The basics of successful marketing campaign management

Developing a marketing campaign for your product or service is one of the most important aspects of business success. And without a detailed plan, you’ll never reach your potential customers. You also have to know how to manage a marketing campaign once it’s launched, including measuring the effectiveness of the different executions, whether they’re in the form of direct mailers, digital ads, an email campaign, or other components.

We’ve put together some campaign management basics to follow, including the use of a customized BDEX data list of potential targets that are actively looking to buy your product or service – whether that’s pet supplies, household appliances, groceries, or a new computer.

Start with your data

Third-party data is going to give you vital information about your target audience; the people who are most likely to buy your product or service. The right data shows insightful characteristics and buying history to reveal patterns that enable you to specifically reach out to potential customers.

Adobe puts it this way: “If you are a marketer and you want to talk with your customers, then you have to first know and understand them … The more data you acquire, the better you will know your customers, which is a critical first step toward successful campaign management.”

The more specific you can get about your target audience the better. It’s fine to know you want to target women, but it’s better to know you want to target married working mothers who live in a particular part of the city or single men who enjoy outdoor adventures such as hiking, kayaking or mountain climbing. These elements are known as demographic, historical, and/or predictive data.

Even better and more specific is real-time behavioral data. BDEX’s actionable data allows you to narrow down the list to individuals who are specifically looking for certain items or services …

Data that tracks real-time online activity

One of the best ways to define your target audience is with data that tracks recent online activity, including purchases, online searches, and more. BDEX collects real-time data based on actual behaviors of potential customers. The data can tell you that people have been on a travel site, bought or shopped for concert tickets, browsed makeup, and more. Our data also tracks when someone has visited a physical store using the technology called geofencing, as well as collects information from POS (point of sale) systems at brick and mortar stores.

Managing data

Compiling data based on information you have collected about your customers or buying a data list from an outside company is not enough. You must also manage your list. In many cases, a marketing firm or company will have a massive amount of data that is being used by different departments and in different formats and systems, which makes it harder to analyze and interpret the information. You’ll need to have an adequate infrastructure in place to manage your data list to ensure accurate information.

Developing content to reach your target audience

Knowing who your customers are is only the first part of managing a campaign. You’ll need to develop the right content in order to speak to your audience. As they say, content is king. And the way you approach your target audience is crucial for a successful campaign. The keys to success are to make content that is attractive (gets noticed and read, watched, or seen), valuable to the individual and provides a clear and compelling proposition.

Determine the best execution for your campaign

This is where you will develop your specific plan to bring your marketing campaign to life. You have to decide the best media to use, which should be easier once you understand your target audience. Remember, if you use real-time behavioral data, you already know that your target has been actively searching for your product online or they’ve visited a store that sells a similar product.

The media you choose will be dictated by the prospect’s habits, demographics, and the devices they use. For instance, you would probably choose different media to target teenagers or millennials than you would if you want your message to reach senior citizens. The use of specific media can also be tracked by the data; you’ll know which devices they tend to use, as well as which media generates specific responses when later analyzing the impact of the campaign.

Common vehicles include:

• Inbound website
• Direct mail
• Email marketing
• Mobile marketing (SMS/text)
• Social media (passive and paid campaigns that boost posts)
• Online display advertising
• Print display advertising
• Broadcast (TV/radio/streaming)

Of the above vehicles, certain ones are more amenable to target marketing than others. Generally, they are those that involve an outbound message to a specific person (direct mail, email, mobile text), though online display ads and social media can also be highly targeted to individuals based on data, as can tailoring what is shown on your website for certain categories of inbound web traffic.

You’ll also decide how much you want to spend for each medium, which again is going to be dictated by the characteristics and habits of your target audience, as well as the measurable ROI of each. If you know your customers get most of their information via their smartphones rather than a direct mail piece than you would probably earmark more money for mobile advertising.

To clearly measure impact, you must either tie a campaign to a very specific offer or have a CRM system that tracks they customer’s journey from the first contact to eventual sale. Speaking of which …

Track the results of your campaign

Finally, you’ll want to develop a plan for how you will track the results of the campaign as well the return on investment (ROI) for each medium.

Analyzing the results will help you:

• Understand which elements of the campaign worked and which ones didn’t (creative, message, and targeting)
• Learn how your target audience responded to your campaign
• Reveal if your campaign accomplished the goals and objectives that were in place
• Gain valuable information for future campaigns
• Establish a baseline ROI

One last note: privacy and managing customer data

One thing to always keep in mind is the privacy of customer and prospect data. In many cases, you can’t send emails or text messages unless existing customers have chosen (opted in) to receive messages from you. In some cases, it can even be against the law.

For instance, the European Union recently enacted GDPR, which is meant to protect the privacy information of consumers. There are explicit rules in place regarding how data can be used and how and when to contact customers with marketing messages. It’s important to note that certain media, such a direct mail, and social media advertising, don’t require opt-ins or permission – while others, such as text messages, unsolicited phone calls to non-customers, and email, do.

An effective marketing campaign requires a plan and data that provides the most accurate information about potential customers. BDEX can help with the latter by providing real-time data via over 700 million device ID connections and more than 900 billion data signals available through our proprietary Data Exchange Platform.

Call us at 917-410-6616 or send an email to info@bdex.com to start putting this information to work for your business.