Whatever you want to promote, if you want to expand your reach and stand out to your target customer or client, promotional marketing campaigns should be a regular occurrence on your calendar.
When planning any promotional campaign, the overarching goals are simple:
- Reach your intended audience
- Convey the appropriate message
- Convert your audience in a specific way
In this article, we’ll look at how to design a marketing campaign in 7 essential (and easy to follow) steps.
1. Assess your audience.
With any planning associated with your business, it’s vital to know who you are targeting.
Are you promoting to existing customers only? Are you trying to reach a new demographic? What age are they, where do they consume content?
2. Get S.M.A.R.T with your goals.
You may be familiar with this acronym by now, but S.M.A.R.T goals refer to objectives that are:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
Setting specific requirements for each section will allow you to remain on track (and on-brand), so avoid setting a vague goal of:
‘Sell lots of our new X product.’
And instead, opt for something like:
‘Achieve a minimum of 200 sales of X product during the two-week promotion period.’
3. What channels will you use?
These may include social media, newsletters, blog posts, website banners, and offline marketing tools such as printed materials, and should be determined based on your target audience.
Don’t be afraid to think outside the box if you want to stand out with your marketing campaign design. Can you reach out to PR agencies to secure coverage in relevant publications? Can you sponsor an event to leverage a new audience?
Write down as many avenues as you can think of, and then refine the direction that’s most suitable for your goals (and the capacity you have to produce the work needed).
4. Define your message.
The message of your promotional marketing campaigns should align with the values of your business, but focus on how you want your target audience to feel when they see your campaign.
Do you want them to be excited about your new product?
Educated and informed about your new service?
Do you want to stir up engagement with something more controversial?
Look back to your target audience, and how the message will correlate with whatever it is you’re promoting. Does it fit together?
5. Set your budgets.
How much do you want to (or more importantly, how much are you able to) spend on your promotional marketing campaign?
Consider all of the channels you want to target and the assets you need. Will you be giving away free products? Offering a discount? Do you need to outsource design work?
All of this will affect your ROI, so take every element into consideration. Can you realistically achieve everything to a high standard with that budget?
6. Plan your timetable.
Starting from your promotional marketing campaign launch date, work backwards to set your timescales and deliverable deadlines.
If you need additional support to get your design elements ready, Design Force’s subscription model can step in to lighten the load and help you deliver assets faster. Our team of world-class designers can be on hand in just one day, so if your timeline proves a tight turnaround, you can still hit your objectives with zero risk.
7. Take your plan and run with it!
Track the KPIs you determined in your S.M.A.R.T goal(s) along the way, and use your findings to steer the direction of your future campaigns.
You’ve done the planning, now get to the action!
With these 7 steps, you’ll be on track to deliver your best promotional campaign yet. Need more support? Get in touch with Design Force today.
