The Ultimate Guide To Creating Marketing Campaigns

Can anyone forget Nike’s ‘Just Do It’ campaign? That’s very not likely. What about Airtel’s ‘Meet The In-Laws’ campaign? We could mention more successful marketing campaign examples, and one thing will remain the same; they all leave lasting impressions. Why is this? The answer is simple. Marketing campaigns greatly impact a brand’s identity, personality, and […]

Can anyone forget Nike’s ‘Just Do It’ campaign?

That’s very not likely. 

What about Airtel’s ‘Meet The In-Laws’ campaign?

We could mention more successful marketing campaign examples, and one thing will remain the same; they all leave lasting impressions. Why is this? The answer is simple. Marketing campaigns greatly impact a brand’s identity, personality, and success.  

No matter the size of your business, a good campaign can make a good impression on your brand. However, if not planned strategically, a marketing campaign can be the worst thing for a brand. This post covers everything on marketing campaigns for small businesses including the steps to launch a successful one.

What is a Marketing Campaign?

Marketing campaigns are essential to control the public’s perception of your brand. If carried out well, your campaign can help;

  • Increase customer loyalty, 
  • Boost sales,  and 
  • Increase profits. 

A marketing campaign is a collection of coordinated strategies and actions designed to meet a company’s specific goal. The goal of your marketing campaigns for 2022  may include creating awareness of a new product, capturing more customers, increasing conversion, etc.

There are different forms of marketing campaigns including television advertising, email marketing, social media marketing, and so on. A marketing campaign can be a combination of different channel types depending on the desired goal and outcome.

Why Are Marketing Campaigns for Small Businesses Important?

You are selling to people, which means you need a strategy to attract them. How do you do this? Launching a marketing campaign! 

Marketing campaigns help with the success of every brand. A marketing campaign is a great tool to build brand recognition and foster connection with your target audience as a small business owner.


Let’s play a game; 

Think of the most popular and successful brands you know.

Do they invest in campaigns? The answer is most likely yes. No matter how good your product or brand is, it is best to expose people to your brand. What better way to familiarize people with your brand than a great marketing campaign? 

Creative marketing campaign ideas have helped brands;

  • Foster brand awareness and establish a solid brand image.
  • Generate new customers and reduce customer churn.
  • Increase sales and revenues.
  • Improve customers engagement.

Types of Marketing Campaigns

Marketing campaigns are of different types based on the campaign’s goal or the channel used. All marketing campaign examples will fall into one or more of the following types: 

1. Content Marketing Campaign

Content marketing involves attracting and educating customers via quality content like articles, videos, images, and other media. Content marketing aims to establish expertise as a thought leader and build a strong relationship with customers.  

High-quality content marketing campaigns also keep customers engaged and keep your brand on their minds which helps to increase sales. Ahrefs is an example of a company that stands out for its educational content marketing. This software company creates How-To guides that address their target audience’s challenges.

2. Brand Awareness Campaign 

Brand awareness campaigns help introduce a brand and what they stand for to the public. It increases awareness and recognition of a brand, indirectly impacting sales. For example, brands can remind the audience to ‘share a coke’ or ‘think different’ or be the change the world wants to see. Marketing campaign ideas centred on brand awareness help evoke emotions, which helps people form a  connection with the brand. 

3.  Social Media Campaign 

Social media campaigns are one of the best digital marketing campaigns in 2022. Whether it’s trending hashtags, holding contests, or paying for ads, social media helps reach a vast audience.

Social media campaigns involve reaching target audiences through social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Some of the best marketing campaigns in 2021 were on social media. NatGeo, for example, launched a #ThinkBeforeYouLike social media campaign to educate people on cheetah exploitation. The brand encouraged people to think twice before liking photos of people with pet cheetahs.

4. Email Marketing Campaign

Email marketing campaigns are marketing content distributed via emails. Like other marketing campaigns examples, emails help nurture leads, create awareness and generate traffic. 

An email marketing campaign can be:

  • Promotional: e.g., cold emails, offers, and sales.
  • Relational: e.g., newsletters, cold emails.
  • Transactional emails: e.g., subscriber confirmations, welcome messages, cart abandonment emails.

5. Product Marketing Campaigns

Product marketing is one of the best marketing campaigns for small businesses. This type of marketing aims to create awareness of a new product or service.  

A product marketing campaign is best when a company wants to introduce a (new) product to the market. This helps create awareness about that product which in turn impacts sales.  For example, Apple launches a product marketing campaign for every iPhone release. 

6. Customer Acquisition Marketing Campaign 

Customer-acquisition marketing campaign, also known as a sales marketing campaign, helps brands impact sales. This campaign aims to grow the customer base and increase sales. Examples include; Limited Time Offer, Black Fridays Offer, Discounts, Free Shipping, etc.  Most sales marketing campaign examples,  have CTAs like Order Now or View Website to create a sense of urgency. 

7. User-Generated Content (UGC) Campaign

User-generated content are posts your customers share to show their love or support for your brands and products. In this case, your customers are the ones creating content for you. Great, right? User-generated campaigns are so powerful because many consumers tend to trust word-of-mouth marketing more than marketing that comes from brands.

Some of the best marketing campaigns for small businesses are UGC, like branded hashtags, video contests, and reviews/testimonials. A great example of a successful UGC campaign is Netflix’s #StrangerThings which helped promote the Stranger Things series. This hashtag challenge involved people posting pictures/videos of stranger things in their daily lives. 

7 Steps For Running a Successful Marketing Campaign 

Some of the marketing campaigns that failed either didn’t plan well for the campaign or skipped a step during planning. Therefore you need to identify and follow the necessary steps for an outstanding campaign. Below are the steps to create a successful marketing campaign for your business and boost your revenue goals. 

Step 1: Determine Your Goals 

What do you want to achieve with this campaign? First and foremost, you need to know the goal of your campaign. This is important because it determines what form your campaign will take and helps measure your campaign success. Knowing your goals will also help you identify creative marketing campaign ideas that can meet your desired outcome. 

Also, your goal should be SMART (i.e. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Timely). Say your goal is to create awareness of a new product. A SMART goal would be;

 “To sell 1000 pieces of the new product to new and old customers through an email and social media campaign by September 2022.”

Write out your SMART goals and how you will measure them. Also, make sure you tailor your goals to the needs of your business.

Step 2: Build Your Buyer Persona

Before proceeding with any marketing campaign, you need to know who you are marketing to. A good marketing campaign always takes into account the buyer’s persona. For instance, how you market to veterans will be different from how you market to nursing mothers or youths. 

Knowing your audience will help you create a campaign that suits the profile of your target audience, which in turn improves interest and response rate. There are three key customers insights you need to improve your marketing strategy in 2022;

  • Demographics:

This describes the characteristics of your audience, such as their age, gender, location, marital status, work, earnings, and so on.

  • Psychographics:

This describes the interest of your target audience. It answers questions like ‘Do they love football?’ Enjoy travelling? 

  • Behavioural:

This has to do with the behaviour of your target audience. What do they spend money on the most? Where do they prefer to purchase? Do they use social media often

Step 3: Identify Suitable Marketing Channels

The key to effective marketing campaigns 2022 is to identify the suitable distribution channel for your idea. Where will you launch the campaign? What channel is most ideal for your messages? 

Start by listing the most suitable marketing channels for your goal. If you understand your goal and your audience, this stage should be easy. For example, if surveys or customer data say your audience prefers print advertising to social media. In this case, going for a social media campaign may be a recipe for failure.

Another excellent marketing strategy 2022 is to select a channel that suits your brand and product. If you sell mostly on Instagram, running paid ads on Instagram will be more suitable than running Google ads. For this reason, always do your research to figure out the channels that are likely to bring better ROI.

Some major marketing channels include:

  • Social media: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, etc
  • Paid Ads: Search Engine Marketing, social media advertising, Google
  • Traditional advertising: TV, radio, billboard, flyers
  • Email Marketing 
  • SEO
  • Content marketing

Step 4: Create a Marketing Budget

Another common thing with marketing campaigns that failed is not having enough budget. You can avoid this by creating a budget to determine how much you have to spend on your campaigns.  Your chosen channel and specific goals will greatly determine your budget. Say your goal is to sell 1000 products. In this case, you will spend more than if you wanted just 100 products sold. 

Also, you should always set a budget based on your current capital. You don’t want to spend more money and resources than your business can handle. There are many low-cost marketing ideas for small businesses, so you’ll always find something that suits your current business size. 

Once you have a budget for the entire campaign, you will also need to allocate specific amounts to each channel. For example, if your entire budget is N20,000 and you plan to campaign through social media, paid ads and content creation, and email. A budget allocation can go like this:

Social Media: N7000

Paid Ads: N5000

Content Creation: N8000

Step 5: Decide Your Campaign Content Format

Now that you know your goals, audience and budget, you need to decide what kind of content you want to create. This is the fun part, but it can also be overwhelming because there are millions of marketing campaign examples. How do you create something unique and engaging? You should consider seeking inspiration from previous campaigns and work with the appropriate team to develop ideas. 

Here are some marketing ideas you can try out:

  • Create a user-generated content campaign 
  • Generate traffic with contests or giveaways 
  • Collaborate with influencers for increased brand awareness 
  • Create an educational or inspiring campaign 

Step 6: Launch Your Campaign 

Now that you have worked on content and chosen a channel, it’s time to launch your campaign! Two tips worth learning from the  best marketing campaigns in 2021 are;

  • Launch your campaign on multiple channels
  • Promote your campaign

Step 7: Don’t Forget To Monitor Your Campaign

Your marketing campaign doesn’t stop after creating content and launching a campaign. It’s essential to know how customers respond to it and measure how it’s helping you meet your set goals.

Some of the KPIs and metrics to measure your campaign performance include:

  • Likes and Clicks
  • Views (videos)
  • Traffic
  • Impression 
  • Reach
  • Sales etc

Successful Marketing Campaign Examples 

Looking for marketing campaigns to inspire you? 

Here are 5: 

  • Nike: Just Do It Campaign

Nike first introduced the Just Do It campaign in 1988, and it remains one of the most successful campaigns of all time. In 2018, Nike relaunched the campaign to highlight athletes who work hard and go beyond winning. 

  • Dove: The “Campaign for Real Beauty” Campaign

In 2004 after statistics showed that only 5% of women think they are beautiful, Dove launched the real beauty campaign. Dove also opened a website where women from all walks of life could share their pictures and experiences with beauty. Of course, it generated a lot of conversation and engagement. 

  • Coca Cola – Share a Coke Campaign

Looking for b2b marketing ideas for small businesses? You should consider building your campaign around a powerful theme like the Share a Coke campaign.  One of the foremost brands, Coca-Cola, launched a campaign where they printed people’s names on bottles of coke. The campaign was successful as people from different parts of the world started sharing photos of their personalised coke bottles. 

  • Airtel – Meet The In-Laws Campaign 

In 2019, Airtel Nigeria launched a television campaign to increase their 4G internet services awareness. The ad was a combination of humour, music, and the realities of a ‘typical’ Nigerian family. Learning from this campaign, some effective marketing ideas for startups include: 

  • Humour
  • Relatability 

 

  • Indomie – “You Like No Other” Campaign

In 2016, Indomie, launched the You Like No Other campaign to celebrate the uniqueness of different individuals. The Noodles brand released customised packs of noodles with taglines like, ‘Blogger like no other,’ ‘Footballer like no other,’ ‘Singer like no other,’ etc. 

While you may not have the same budget as these brands, you can always create successful marketing campaigns for small businesses. With the wealth of digital marketing tools available, businesses of all sizes can launch a successful campaign. Here are a few marketing ideas for star things to keep in mind when creating your next marketing campaign content:

  • Craft a powerful message
  • Make it memorable 
  • Keep it simple

 

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