{"id":45529,"date":"2021-02-03T10:00:22","date_gmt":"2021-02-03T03:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/act.com\/how-to-create-more-efficient-marketing-campaigns\/"},"modified":"2023-03-21T10:50:11","modified_gmt":"2023-03-21T17:50:11","slug":"how-to-create-more-efficient-marketing-campaigns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/products.act.com\/en-gb\/how-to-create-more-efficient-marketing-campaigns\/","title":{"rendered":"Revitalise Your Small Business Part 3: How to Create More Efficient Marketing Campaigns"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Creating and running a marketing campaign can feel like an overwhelming task, especially for small business owners who already have a lot on their plate. As we discussed in our Part 2 blog “Six free ways to drive traffic to your website”<\/a>, driving traffic to your website involves a mix of marketing activities you may already be doing, such as leveraging social media<\/a>, engaging your community, reviewing analytics, and more. If you\u2019re doing any or all of these things, congratulations! You\u2019re already laying the foundation of a successful marketing strategy.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Here are some key ways to further refine and simplify your approach to marketing campaigns:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Have specific goals in mind<\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

All too often, small business owners aren\u2019t sure where to start. It\u2019s easy to feel overwhelmed by a vast list of marketing activities. But a marketing campaign is much more specific than just generally promoting your business or increasing sales. A campaign is intended to generate a certain result or meet a particular goal. For example, a business might want to generate brand awareness or promote the opening of a new location by offering in-store, limited-time discounts. The specific goal is to drive traffic to the new store and generate X number of dollars from that location within a certain time frame.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Identify your campaign \u201cingredients\u201d<\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
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After defining your marketing goal, you have to figure out how to accomplish it. Which media channels and content will you use? For instance, you may rely exclusively on social media, or create a tiered email marketing campaign to send to targeted recipients from your email database. Who will help you create and distribute your content? Will you use social media, search engines, or display ads? Also, will you need help creating copy, videos, photography, infographics, landing pages, or other shareable content? Will you rely exclusively on digital marketing, or do you have the budget for direct mail and flyers (and more importantly, would those make sense for your audience)? By identifying these channels upfront, you can create the right content and message for the right medium instead of trying to recreate the wheel for each asset.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Know your audience<\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

This can\u2019t be overstated. Many marketers can get stuck in the habit of wanting to target everyone, but if your marketing campaign is too vague and ill-defined, chances are it won\u2019t reach anyone. The good news is, you don\u2019t have to spend many hours and lots of money to understand your target audience. It can be as simple as segmenting your audience by prospects, new customers, long-term customers, and inactive customers, and coming up with key messaging that’s relevant to them.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

For example, The Sherman Sheet<\/a>, a financial services company and long-time Act! customer, specifically uses the Marketing Automation (AMA) platform to create highly customised email campaigns. They optimise the campaigns to reach current paid clients, prospective clients who signed up for a 30-day free trial, and those who completed a 30-day trial as follows:\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n