, or be someone people need and sell you.” – Ryan Lilly

The value customers receive is equal to the benefits of a product or service minus its costs. 

The big question:

• What value does your product or service create for them?
• What does it cost them–in terms of price plus any other added costs of ownership or usage (e.g., how much of their time do they have to devote to buying or using your product or service?)

Consider all the businesses out there offering exactly what you offer. With similar products  or services, customers have no choice but to make a subjective choice.

Your value proposition is where you win them over. You need to understand your value proposition so that you communicate what makes you different, and continually work harder to set yourself apart.

You can do that through:

• Identifying what you’re good at and owning it
• Make your value proposition clear in all your communications
• Ask customers why they buy from you, use feedback to boost your value proposition
• Quantify your value with real data
• Communicate the benefits of your service so customers can see the value

Squeezing all of your value into one proposition isn’t easy, which is why we’ve come up with a guide that you should follow before you cement your value proposition. {lead magnet]

Step 3: Customer’s Segmentation

Different customers will have varying perceptions of your value relative to your competitors, based on geographic proximity, for example, or a product attribute that one segment may find particularly attractive.

Rather than trying to shoehorn the same value proposition to your entire audience, identify what tickles different segments.

I mean segmenting your customers. Segmenting, at its most basic, is the separation of a group of customers with different needs into subgroups of customers with similar needs and preferences.

By doing this, you can better tailor and target your products and services to meet each segment’s needs. This isn’t, as McKinsey’s John Forsyth says, simply for marketing or retail firms.

“We see many, many companies saying, ‘I want to get more consumer-driven and customer-facing. But sometimes the organizations don’t know how to start. I’d say you really start with a basic understanding of your consumers or customers, right? And that’s segmentation.” – By Philip Kotler

Segment your audience based on what they value, and adjust your message to each. Value could vary based on season, geography, demographics or certain product attributes. What an adult considers as value, for example, can be completely different than that of a teenager. 

If you have a target market cut out for you, then all you have to do is get in the shoes of your customer, and figure out what’s a gesture they would appreciate.

Step 4: Create a Win-Win Price

Set a price that makes it clear that customers are receiving value but also maximizes your “take.” Satisfied customers that perceive a lot of value in your offering are usually willing to pay more, while unsatisfied customers will leave, even at a low price.

“The true test of character is to live win-win even when promoted to positions where win-lose is possible.” – Orrin Woodward

Using “cost-plus” pricing  (i.e., pricing at some fixed multiple of product costs) often results in giving away margin unnecessarily to some customers while losing incremental profits from others.

Step 5: Focus on your most valuable customers

Disproportionately allocate your sales force, marketing dollars, and R&D investments toward the customers and segments that you can best serve and will provide the greatest value in return. Also, allocate your growth capital toward new products and solutions that serve your best customers or can attract more customers that are similar to your best customers.

“As an entrepreneur, value creation will always be your first line of defense against business failure.” –  Gregory V. Diehl

Your customers are the lifeblood of your business. They are the source of current profits and the foundation of future growth. These steps will help you find more ways to grow your business by better serving your best customers.

 

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It is an undeniable fact that Customer is the most valuable asset to every business. Without them there will be no business existence. In fact, customer’s service is the integral part of a business sucess. 

Let me put it straight; Your customer is the Boss and not you. 

To that end, knowing what drives your customer’s paying actions is a key to your revenue growth.

In this article, I will be sharing with you 10 steps to your customer’s paying power which is pertinent to your revenue growth.

STEP 1: Listen To Customer’s Feedback

You are in business to service the needs of customers, and you can only achieve that better if you can figure out what your customer’s want are. One way to do this, is to listen to your customer’s feedback.

HundredX, a company that creates listening/feedback software for enterprise business clients conducted a survey on more than 500 business executives and found that 94% believed the following statement: “Listening to customer feedback is increasingly critical to the bottom line.”

Indeed, it is the fuel for your revenue growth.

When you truly listen to customers feedback, you’re well informed of what they want and provide good services that satisfy their wants.

However, it’s helpful to differentiate between a customer’s want and need.  A want is much more powerful than a need. if you sell to someones needs, they will always buy the lowest cost solutions that meets their needs. 

But when you sell to their wants, you will experience a rapid growth in sales.

But how can you do that?

Simple! Take the time to identify customer wants by asking questions and concentrates on what the customer is really saying.

Listen to their words, the tone of voice, body language, and most importantly, how they feel.

Nothing makes a customer more happier than feeling that thay are being heard. HundredX cites a report from Applied Marketing Science which found that customers who receive responses to their tweets are willing to spend 3-20% more on average-priced items.

Thus, a happy customer worth more than a satisfied consumer. So beware of making assumptions, thinking you intuitively know what  your customer wants when in reality you don’t.

Here are Some simple ways on how you can receive customer feedback:

• Following up with customers after a sale (email or phone call)
• Sending your customers surveys
• Having a comment or service level satisfactory machine at check out
• Offering customers 10% off their next purchase if they answer an online questionnaire about your business
• Asking customers that switched service providers what made them switch
• Having employees, managers and owners available and physically visible to personally talk to customers face-to-face

STEP 2: Identify And Anticipate Your Customer’s Wants

Did you know that customers don’t buy products or service? They buy emotional satisfaction and solutions to their wants. Most customer wants are emotional rather than logical.

No matter how good your product or service may be, the simple truth is that no one will buy it if they don’t want it or believe that they need it. And you won’t persuade anyone to buy what you’re offering unless you understand what it is that they really want.

The more you know your customers, the higher you chances to anticipating their wants.

So it’s well worth making the effort to find out:

Once you have these knowledge, you can use it to influence your customer paying power in their best interest.

STEP 3: Always Make Customers Feel Truly Valued

I guess you’re familiar with the three words: “Dear valued customers…” Those three words are often used to begin a notice or anouncement, expecially when businesses are about to deliver bad news.

Making your customers feel valued is so much more than the “Dear valued Customers” words on a piece of paper and should be done without impending bad news.

When customers feel valued, they become loyal  and always willing to take a paying action.

Here are a few ways to make your customer feel truly valued:

• Pay Attention To Your Customer Details

It’s important for any good business owner to try to get into the mind of potential customers. The only way to do that is to pay attention to  their details.

For example, if you are pharmacist, and a customer says they are allergic to a particular drug, it is your duty to ensure that your workers pays attention to the details that will keep that customer from having a potentially deadly reaction.

These are the details embedded in the service you are providing. Owners who fail to take customer’s details into account are actually setting up their business for failure.

You never want your customers to feel like they’ve been ignored! so start paying attention to you rcustomer’s details.

This attention to detail shows the customer that you are listening, and in turn, makes them feel truly valued.

• Use Their Name

Remember customers are human too. Everyone loves to be acknowledged, even in little ways. One thing you can do to make sure you treat your customers like real people, and not just robots with their names on your computer screen, is to Use their name.

Dale Carnegie once said “A person’s name is to him or her the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” and in the world of customer service, it couldn’t hold more truth.

You can use your customer’s name in a number of different ways. For example: Say the customer’s name immediately upon meeting them for an appionment, Begin each email by addressing the customer by name, and at the end of the transaction use their name while thanking them.

STEP 4: Good Body Language

While verbal and written communication play a good part in the corporate world, it’s crucial not to overlook the importance of body language.

Non-verbal communication like the way you hold yourself in a meeting, or your ability to commit to eye contact can either inpend or enhance the message you’re sending.

Always display a good body language towards your customer. And be sure that it conveys sincerity. Most importantly, let your words and action be congruent.

Body language in business, sets the pace for people to communicate with others on a more friendly and deeper level. From your facial expressions to your body movements.

According to studies from language and psychology experts, body language might even have a bigger impact on a conversation than the words that you choose.

Over 55% of all messages come from non-verbal cues like posture and gesture, and Studies show that people remember 10% of what they hear and 20% of what they read, but about 80 percent of what they see and do.

When it comes to using body language for business, here are some of the most critical characteristics that you can convey:

• Confidence: Throughout history, entrepreneurs and business leaders project confidence in the way that they hold themselves. Just look at Richard Branson of Virgin Media. He shows confidence wherever he goes with plenty of open body language and big smiles.

• Assertiveness: Assertiveness is a crucial part of body language in business communications. Whether you’re selling to consumers or trying to prove the value of a new business strategy to shareholders, it’s important to be assertive.

• Interest: Communication works best when everyone involved is interested in what the other person is saying. Showing an active interest in every conversation indicates professionalism, which is ideal for building better consumer and employer brands.

• Intelligence: Body language methods can even make people seem more intelligent. Nodding along and showing comprehension with complex topics, or schooling your face not to show confusion during a complicated situation can be an essential way to “save face” in business communications.
• Empathy: Just as it’s important to show your IQ with body language in business, it’s also valuable to demonstrate your “EQ” or emotional intelligence. Professionals who can decipher and respond to the emotional needs of their colleagues and customers have the best chance of thriving in today’s competitive marketplace.

STEP 5: Customers Understanding of Your System

There should be no power shift between your brand and customer. Help customers understand your system. 

Your business may have the world’s best systems for getting things done smartly, but if customers don’t understand them, they can get confused, and that can make you miss a great deal.

Take time to explain how your systems work and how they simplify transactions. Use simple and clear words.

Business that put their customer at the heart of their sytem or process will experience an increase in customer lifetime value and a reduction in churn. 

STEP 6: Don’t Neglect The Power of “YES”

If you own a business or work in an environment where customer satisfaction is paramount, you may be no stranger to the concept of the power of “yes.”

I had the pleasure of being on the receiving end of some exemplary “yes-thinking” action. I was so impressed by the lengths that my team went in order to deliver “yes” for my customers, that it inspired me to reflect on what I’ve learned about the  power of yes in my own business life.

No doubt, yes is a powerful word but if you’re unable to fulfil a request or you don’t think you can fulfil the request. Help them find an alternate remedy. Whether that remedy is your business or another, they will appreciate the extra mile you went to help them, and will recommend your business to their network.

Always look for ways to help your customers. When they have a request (as long as it is reasonable) tell them that you can do it. Figure out how afterward. Look for ways to make doing business with you easy. Always do what you say you promise.

STEP 7: Know How To Apologize

When something goes wrong, apologize. It’s easy, and customers like it. You already know how it goes:

“We apologize for the inconvenience.” “Sorry for the trouble, we are looking into this matter.” 

Apologies display empathy–something experts credit as a force that drives business forward. That could also help secure higher business deals and drive company growth.

You’ve heard that “the customer is always right.” Not everyone agrees. Well, i will say that Customer may not always be right, but must always win.

Pete Fader, Professor of Marketing at the University of Pennsylvania, shares why in his book Customer Centricity.

It’s not always easy to identify instances when your business is at fault compared to times when a customer’s demands are unfair..

Still, there is a time and place where apologizing is critical.

I mean instances where you’re responsible for poor customer or user experience. something that 55% of customers are willing to pay more for (if the experience is guaranteed).

Even the largest ecommerce website Amazon fell into such situation and apologize for delayed shipping.

So deal with problems immediately and let customers know what you have done. Make it simple for customers to understand. Value their complaints, it gives you an opportunity to improve. Even if customers are having a bad day, go out of your way to make them feel comfortable.

STEP 8: Give More Than Your Recieve

There is an old saying: It is better to give than to receive. And another old saying: The more you give, the more you get. 

These are both true in life, and you’ll agree with me that every part of life is business. Giving is better part of the customer experience.

Customers like to receive, and when they do they return the favor by spending their money with you. We call it “The Law of Reciprocity”.

Zig Ziglar, the late and great motivational speaker summed it up well when he said, “You will get all you want in life if you help other people get what they want.

The future of all companies lies in keeping customers happy, so think of ways to elevate yourself above the competition.

Consider the following:

• What can you give customers that they cannot get elsewhere?
• What can you do to follow-up and thank people even when they don’t buy?
• What can you give customers that is totally unexpected?

STEP 9: Get Feedback Regularly

Its a good practice to get feedbacks regularly. One way to achieve that is to encourage and welcome suggestions from customers on how you could improve you business for better customer experience.

There are several ways in which you can find out what customers think and feel about your services.

These are:

• Listen carefully to what they say.
• Check back regularly to see how things are going.
• Provide a method that invites constructive criticism, comments, and suggestions.

STEP 10: Treat Employees Well

​Did you know that Employees are your first customers and need a regular dose of appreciation.

Thank them and find ways to let them know how valuable they are to your business. Treat your employees with respect and chances are they will have a higher regard for customers. Appreciation stems from the top. Treating customers and employees well is equally important.

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In this complex business society, every business is seeking ways to icrease their customer size without having to grow their employee base.

But only a few is really getting the most out of it? while others are leaving money on the table.

As customers keeps evolving, so does the unpredictable business landscape.

Today, the best performing business (both B2B and B2C) use marketing automation to simplify their business processes and marketing actions. 

In this article, I will explain the real life benefits and application of marketing automation to help you decide if it’s the right service for you.

I know you’ve heard about it, you know plenty of marketers are infatuated with it, but at the end of the day you still ask:

What is Marketing Automation?

Even if you’ve heard the term marketing automation before, it may still sound like something from a futuristic Industrial Revolution.

Let’s define marketing automation:

Marketing Automation refers to software that enables you to carry out marketing hands-free, without continual manual labor.

According to Marketing Automation Best Practices, Econsultancy, is ‘a platform that supports the marketing process, enabling targeted communications that nurture leads until they are sales ready, better management back-end technology that enables better, faster, more relevant, more accountable

These tools can automate repetitive tasks such as sending emails, scheduling and publishing social media posts, setting follow-up reminders and sending promotional content to customers.

They can also be leveraged to assist with lead generation, relationship marketing, cross-selling, upselling and more.  

These may not be convincing enough because what you care about is return of investment (ROI), which is great. That’s why you are an outstanding business servant.

I agree 100% with your; but you’ll also agree with me that ROI balls down to your key marketing efforts and action. That is why marketing automation is so vital; it has a massive return on investment for your business.

Due to the overwhelming amount of responsibilities and tasks that marketing juggle, marketing automation has soared in popularity. According to Forrester researchers, marketers are projected to increase spending for marketing automation by 14% over the next five years.

It may suprise you to know that majority of business owners are resentful of marketing automation services.

A few of the reasons are as follows:

• They assume that marketing automation is an expensive tool
• They think creating content is taxing and hard
• They think configuring the campaign to their business model is too complex
• And finally (and probably most importantly) they don’t understand exactly how marketing automation works

Now let’s look at the:

Benefits of Marketing Automation

Every company is different, in terms of vision, goals, product/service and audience. No matter your focus, with a marketing automation software, you’ll have the potential to capitalize on numerous benefits like:

Save Time

One of the biggest benefits from automation is the time saved on repetitive task. With these systems in place, employees no longer need to spend time sending out emails, sharing social media posts at regular intervals, posting digital ads, sending out follow-ups or doing numerous other repetitive tasks.

The fewer hours you or your team spend on these repetitive task, the more hours you have to strategize, brainstorm, host client meetings.
With more free time, these employees can focus on the creative side of the job again and likely become more effective, productive and fulfilled workers.

This software also could improve your bottom line, as you may be able to cut down on staffing costs. While the software aims to empower marketers to be more effective, it may take the place of some junior-level employees. More importantly, if your employees are able to focus on more interesting work, you may see a decrease in costly turnover.

Optimize Your Marketing Processes

These tools are designed to enhance your existing marketing capabilities and improve your marketing strategy. This is not an exhaustive list, and full capabilities will depend on which solution you choose, but some of the ways automation improves the marketing process include:

• Continuously A/B testing content to see which performs better
• Storing all marketing collateral, interactions and details in one centralized location
• Allowing advanced and evolving segmentation of the target audience
• Creating hyper-personalized and ultra-targeted campaigns (without sacrificing automation)
• Managing pipeline from initial lead to conversion to up-sell
• Creating parameters for contacting and following up with leads across multiple channels
• Building robust customer profiles
• Collecting information about leads through forms and landing pages
• Nurturing leads through repurposed content

Think of the Coca-Cola Campaign: “Share a Coke”. It lets people give Coke bottles with people’s specific names on the labels. Like Bobby. Courtney. Dean and so on.

That one adjustment meant big money. According to this article, there was a 2% increase in soft-drink sales, growing consumption from 1.7 to a whopping 1.9 billion servings a day.

In fact, research from Pinpoint Marketing shows that using someone’s name in an email can increase the open rate by up to 35%!

Shorter Sales Cycle

Marketing automation drastically reduces the sales cycle, because unlike lead generation and pipeline management, marketing automation focuses primarily on converting leads into customers – rather than acquiring as many leads as possible.

Marketing automation bridges the gap between when a customer expresses an interest in your business and the time it takes for them to receive valuable content (like social media, an offer or an email) which encourages them to complete their purchase.

Marketing automation is not just for the marketing department. This technology can be incredibly useful for the sales team as well.

Based on the rules you set when you start using the software, the platform will assign each lead a score. Depending on the score, a lead can be listed as a marketing qualified lead or a sales qualified lead.

These scores and labels can influence which marketing campaigns or sales actions the potential customer will receive. This tool essentially takes the guessing out of lead scoring and keeps sales from wasting time on unqualified leads.

Marketing automation platforms can also send alerts when the lead is engaging with your business or brand. The alert tells the sales team when the prospect is most likely to convert or buy, so your rep can reach out then. It can greatly reduce the time and frustration wasted on failed cold calls.  

Improve analytics and reports

Marketing automatic gives your business access to behaviour metrics which you can then be used to fine-tune your entire marketing strategy. To put this into perspective, when a prospect enters their contact details through a form on your website, your marketing automation software will then begin to monitor that specific user every time they access your site. This data allows you to setup “actions” based on your choice of triggers. For example, if a particular customer is routinely looking at the TV section of your website, you can use then send that user an automatic email with the latest deals or content of your choice to increase your sales.

In short, marketing automation lets you gauge the interest of their prospects and their engagement, rather than waiting patiently for them to contact you. This means you can follow “hot leads” immediately as opposed to waiting and letting the opportunity slip away.

Most automation packages include advanced analytics and reporting, so you’ll be able to more effectively measure ROI (return on investment). The detailed attribution reports should be able to tell you how a campaign:

• Performed in various segments and channels
• Impacted KPIs (key performance indicators)
• Contributed to company revenue

Prior to the digital age, it was hard to measure which advertising and marketing campaigns influence customers’ decisions. Now, especially with automation, you have the answers in the software. These tools allow you to generate reports at multiple levels including contacts, custom event, company, revenue and ROI.

With this information, it’s easier to track the entire lifecycle of a campaign and make more informed strategic decisions.

Saves money and increase revenue

Despite the initial investment cost, marketing automation will save your business hundreds or even thousands of pounds in the long-run. With marketing automation, the days of logging into different accounts for different tasks is over! Marketing automation is like a master control panel giving you access to lead flow, customer dashboards / interactions, website metrics, customer engagement rates, emails and social media (and much more) all under one roof.

This will save your staff a great deal of time, allowing them to focus on different tasks in your business, as well as eliminating the risk of human error.

With better lead scoring, nurturing and conversion, customer relationship management, targeting and the ability to automate up-sells and cross-sells, automation technology can enhance a customer’s lifetime value. Sales cycles are also likely to get shorter, which means your sales staff could potentially increase the number of leads they convert every year.

These improvements can result in increased revenues – which can be specifically attributed to certain actions along the sales cycle thanks to automation tech – for your department and business.

Top 10 Marketing Automation Software Platforms For 2020

Now that we have established the key features of marketing automation platforms, let us dive into the ten most popular marketing automation software tools for 2020. We evaluate them based on their offerings, compatibility, pricing, and suitability.

1. HubSpot

Known as a leading growth platform, HubSpot gained fame for its inbound marketing campaign offerings. Founded in 2006, the tool has over 64,500 subscribers for its marketing hub, sales hub, and service hub, along with a powerful CRM. The company also hosts the HubSpot blog, which is a content goldmine for beginners to marketing as well as small marketing teams.

HubSpot offers advanced features such as landing pages and forms, dynamic content, SEO, social media automation, automated email responses, and detailed personalization of emails in addition to basic automation features. These features make the tool the right choice for startups and small- and medium-sized business (SMB) marketing teams.

HubSpot is also compatible with all leading CRMs and applications such as Salesforce, Gmail, Outlook, Slack, Zapier, etc.

Although the tool offers a lifetime free CRM version, advanced features range between $50 to $2400 per month. With the ‘customer comes first‘ approach and easy-to-use experience, HubSpot makes the list for the top 10 marketing automation tools to consider in 2020.

2. Maropost

G2 Research has named Maropost a leader in marketing automation and personalization software. Maropost is a Toronto-based marketing automation start-up that provides unified customer engagement solutions for brands and retailers in the B2C space.

The tool offers advanced features such as multi-channel customer engagement, machine learning and AI-powered recommendation machines, and e-commerce optimization platform. These features make the tool an ideal match for B2C conglomerates and retail brands, as well as the ever-competitive e-commerce business.

Maropost is highly scalable and offers API integrations on multiple platforms as well as custom integration for third-party tools. These factors push Maropost to one of the top spots in the list of marketing automation tools for 2020.

3. ActiveCampaigns

ActiveCampaigns is a leader in the small business marketing automation space. A go-to choice for small marketing teams, the tool has all the basic functionalities of an ideal marketing automation platform, with some advanced features. ActiveCampaigns serves more than 50,000 customers as of 2019 with its robust automation services.

The tool offers advanced features such as contacts and leads scoring, site and event tracking, dynamic content, SMS marketing, predictive sending, and a mobile application, in addition to basic automation features. Review sites and research experts have often reported ActiveCampaigns to be an ideal fit for small business and marketing teams.

The tool can be easily integrated with multiple platforms. The pricing for the tool ranges between $9 to $229 per month, making it a natural choice for startups not wanting to invest heavily in marketing automation. With its competitive pricing and readily available features, ActiveCampaigns will be on the top of the marketing automation platforms list of 2020.

4. Mailchimp

Every email marketing professional worth his salt is familiar with Mailchimp’s email marketing platform. But the email marketing giant is now heavily invested in marketing automation for small and medium-sized marketing teams. Renowned for its brand mascot Freddie, and an excellent user-experience with its witty call-to-actions, Mailchimp has become a favorite for content marketers wanting to promote their content efforts via marketing automation.

Mailchimp’s marketing automation suite offers advanced features such as creating HTML email templates, landing pages, Google remarketing ads, and Facebook and Instagram ads, A/B and multivariate testing, and standard and comparative reports.

Another reason for being popular among SMBs and startups is that Mailchimp offers free basic features. The paid features cost between $9.99 to $299 per month.

5. Act-On

Act-On is a marketing automation platform best suited for medium-sized businesses. It promises faster time-to-value along with best-in-class customer service. The tool is also recognized as a visionary in the 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant for CRM Lead Management.

Act-On offers an advanced feature called the Adaptive Journeys that customizes forms, channels, message scheduling, and lead scoring based on customer-specific preferences and behaviors. Its sub-features of inbound, outbound, and analytics help enhance landing pages, website engagement, social media, lead nurturing, lead scoring, customer segmentation, and reporting.

The tool is compatible with Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, SugarCRM, and Infor CRMs.

The price for Act-On ranges between $500 for onboarding to $900 for multiple users. Act-On is one of the marketing automation software tools in 2020 that is rightly suited for medium-sized businesses looking to enhance their marketing operations.

6. Keap (Infusionsoft)

Infusionsoft, now Keap, is an advanced marketing automation tool ideal for small businesses and freelancers. The product serves over 145,000 users across multiple industries with powerful campaign building solutions.

The tool offers advanced features such as capturing and tagging new leads, assigning tasks, and sending emails that nurture new leads. Highly rated for its outstanding service, Infusionsoft acts as an all-in-one CRM, sales, and marketing automation platform.

The tool provides easy integration with Gmail, Outlook, Shopify, Microsoft, WordPress, and many more platforms.

Infusionsoft offers a free trial period of 14 days, following which the price range starts from $99 and may differ according to custom plans.

7. Sendinblue

Sendinblue is an all-in-one digital marketing toolbox that provides relationship marketing solutions. With advanced features such as landing pages, Facebook ads, retargeting campaigns, complex automation workflows, and transactional emails, Sendinblue is an ideal fit for medium-sized businesses looking to expand their marketing functionalities.

The tool offers a free version for basic features and a paid version ranging from $25 to $173 for advanced features. Sendinblue is a close competitor of Mailchimp and offers similar features. Its advanced features and modern appeal make it a contender in the top ten marketing automation platforms of 2020.

8. Ontraport

Ontraport is a CRM and marketing automation tool that claims to manage all your marketing assets in one place. It is an ideal automation solution for entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and small businesses.

Ontraport boasts all basic features of a marketing automation platform, along with advanced features such as landing pages, forms, process automation, funnels, and journey-mapping. These features make the tool a natural choice for entrepreneurs looking to enhance their customer experience.

Ontrport also offers easy integration with Quickbooks, Xero-XOSync, and other applications. It comes with a free trial of 14 days. The basic plan starts from $79 and expands up to $470, based on features. If you are a small marketing team looking to explore the advanced features of marketing automation, Ontraport is the right choice for you in 2020.

9. Autopilot

Autopilot is a visual marketing automation software tool that provides seamless user-experience to marketers. The product offers multi-channel marketing solutions with a highly advanced visual experience.

The tool includes advanced automation features such as lead scoring, nurturing, marketing analytics, customer journey maps, and customer segmentation. It enables marketers to create highly personalized customer experiences that enhance lead generation.

With easy integration possible for popular applications such as Facebook, Salesforce, Google Ads, and Twilio, the tool is an excellent choice for integrated marketing campaigns.

Autopilot offers a 30-day free trial, following which the pricing ranges from $49 to $249 per month for advanced features. Scale up your marketing efforts in 2020 using this seamless automation engine.

10. Marketo

Marketo has become a popular brand in the marketing automation space in the recent past, and rightly so. The tool offers a powerful automation platform that focusses on account-based marketing.

The tool is well known for the simplicity of its basic features, and also offers advanced, complex features such as account insights and account profiling, digital ads, mobile marketing, revenue attribution, marketing analytics dashboard, and predictive content.

These advanced features make it a perfect match for the medium as well as enterprise businesses working with larger and complex datasets.

Acquired by Adobe in 2018, the pricing for Marketo starts at $895 per month.

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When running a business, marketing could be a difficult task. Off course, you’re focused on keeping your current customer’s happy so that they stick around and hopefully pass you referrals.

You enjoy the benefits of new clients finding you, usually because of their own efforts rather than yours.

Though it may have worked well for you until now, but it’s not a reliable or consistent approach to growing your business.

To attract new customers and make your business goals a reality, you’ll need to include marketing campaigns into your ongoing marketing strategy.

The term ‘marketing campaign’ are misused in several ways and many people don’t really understand what it entails.

If you are new to marketing campaign, it can be tough to understand all of the working parts. or if you’re already on it, you may still find it difficult to come up with an effective campaign that will produce the result you want.

However the case may be, an effective marketing campaign demands a great deal of time, patience and planning.

In this article, I will show you everything you need to design your marketing campaign and make it a success.

But before we jump into that, let’s first discuss the: 

Concept of Marketing Campaign

Marketing campaigns are organized, strategized efforts to promote a specific business goal, such as raising awareness of a new product, service or capturing customer feedback.

Marketing campaign could also be to communicate new or existing product or service to a targeted audience, to reinforce the brand promise and brand positioning, or acquire more customers to bring in more revenue to the organization.

It’s concepts are typically aim to reach consumers in a variety of ways and involve a combination of media, which  includes but not limited to email, print advertising, television or radio advertising, pay-per-click, and social media.

In simple words; a marketing campaign is a series of actions:

• that exists outside of your ongoing marketing tasks and meant to achieve a particular task.
• Has a budget (even if it’s a $0).
• Has a specific desired outcome.
• Starts and ends on a specific date.

As an example:

You’re trying to attract new clients in a particular business dealings, so you host a number of events such as advertising in the local paper, and ask existing customers for referrals. At the same time, you still continue your inbound marketing operation—running Facebook and Google Adwords ads, writing blog content, and so on.

If you’re skeptical whether you’re running a campaign, ask yourself;

“When am I beginning this project or activity, and when am I wrapping it up?”

If the answer is “now” and “never,” it’s an ongoing part of your marketing strategy, NOT a campaign.

But if the answer is something like, “january 2” and “August 11,” then you’re probably launching a campaign.

Similarly, most of the Nike advertisement you see or hear on your way to work are often not part of a marketing campaign but a prt of their marketing strategy.

But, when you see a Nike billboard, scroll past a Nike sponsored Instagram post, or receive a Nike email all promoting the same product. You’ve definitely witnessed a marketing campaign.

Now that you’ve known what marketing campaign is,

Lets dive into the steps to:

Planning Your Marketing Campaign

Planning is important to the effectiveness of your marketing campaign. It helps you determine how to measure your success and serves as a “Go-To” guide for you and your team when things are getting down.

Here are a few steps to come up with a successful marketing plan:

Step 1: Establish ‘SMART’ Goals

This is the very first step to begin with in your marketing campaign. Establish SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely) goals for best results.

SMART goals keep you accountable and provide you with concrete ideas of goals for which to aim. For example; the goal of your marketing campaign is to gain 10 new clients every month using “Facebook marketing” featuring your new product line.

This goal is SMART as it is specific (new customer), Measurable (10 new customers), Attainable (through Facebook marketing), Relevant (featuring your new product line.) and Timely ( Every month)

Take a look at the list of goals below and see which one aligns best with your own business goals?

• Promote a new product or service
• Increase brand awareness
• Gather customer feedback or content
• Generate revenue
• Boost user engagement
• Advertise an upcoming event
• Increase sales
• Increase customers
• Improve retention rate
• Improve percentage of repeat customers
• Get good publicity

The more specificity your goal is, the better your results. Not only is it easier to gauge success when you’ve got a clear-cut goal, it also helps you plan.

Goals can be based around sales, customer satisfaction or profits.

It may also be to gain at least 20 new clients a month or to sell 30 products per week, or to increase your revenue by 40 percent this year through Facebook marketing.

Step 2: Identify Your Target Audience

You’ve successfully establish your SMART goals. Now it’s time to identify your target audience.

First, figure out whom you’re targeting. Understand their general demographic and needs. This will help you craft a relevant, valuable, and memorable marketing campaign.

Here are a few things you may want to consider:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Income bracket
• Job title
• Education level
• Interests
• Biggest challenges

Next, figure out what stage of the buyer’s journey your campaign is targeting.

Your marketing message varies, depending on whether your campaign audience is in the Awareness, Consideration, or Decision stage.

Are you trying to bring in new customers, or are you attempting to gather feedback from existing clients? Are you marketing your brand to those who recognize it, or are you introducing a new brand identity altogether?

It’s also helpful to note that a marketing campaign can include collateral for people in various stages of their journey. For example, while your campaign might target current customers, it might also bring brand awareness to new consumers.

Here are some questions to ask yourself and your team to better understand your audience.

• What are my audience’s general interests? What magazines do they read? What TV shows do they watch? How do they spend their free time?
• Where does my audience hang out online? For what purpose do they use Instagram, Facebook, and other networks? Do they engage or merely browse?
• What kind of content gets my audience’s attention? Do they respond to straightforward sales messages, or would they rather consume witty, humorous content? What cultural references would they understand?
• What kind of problems do they have that my product, service, or brand could solve?

Step 3: Choose Metrics To Measure

Choosing metrics to measure your campaign will depend on your campaign goal.  Also, If your campaign involves multiple marketing efforts (such as social media, direct mail, and radio ads), it’s wise to define how you’ll measure your campaign on each channel.

Here are a few examples of metrics based on the campaign goals I mentioned above.

• For promoting a new product or service: Pre-orders, sales, upsells.
• For increasing brand awareness: Sentiment, social comments, press comments.
• For gathering customer feedback or content: Social comments, engagement.
• For generating revenue: Leads, sales, upsells
• For boosting user engagement: Blog shares, social shares, email interactions and engagement.
• For advertising an upcoming event: Ticket sales, vendor or entertainment bookings, social comments.

For example, let’s say I was running campaign (to gain 100 clients every month) on social media, email, and on our blog.

First, I’d define my key performance indicators (KPIs) for each medium, which may look like:

• Instagram engagements (likes and comments) and profile tags
• Email open rates and click-through rates
• Blog views, click-throughs, and social shares
• Then, I’d define my primary campaign KPI: Instagram branded hashtag.

While the above KPIs indicate how well my campaign is reaching and engaging my audience, my primary KPI tells me how close I am to reaching my SMART goal.

Step 4: Choose Your Marketing Channel

Marketing campaigns are like paintings: A simple one might include two color pallete, while a complex one might include 12.

In this metaphor, your promotion channels are your color pallete.

Typical channels include email, direct mail, radio, social media, TV, events, trade shows, online advertising, digital media, print media, and publicity.

However, your selection depends on two things: Your budget, and your answers from step #2 and #3.

As a small business, a TV commercial is probably out of your price range. Facebook ads, on the other hand, are affordable (as low as $1 per day) and cost-effective. Although it’s worth doing some research to see which other options are financially feasible.

Once you’ve prepared the list of channels, consider your audience. Most especially, know where they spend their time? 

An effective marketing campaign incorporates multiple channels to touch potential customers as many times and in as many possible ways.

Think about what type of marketing your campaign will use. This choice depends on your audience preference, budget, and brand engagement levels.

Take a look at the current media channels you use to promote your company. Identify which one perform the best? Which one allow you to pay for advertisements? Which one have the best engagement? Most importantly, where are your customers hanging out?

It probably wouldn’t be wise to publish your campaign on a brand new medium on which your business has no presence. So, stick to those marketing channels on which you’re already killing it.

Start by choosing two or three channels for your campaign. Remember that you’ll need to alter or expand your marketing assets to fit the media channels you choose. Your campaign images, video, and copy might vary between social media, email, print, etc.

Lastly, even if you choose not to actively promote on a certain medium, you can always optimize it to at least mention your campaign. For example, you can update your social media bios, change your email signature, install a website header notification bar, add small calls-to-action (keep reading for more on these) at the bottom of blog posts, and more.

These efforts don’t require much extra work or resources but they promote your campaign nonetheless.

Step 5: Choose Metrics To Mornitor

The effectiveness of your campaign depends on the metrics you’ve chosen to measure. Which also depends on what tyoe of marketing campaign you’re running and what channels chosen.

Here is a list of metrics to watch per marketing channel.

Email Metrics

• Click-through rate
• Bounce rate
• Conversion rate

Social Media (Paid) Metrics

• Click-through rate
• Conversion rate
• Cost per click
• Cost per-conversion

Social Media (Organic) Metrics

• Passive engagements (likes and shares)
• Active engagements (comments)
• Follows
• Click-through rate

Lead Magnet/Content Offer Metrics

• Opt-in rate
• Cost per opt-in
• Follow-up email open rate
• Opt-in conversion rate

Display Ads/Paid Media Metrics

• Cost per thousand impressions
• Click-through rate
• Conversion rate
• Cost per conversion

Direct Mail Metrics

• Response rate
• Cost per conversion
• Average revenue per conversion

Content/SEO Metrics

• Click-through rate
• Bounce rate
• Time on page
• Page scroll depth
• Conversion rate

This may seem like a lot of metrics (depending on your campaign), but keeping an eye on these numbers can help you assess your campaign accurately and better understand how to improve.

Step 6: Design a Compelling Content

This step is all about calibrating your marketing efforts and channels to lead your customers to complete your desired goal. This is done through conversion assets like calls-to-action, landing pages, and lead forms.

These assets can be used separately or in conjunction with one another, such as featuring a lead form on a landing page, or creating a call-to-action asking your audience to fill out a form.

No matter what form your content takes, the most important thing to keep in mind is your audience and the content assets through which you’ll be promoting them.

Lets look at some of  these content assets:

Calls-to-Action

Call-to-Action is an image, button, or message that guides visitors to take some action. It cut through the noise of today’s marketing and advertising world and give your audience a clear directive.

Your CTA should be specific and obvious to the people you are marketing to. It’s generally considered a marketing best practice to only include one CTA per campaign, in order to avoid confusing people or diluting your results.

But, there’s no one-size-fits-all for CTAs, especially in the case of marketing campaigns. Your campaign CTA can’t simply ask them to complete your goal. You must also consider how your audience would benefit from completing your action and include that in your CTA.

Your CTA can take many forms. If you’re creating a content marketing campaign, for example, you might choose to market a blog post or a video that encourages viewers to subscribe to your blog. In this case, your CTA would be subscribing to the blog.

If you’re implementing a direct mail marketing campaign, your content might be a postcard or flyer that asks recipients to redeem a discount. In this case, your CTA would be redeeming a code to receive a discount.

Landing Pages

A landing page is a web page that serves as the entry point for visitors who click on your banner ads or social media links. Landing pages are most frequently used to capture leads..

Landing pages give your campaign a home, a destination. They are a dedicated space for your audience to visit and learn more about what your campaign consists of and why they should participate. It also sets your campaign apart from the rest of your website and content.

Your landing page should be ripe with benefits for your audience, especially the unique value proposition (UVP) of your campaign. 

High-converting landing pages also contain social proof and a variety of marketing assets like images, strong copy, and video.

Lead Capture Forms

Lead forms or lead capture forms are web forms dedicated to capturing information about a visitor. By filling out the form, the visitor then turns into a lead. Lead forms are not necessary for all campaigns, but they can be great assets for most others, such as product pre-orders and content offer downloads.

A lead capture form helps you gather users data. The form contains a series of fields to collect information from users in exchange for an offer.

Lead forms transform anonymous website visitors into hard data you can use to make sales and learn more about your audience. They put your landing page to work. 

Step 7: Plan Your Campaign Calender

First, build a general campaign timeline. On a calendar, mark your campaign start date and deadline. This gives you parameters to work within.

Next, take a look at your marketing assets and chosen promotional marketing channels. Based on your people and financial resources, how often can you afford to post and promote your campaign content? Create a promotional calendar for each marketing channel.

Decide on the precedence for each channel and map out your scheduled posts, emails, etc. on your calendar.

Why should you map your campaign visually? It’ll help you evenly disperse your campaign promotions and publish equally on each medium. It’ll also give you an idea of where your time and energy is going so that you can look back when assessing the effectiveness of your campaign.

If your promotional calendar seems very, very full, don’t fret. Social media and email scheduling tools can alleviate the pressure of posting daily. Check out tools like HubSpot, Buffer, and MailChimp to help you schedule and manage your campaign promotions.

The promotional stage is all about getting your campaign in front of your audience. 

Step 8: Analyse Campaign Data

This step helps maximize your campaign’s business impact. When you analyze and apply your data, its value increases tenfold — not only did it help you measure and assess your campaign results, but it’ll also give you direction and clarity on your audience, marketing methods, creative prowess, and more.

Let’s look at Instagram campaign. Of course, images shared by your customers are helpful because they help you gather user content on social channels. But this “data” also provides insight into who your audience is, when and how often they post on Instagram and what language they use.

Lastly, spend time with your team reviewing your campaign. Ask yourselves questions like:

• What could’ve been done differently?
• How could we have saved money?
• For anything that went wrong, why do we think it went wrong?
• What did we learn about our audience or marketing channels?
• What kind of feedback could we gather from participants or customers?

Step 9: Set Your Campaign Budget

ou don’t want to come up with a great idea, work out the costs, and then realize it’s out of your financial reach. Setting a budget based on what you can afford helps you avoid this issue.

Not sure what you can afford? Calculate how much income you generate from an average customer, also referred to as customer lifetime value (CLTV).

There are a number of ways to calculate customer lifetime value, here’s one.

Once you’ve determined your CLTV, estimate how many customers a campaign could realistically bring in (don’t forget to account for how many new customers you can handle).

Step 10: Launch and Mornitor Your campaign

Next, take a look at your marketing assets and chosen promotional marketing channels. Based on your audience and financial resources, how often can you afford to post and promote your campaign content? Create a promotional calendar for each marketing channel. Decide on the precedence for each channel and map out your scheduled posts, emails, etc. on your calendar.

Why should you map your campaign visually? It’ll help you evenly disperse your campaign promotions and publish equally on each medium. It’ll also give you an idea of where your time and energy is going so that you can look back when assessing the effectiveness of your campaign.

If your promotional calendar seems very, very full, don’t fret. Social media and email scheduling tools can alleviate the pressure of posting daily. Check out tools like HubSpot, Buffer, and MailChimp to help you schedule and manage your campaign promotions.

The promotional stage is all about getting your campaign in front of your audience. But, how are you supposed to get your audience to follow the purpose of your campaign? Next, we’ll discuss how to optimize your campaign to convert customers.

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