From Coca-Cola's "Open Happiness" and Dove's "Real Beauty", to non-profit organisations like Stop the Money Pipeline, successful marketing campaigns have a way of sticking with us long after an impression or purchase.
The reason is that effective campaigns make companies personable, relatable, and memorable. And the best ones do even more than achieve quantitative results and increase sales — they have the power to change consumer perceptions, drive change, and impact societies.
However, the question is: how do you create a successful marketing campaign, one that is innovative enough to leave a lasting impression and attract so many of your customers, and remarkable enough to drive sales long after the ad has aired?
While there is no one-size-fits-all method, there are a couple of criteria that the most successful marketing campaigns have in common. Here, we break it down.
Table of Contents
What is a Marketing Campaign?
Planning Your Marketing Campaign
Distributing Your Marketing Campaign
Converting Customers Through Your Marketing Campaign
What Marketing Campaign Metrics Should You Monitor?
What Makes a Marketing Campaign Successful?
Successful Marketing Campaign Examples
What is a Marketing Campaign?
Marketing campaigns promote products or services through different types of media, like television, radio, print, and digital platforms. They don't just rely on advertising and can also include live demonstrations, social media, and other methods to reach their target audience.
Marketing campaigns are crafted with different goals in mind, such as building brand awareness and a brand image, introducing a new product to the market, increasing sales of a product or service, or reducing the impact of negative news.
How you define the campaign's goal will usually determine the strategy you need to execute the campaign effectively, and what media channels you'll need to get the campaign in front of your audience's eyes.
Planning Your Marketing Campaign
Correct planning correctly will ensure you know how to measure campaign success and guide your marketing team to do more of what's working, and get back on track when it's not.
Ask yourself these questions to plan effectively for your next marketing campaign:
What is the main goal?
If you’re having trouble defining your campaign's purpose, start broad. Take a look at the marketing goals below and see which ones make sense for your own brand. Which one is most aligned with your own? This is hardly a definitive list, but it gives you an idea of some general business goals that a successful marketing campaign could help you achieve.
- Promote a new product or service
- Increase brand awareness
- Gather customer feedback or content
- Generate revenue
- Boost user engagement on social media
- Advertise an upcoming event
- Generate leads
Now, take your broad goal and turn it into a SMART goal: one that is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. An example of a broad goal is "My goal is to gather customer feedback or content on our brand."
To make that goal SMART, would sound something like: "The goal of my marketing campaign is to gather user-generated content from 100 customers from a branded hashtag on Instagram featuring our new product line by the 30th of June."
How will the campaign be measured?
Depending on the goals you've set out to achieve, your marketing campaign might be measured by the number of leads generated, the amount of sales revenue in a given month, or new followers you gain on a particular social media platform, for example.
Decide what milestones and metrics you want to track is important for gaining and keeping momentum, as they will be key indicators on the effectiveness of your campaign strategy and tactics.
Who are you targeting?
The first step to answering this question is figuring out what stage of the buyer’s journey your marketing campaign is targeting. Are you trying to bring in new customers, or are you attempting to gather feedback from existing customers? Are you marketing your brand to those who recognize it, or those who are currently unfamiliar?
Your marketing message and campaign strategy will vary depending on whether your campaign audience is in the awareness, consideration, or decision stage of the marketing funnel.
It’s important to note that a marketing campaign can include content 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.
Distributing Your Marketing Campaign
This is where you start considering when and where your intended audience will see your marketing campaign. As a marketer, you should already have a pretty good understanding of which channels you use for promotion and which of these channels work best.
But, if finding your ideal marketing channel is new to you, try using the PESO model as a guide, where the distribution channels are divided into Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned. Start by selecting two or three primary marketing channels for your campaign.
For example, you might want to promote your UGC Instagram campaign on Instagram, through an email newsletter, and on your website. You could also plan to use part of your budget to boost social media posts to encourage more views.
Determining a timeline
Putting a start and end-date on your campaign will give you a better sense of what's needed to execute a successful promotion strategy.
It is a good idea to create a campaign calendar, marking the start and end date. This will also help you plan the preparation of all necessary assets for launch of the campaign.
If you need some inspiration, take a look at our guide on how to create a social media calendar; it has insights and tips on how you can plan out your content successfully.
Converting Customers Through Your Marketing Campaign
Successful marketing campaigns are usually a connected series of operations designed to have a particular end result, or conversion.
How will you drive conversions?
Your marketing campaign needs a call to action (CTA) that you want your audience to engage with. CTAs are a direct ask of your audience that usually prompts visitors, leads, or consumers to take action, and you need to have this in your campaign if you want to see success.
CTAs give your audience a clear directive. And if they're tailored to your brand, you'll have a greater chance of cutting through the noise and inspiring a conversion.
Continuing the example of using UGC, your CTA would outline the direct ask ("Share a photo of yourself using our product") and include the benefit for the user if they chose to engage ("be entered to win a voucher").
Another way that you can drive conversions with a marketing campaign is through landing pages. These dedicated pages help your audience to learn more about what your campaign is all about, and generally help set your campaign apart from all the other content on your website.
Campaign landing pages typically include the benefits for your audience in taking part in your campaign, so highlight these and repeat your CTA so that your audience knows exactly what to do. Include a variety of marketing assets, like images or videos, to increase the conversion rate.
What Marketing Campaign Metrics Should You Monitor?
The more specific marketing metrics you monitor and report on depend on what type of campaign you are running and the distribution channels you've chosen, but in general you should try to keep track of: traffic generated, CTR, impressions, and ROI. And, of course, one of the most important KPIs is the campaigns impact on revenue, so be sure you have a way of measuring this in place.
Here are some other metrics that you can monitor for a holistic view:
Email marketing metrics
- Click-through rate
- Bounce rate
- Conversion rate
Paid media
- Click-through rate
- Conversion rate
- Cost per click
- Cost per-conversion
Organic metrics
- Social engagement (likes, shares, comments)
- Follows
Lead generation metrics
- Opt-in rate
- Cost per opt-in
- Follow-up email open rate
- Opt-in conversion rate
Not all of these metrics will be applicable to your campaign but it is worth monitoring the quantitative values to better assess the success of your campaign.
What Makes a Marketing Campaign Successful?
So, how will you know that your marketing campaign was a success? That will depend on whether or not your campaign was able to meet its initial SMART goal. If it did, you have success! This is one of the reasons why you set a campaign goal to begin with — so that you can ensure that the strategy you put in place helps you attain your goal.
Whether you wanted to increase your Instagram followers, grow your email subscriber base, or inspire 1,000 downloads of your ebook, when you meet these personal marketing goals that you set for your campaign, that is what makes it successful.
Successful Marketing Campaign Examples
Take a look through these examples of successful marketing campaigns to get ideas and see what success in marketing looks like!
Budweiser – Whassup Quarantine Version
When Budweiser brought back its infamous ‘Whassup’ catchphrase earlier in 2020, it was a remix of the original, only this time, it was the ‘Quarantine Version’ to coincide with what the world was experiencing. dated tech).
The marketing campaign was shared on social media platforms, with the hashtag "#Togetheratadistance" and the "#SavePubLife initiative" to help pubs that were forced to close due to social distancing regulations.
Burger King’s mouldy Whopper
In 2020, Burger King announced that they had removed artificial preservatives, colors, and flavors from their famous Whopper burger. To promote this, Burger King released their moldy Whopper marketing campaign. Shared in both photo and video formats, Burger King documented how much mould grew on one of their Whoppers over a 34-day period.
This marketing campaign, despite coming across as a rather unconventional method of marketing fast food, was a great example of how brands can capture the attention of their audience, as well as increase conversations around their brand.
Facebook’s Super Bowl commercial
For the first time, Facebook aired a commercial during the 2020 Super Bowl. The 60-second advert, called "Ready to Rock" promoted Facebook Groups and featured celebrity appearances such as actor Sylvester Stallone and comedian Chris Rock, as well as highlighting several “rock” themed Facebook Groups.
Not only did the advert receive positive responses for its play on words and including real members of the featured Facebook Groups, but it's a great example of ad targeting and using new platforms to help your brand reach a wider audience.
While marketing campaigns may involve a lot of information, strategizing, ideas, and monitoring, hopefully, this has given you a deeper look into how you can find success in running your own marketing campaigns.
For some added inspiration, see some of India's best marketing campaigns to learn a few tips on what it takes to be the best.
