Think about any awesome new brand, product, or service you discovered. Chances are, you can trace your awareness back to some sort of marketing campaign.
Whether you saw an ad on social media, read a promotional email in your inbox, or even got a recommendation from a friend, an effective marketing campaign is ultimately at the root of your eventual purchase.
But when these marketing strategies are responsible for piquing interest, building recognition, and converting customers, marketing campaign management can feel like a big and complicated job.
It requires diligent planning, timely execution, and a ton of knowledge and insight into the audience you're reaching out to. Marketing campaign management also normally requires a team of marketers, depending on how big the campaign actually is, as well as a detailed marketing campaign calendar.
So, how can you successfully plan, execute, and manage marketing campaigns that do your brand justice? Let's dig into everything you need to know about marketing campaign management.
What is campaign management?
Campaign management is planning, executing, tracking, and analyzing a marketing initiative, sometimes centered on a new product launch or event.
Campaigns normally involve multiple pushes to potential buyers through email, social media, surveys, print materials, giveaways, and other resources, all focusing on a similar topic or idea.
Marketing campaigns are launched to get potential buyers thinking about a specific problem that can be solved using your product or service. These campaigns are crucial to engaging your audience and raising market awareness around your brand.
In order to master multi-channel campaign management, you need to understand what your audience is interested in. What problems are they trying to solve? What does their daily routine look like? What would catch their attention? These are the basics of building a marketing campaign that leads to conversions.
What does a marketing campaign manager do?
Marketing campaign management involves a lot of juggling — and that's where a marketing campaign manager comes into play.
The marketing campaign manager is the person who is responsible for planning and executing marketing campaigns. They'll oversee and schedule anything that's customer-facing, like copy, design, and audience segments.
The marketing campaign manager can't just create the campaign, though — they also need to measure and report on its effectiveness to ensure it meets the appropriate goals.
While marketing campaign managers have a lot on their plates, they don't go it alone. It's a highly collaborative role, and marketing campaign managers will often work with sales, sales ops, external agencies, and other members of the marketing team to craft and launch compelling campaigns.
As far as what skills you need in this type of position, there are no hard and fast rules. However, generally speaking, a marketing campaign manager is usually someone who has experience in email marketing and is familiar with CRM and digital marketing automation tools like Marketo, Eloqua, and Salesforce.
Types of marketing campaigns
You likely know by now that marketing is pretty broad, which means there are tons of different types of marketing campaigns that you could rely upon.
You could look at marketing campaigns based on their intent or purpose. For example, you could create specific campaigns to:
- Announce a new business
- Launch a new product or feature
- Capitalize on a certain event or season
- Share a rebrand or other announcement
- Highlight a contest or other initiative
All of those campaigns would use a mix of different marketing efforts and channels to achieve the marketing team's goal. Let's take a closer look at some of the most common types of marketing campaigns and what they entail.
Product marketing
What it's used for: Introducing, promoting, and selling a brand new product
If you have a fresh product to bring to market, you'll put together a product marketing campaign. This type of campaign uses a variety of methods and messaging to create a product's image, position it effectively in the market, and spread awareness, demand, and adoption by customers.
Email marketing
What it's used for: Marketing a brand or product using a series of emails
Looking specifically at marketing channels, email marketing continues to be a method that campaign managers rely heavily upon. When one Adobe survey found that people spend more than five hours per day checking their inbox, an email marketing campaign is a reliable place to get your message in front of customers.
Brand development marketing
What it's used for: Building and promoting a unique brand identity to rise above competitors
Marketers know that the best brands have distinct personalities. After all, the sassy and approachable vibe of Duluth Trading Company is much different from the sleek and tech-savvy identity of Apple.
Brand development marketing focuses on identifying and crafting a brand's overall image and personality and then actively marketing that to customers through a brand awareness campaign to build awareness, recognition, and loyalty.
Content marketing
What it's used for: Establishing and maintaining trust with existing customers and attracting new customers through search engine optimization (SEO)
We'll spare you the whole "content is king" cliché. But in all seriousness, content marketing ranks high on the list of marketing strategies for most campaign managers.
Content marketing involves creating content — that could be blog posts, ebooks, webinars, podcast episodes, emails, and more — that serves your ideal customers.
Both email marketing and social media marketing (which we'll cover next) fall under this umbrella, as those are both types of content.
Social media marketing
What it's used for: Connecting with an audience in a more balanced relationship
Unlike other marketing efforts that involve shouting your messages at customers, a social media marketing campaign can be far more relationship-focused. While you can share content with your audience, they can also interact with you through reactions, comments, and messages.
As social media has continued to gain traction and popularity, it's become a non-negotiable for marketers. While you don't need to be everywhere, you do need to maintain an active presence on the platforms your target audience uses.
In fact, nearly 92% of U.S. marketers in companies larger than 100 employees were expected to use social media for marketing purposes.
How to create a marketing campaign
Now that you've familiarized yourself with the different types of marketing campaigns, it's obvious that the possibilities are almost endless.
So, how do you actually pull together a compelling campaign that spreads the word about whatever it is you want to promote to potential customers? Here are some steps to take you from a big idea to a big impact.
Determine goals
First things first, you need to know what your finish line is. What are you ultimately trying to achieve with the marketing campaign you're putting together?
It's important to drill down and get as specific as possible here. Your first instinct might be to name a goal like "build brand awareness," but what does that really mean? How will you know if you're successful?
To set a goal that actually keeps you on the right track, try using the SMART goal framework That's an acronym to ensure your goals are:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
So, rather than simply stating you want to build brand awareness, you could set a goal like this: Increase traffic to our website by 35% by the end of the third quarter.
Define budget
It'd be nice to have endless dollars and resources to commit to your marketing campaigns, but that's never a reality. You'll need to operate within a specific budget.
If you already have some data about your previous paid campaigns, the costs of freelancers or agencies you used, and even your typical customer acquisition costs, that can be helpful as you work to pull together a more accurate budget.
Depending on the size of your company and team, you might want to have conversations with several other stakeholders and departments to make sure you have a realistic grasp on what you can expect to spend.
Once you know your overall budget, write it down. You'll want that number as you move through some of the other steps and stages.
Identify your audience
Now it's time to figure out who specifically you're trying to reach with your marketing campaign. Who is your target audience?
If you already have some customer personas and audience research for your brand, lean on that as you figure out who you most need to target with your marketing efforts.
Your audience will vary based on what you're marketing and the goal of your campaign. For example, crafting a campaign that targets existing free users who you'd like to upgrade is far different from targeting people who have no familiarity with your brand or offering.
Pick channels
Equipped with your overall goal, budget, and audience, it's time to dig into the nitty-gritty of how to get the word out there. What marketing channels do you plan to use?
Keep in mind that you don't need to limit yourself here. In all likelihood, you'll use a combination of different channels to reach your target audience.
As you note the ones you want to leverage as part of your campaign, also jot down whether that channel will be paid, organic, or both. That's important as you keep a close eye on your budget.
Create content
With all of the groundwork in place, you're ready to actually create the various assets you'll use as part of your marketing campaign. There are tons of options here, including (but certainly not limited to):
- Blog posts
- eBooks
- Social media posts
- Emails
- Webinars
- Websites and landing pages
- Advertisements
As you create each piece of content, make sure to confirm that it contributes to your overall campaign goals, suits the audience you're trying to reach, and fits into your budget.
Measure success
Once your campaign is pushed out into the world, you can't just cross your fingers and hope for the best. You need to monitor your results to ensure you're moving in the right direction.
Frequently check in on your analytics and reports to see how your various marketing efforts are performing in comparison with your goals.
If your campaign is falling flat, it might be worth revisiting some of your plans to make some strategic adjustments and boost your effectiveness.
Features of good marketing campaign management tools
There's a lot to juggle when managing a marketing campaign — particularly a complex one that uses a lot of channels, teams, and resources.
Fortunately, the right campaign management tools can help take some stress out of the process.
You'll likely use a variety of tools to put together your campaign itself. Everything from design programs and social media schedulers to email marketing platforms and keyword analysis tools will have a place in your marketing campaigns.
But, when it comes to pulling that all together and staying organized, you'll want one seamless and centralized place where you can easily keep track of all of those moving pieces.
What should you look for in a marketing campaign management tool? Beyond the obvious work management features like assignments, deadlines, and workflows, keep an eye out for a solution that has:
- Asset management tools to reduce bottlenecks in proofing, approvals, and publishing
- Templates so you can avoid reinventing the wheel
- Customized request forms to streamline your work intake
- Reports that will give you insights across all of your channels
All of those will help you craft your most effective and compelling marketing campaigns — with much less stress.
Looking for a tool that has all those features (and more)? Check out Wrike for free today.
How to get started with Wrike's Marketing Campaign Management template
Wrike contains everything you need to manage marketing campaigns, especially with the Marketing Campaign Management template. Use the prebuilt template to break campaigns into phases, track campaign performance, and share ROI with stakeholders.
If you're looking for other Wrike features to streamline your campaigns, customizable request forms make it easy to manage incoming tasks, and workflows can be tailored to your team for status updates at a glance.
The campaign planning dashboard gives you 360-degree visibility into the project and can be shared quickly with team members and stakeholders.
Get started today with a free Wrike trial and guide your marketing campaigns to success.
