You know the ads that captivate? The marketing messages that resonate? The images and words that manage to break through the deluge of content and make an impact? 

Those don’t happen by accident. Even if they seem effortless – born to be viral – effective marketing campaigns are carefully planned and executed so that they break through to their audience. It’s not magic – it just seems like it to your customers. 

Effective Marketing Campaigns 101 

Don’t get caught up in the glitz, the glam, the shiny… At its core, effective marketing campaigns are based on a simple – yet strong – foundation. Know your target client, understand where they are in the buyer’s journey, and determine how best to move them through your conversion funnel. 

But wait. We’ve thrown out some terms that you need to understand in order to build that solid foundation. A campaign is simply how you take strangers who visit your site and turn them into not only customers but brand advocates and evangelists after they’ve interacted with you and purchased your product or service. The key is to draw them to your brand. How? 

• Valuable, authoritative content 
• Targeted social media marketing 
• Search engine optimization 
• Powerful branding 
• Experiences tailored to their needs 

These are all examples of inbound marketing; that is you are attracting folks, pulling them into your brand’s orbit. This contrasts with traditional outbound marketing, where you essentially push marketing messages at them. Welcome or not! Unlike outbound marketing, inbound approaches do not interrupt your audience with content they may not want; the aim is to establish connections and provide solutions. 

Success here is predicated on how well you know your audience, their goals, interests, their pain points, and their online/purchasing habits. 

The Buyer’s Journey and Your Conversion Funnel 

Any campaign worth its salt will also encompass where people are in the buyer’s journey. This is the process of going from a stranger to a brand to a buyer – and, ideally, taking the next steps as a brand advocate or evangelist. Steps along the buyer’s journey include: 

1. Awareness: At this phase, a consumer realizes that they have a problem, a challenge, or an unmet need. I hate my old cabinets; I really need to make a change. 
2. Consideration: The consumer identifies and defines their problem. They then look into companies that can help them solve it. The honey oak is outdated and dragging down my design. Which companies (builders, remodeling specialists, etc.) can help me achieve the style I want? 
3. Decision: The consumer chooses a company to provide a solution. Brand A is the one who can do this for me, and I feel great trusting them with my home. 

At every step, your relevant, informational content guides them further along the path to you. Developing messaging that resonates to where they are on the journey helps them continue to take the next steps. This is what your conversion funnel represents: how they go from stranger to customer to promoter of your business. 

Putting It Together – and In Action 

Providing valuable content is great, but you need to deliver it to potential clients at the right time. This is where campaigns come in. You start with a trigger – an offer – that is aligned to their phase of the journey and that gets them engaged in your campaign. Additional triggers guide them further down your conversion funnel. 

A campaign, often intertwined with other campaigns, provides a clear path for a prospective buyer from their current phase to the end-goal… purchase and promotion. 

The right content in front of the right people at the right times. This is the crux of effective marketing campaigns. Simple? Yes. Easy? Well… No. But we can make it easier! To find out how, connect with the Haven team.