Assuming you have your marketing strategy in place, it’s time to map out want each campaign looks like, so you know what assets you have available, the ones that need updating, and any you need to create from scratch.
Think about your campaign plan like a mini marketing strategy, only it’s laser focused on something specific, like a product, service, message, audience, segment, tactic (like case studies, SEO, or webinar series), customer pain point, or aspiration.
You’ll first need to define what success looks like, before planning your messaging, and determining how you will engage and convert your audience.
Let’s look at these 3 areas in more detail:
Defining what success looks like
Within a business, every goal needs to ultimately link back to the business objectives, to ensure that what you’re doing moves the strategic dials that enable to business to move forward.
Link your campaign plan back to your marketing strategy (and therefore the business strategy) and you know your efforts will have a big impact, and you’ll never risk making content for content’s sake.
For example, your business is likely to have an overall goal that relates to revenue. Within the marketing strategy, this will be reflected in the number of leads generated and/or conversions within the sales funnel. Filter that down into a specific campaign, and your measure of success could be number of signups for an event or number of downloads of a gated asset.
Pretty simple stuff!
Looking at your marketing strategy helps you to determine appropriate KPIs to track for your campaign success – but it also helps provide direction on how to successfully engage your audience.
Your marketing strategy will contain details about your audience personas, including buyers and influencers. Within your campaign plan, you take this information one stage further to consider what their mindset will be at each stage of the funnel.
For example:
| Top of the funnel | “Who are you?” “Help! I have a problem with X.” “I’m interested in X.” “What do I need to know about X.” “What makes you an authority?” |
| Middle of the funnel | “Can I trust you to do what you say you can do?” “What exactly can you do for me?” “What do I need to think about when considering X?” “Practical advice on how to do X.” “What does X look like in reality?” |
| Bottom of the funnel | “Is it really right for me?” “Why you?” “Why now?” “What happens next?” “What if I change my mind?” |
When you know what questions are front of mind in your audience, you know what you need to communicate, and can start thinking about how.
Planning your messaging
Next, you want to create your messaging framework. I’ve detailed my process in this article. But in essence, it needs to cover these 10 steps:
- Step 1: Market drivers
- Step 2: Business drivers
- Step 4: Vision, mission, values
- Step 5: Why?
- Step 6: The offering
- Step 7: Value to customers
- Step 8: Evidence
- Step 9: Nuts & bolts
- Step 10: Value propositions
When pulling your messaging framework together, refer to your marketing strategy and brand book to ensure your campaign messaging remains aligned and consistent with your brand.
Determining how to engage and convert your audience
Different types of content lend themselves to different stages of the funnel. To find out more, download your free sales cycle mapping content planner here…
At the top of the funnel, you’re looking to generate awareness to hook people in. Here, short, snappy content, like SEO-rich blogs, social, and email marketing, work well to communicate your key message(s) quickly.
Moving towards the middle of the funnel, we need to convert that initial awareness into interest and then desire (yes, I’m a big fan of the AIDA model!). Here, you want content to inform and educate the audience about your offering.
Finally, as we near the bottom of the funnel, we want the audience to take action. Here, your mission is to create content that makes the audience feel like they have no option but to click and convert – particularly when you’ve addressed any last-minute doubts or post-purchase fears.
In my 20 years’ experience creating and executing campaigns, I’ve learned some important lessons about smart campaign planning:
Start with a central meaty asset
Think white papers, eBooks, guides, and webinars. These assets are all highly valuable and can be gated because your audience is prepared to ‘pay’ for them by sharing their contact details.
Repurpose your content into other formats
Once you have your central asset, use it to create other supporting assets that drive traffic to it, like articles, infographics, social snippets, and email nurtures.
Perform a content audit
You’ll be surprised how much content you already have, which can be used ‘as-is’ or updated to serve a new purpose. Read more about content audits here…
Book your resource upfront
As soon as you know what content you need to create, book briefings with your subject matter experts, schedule your freelancers, and secure what you need from your suppliers, so you execute your campaign on time and to budget.
Don’t be afraid to stop and change direction
No campaign is ever set in stone. If something isn’t working, tweak and refine it. The great thing about being a marketer is the ability to experiment – so try something new!
Draw it out
It might just be the way my brain works, but I find physically drawing out the campaign with coloured pens and paper helps you to see how everything links together and supports each other.
Need some help planning your next campaign?
Email hello@alicehollis.co.uk
I’m more than happy to talk through your plans, come up with ideas, answer your questions – or even plan out your campaigns for you.
Alternatively, you can buy my buy my campaign plan template here…