Marketing Campaigns: Understanding A Business Essential

Let’s face it: if marketing campaigns don’t play a big role in your marketing strategy and your business, you’re missing out on a world of possibilities. That’s why we’ve compiled our guide to some marketing campaign essentials. After all, there are many different types of marketing but they all have the same purpose, and that’s to work towards a specific business goal.

Why are companies spending billions for marketing though? What makes marketing so important in the business world? We’ll look at some marketing theory, types of marketing campaigns, some examples of the best marketing campaigns of all time and cover a range of successful marketing campaign essentials along the way.

The Purpose of Marketing Campaigns

In today’s competitive business environment you can have the best product in the market, but without efficient marketing you’ll fall short of your potential market share and lose profits. The question is not whether marketing is important or not; rather it is how much marketing you need to dominate your market.The role that marketing campaigns play can be broken down into six main elements:

Communication:

Communicating with potential customers and relaying your company’s message to them is the first step towards increasing sales. Through marketing campaigns, a business talks to its consumers, delivers its vision and highlights the qualities of the product or service offered. A sales CRM software helps in keeping an up to date track of each customer and hence boost customer retention.

Communication with your target market is key. To reach the largest audience available and effectively deliver your message, spread your word on as many platforms as you can. Any business should research the target market, find out where they can be online and in the physical world. Through effective market research, the company’s message will reach its target audience.

Creating a brand image:

Brand image is how the consumer perceives your brand and your company. It is created by the customer’s own experience with the company, the consistent message put through your advertising or marketing campaigns and the word of mouth spread through other customers’ experiences. Why is brand image crucial to surviving in the market?

A strong brand resonates with the customer; quality marketing equates to quality products in the consumers’ minds. Next time he/she is walking down the aisles in a supermarket, the consumer will be reminded of your strong brand image and opt for your product.

Customer Loyalty:

Loyalty is the emotional response a customer has as a result of several positive experiences with your company’s product or service. Customer loyalty is mostly obtained through efficient customer service management and post-sales services. However, great marketing campaigns that create efficient practices have been shown to increase a customer’s sense of loyalty. When a customer feels appreciated and has a direct line of communication with a business through social media platforms, this in turn increases his/her sense of loyalty. Messages relayed through ads can fixate on the consumer’s needs, which make customers feel like the products of a certain brand satisfy their requirements.

Retaining Current Customers While Obtaining New Ones:

Retaining existing customers is always cheaper than obtaining new ones. The best marketing campaigns however, can work on both. Targeted marketing campaigns assert a company’s dominance in the market, remind current customers of the benefit of the product and greatly help in securing new buyers.

Brand Recognition:

One of the main purposes of any marketing campaign is to promote the name of your brand and company. Brand recognition or brand awareness relates to how much the targeted consumer can identify with a certain brand. Brand recognition is built through effective marketing campaigns. Consumers who are exposed to visual and auditory advertisements are more likely to recognise your products while shopping or looking for certain services.

Increased Sales:

The main point of any market campaign is to eventually increase sales. Profit is what keeps a company competitive in the business world; and the more sales a company has the more profitable it will be.

At ProfileTree, we specialise in driving marketing campaigns that are data-driven, engaging and memorable. We love finding out what fellow experts in the field of marketing have to say about marketing campaigns, and here’s a great example. We sat down with Peter Craven of BlueSky Video Marketing to chat about the best marketing campaigns: check it out!

Marketing Mix – The 4Ps

Although originally defined as the 4Ps, the marketing mix has been expanded to include as much as 7Ps. The original four were price, product, promotion and place. The marketing mix was defined as a set of tactics that are essential in the process of marketing and selling a product or service.The concept was first derived in 1948 by a Harvard professor called James Culliton. He called marketers “mixers of ingredients”. Those ingredients were later popularised as the 4Ps by Jerome E. McCarthy in the Sixties.

Price:

Price plays an important role in the market: too high and you won’t win enough sales, too low decreases your profit margin and can suggest an inferior product. With price, a company should hit that sweet spot where prices are fair enough to beat competitors while retaining the product’s image. The pricing aspect includes: pricing strategies, tactics and special promotions.

Product:

The product aspect refers to the item being marketed to the end consumer. The product could be a tangible or intangible item (ie, services). The product should satisfy the customer’s needs and wants and is arguably the most important of the 4Ps. If the product is no good, then no amount of work on the other marketing mix tactics can save the project.

There is a minimum performance that consumers expect from a certain product or service; the company should target anything above the minimum in order to remain competitive in the marketplace. The product aspect of the marketing mix includes: the features, after sales services, quality and branding of the item sold to consumers.

Place:

The place characteristic of the 4Ps of the marketing mix includes the physical location where the products or services will be offered to the end consumers or the warehousing location of the products. This is important because the placing strategy decides where customers will be able to purchase the product. Distribution tactics include intensive, selective or exclusive dissemination.

The company can also opt for franchising or online distribution. Ultimately, the place matters because that is decisive in where the customer can have access to the final product. Exclusive distribution gives the consumer the idea that the product is of such high quality that it can be found only in select locations. On the other hand, intensive distribution grants convenience to the customer. Although intensive distribution could be more costly, it gives customers access to buy the product more easily, thus increasing sales.

Promotion:

The last of the original 4Ps, but by no means, the least important, is the promotion aspect. Promotion refers to the marketing effort carried out by the company to market and promote the product and/or service offered by the business. Promotion efforts include public relations, advertisements, marketing strategies plus sales discounts or promotions. The promotional mix part of the 4Ps could be considered to be the most important part of the marketing mix.

The 7Ps of Marketing

A more recent modification to standard 4Ps of marketing: this adds three more elements to the 4Ps. The recent additions are:

People:

The term ‘people’ is used to refer to anyone involved in the process of marketing and selling a company’s product.

This includes the company’s employees, the target market and all decision influencers. If the targeted market segment does not have enough demand for the product or service, then the company should consider either changing the targeted consumer or they should attempt to increase demand by altering the product.

Process:

Delivering the product from the production phases into wholesale then retail and, finally, to hands of the consumer is complex and expensive. Fortunately, cutting costs and time where applicable is a good way to save time and money. The process should be as consumer-focused as possible; meaning that the end result should have the customer’s best interest at heart.

Physical environment:

The physical environment is where the consumer and your employees physically interact. This includes your facilities, office, the interior design and the ambient conditions. This refers more to the service industry rather than the tangible product realm. The aim of this is to make the physical environment as welcoming as possible for the consumers.

The 4Cs of Marketing

In the early Nineties Robert F. Lauterborn introduced a more customer-oriented model. The 4Cs are, basically, the same as the 4Ps. But what is the difference between the two models?

Product changed to Consumer wants and needs

Consumer wants and needs differ from product by focusing more on what the consumer wants rather than the qualities of the product.

Price changed to Cost

Price was changed to cost in Lauterborn’s model. The reasoning behind this is that price or monetary value is not the only cost to be considered. The cost of time among other things was something to be kept in mind.

Promotion changed to Communication

Lauterborn believed that promotion refers to a one-way process and believed that the process should be viewed as a communication between the seller and buyer in both directions.

What services does your business need to create the best marketing campaigns?

Check out the services we offer at ProfileTree as the best agency to grow your business.

We also explored this topic, plus marketing automation and growth hacking, with tech marketer Rachel Davis during a ProfileTree Business Leaders video interview. It’s worth a watch to explore this topic in more detail:

Campaign Strategies

Running successful marketing campaigns is like running a marathon, it needs long term preparation, an action plan and a focused effort. In the marketing world, these factors are devised into a campaign strategy.

A campaign strategy will effectively match your products or services with your target audience in order to meet your marketing and sales objectives. Running your marketing campaign is a relatively minor part in the campaign strategy, all the important work is done before this time.

Campaign strategies are used by many brands and marketing agencies all around the world. According to AdHere’s article ‘Marketing that Sticks’, these seven features are included in many of the best campaigns:

Clear Call-to-Actions:

The purpose of your campaign should be clearly presented. Your audience needs to know what to do and how to act after receiving the information you just shared. While you have your audience’s attention, it is important to get your message across to achieve your marketing goal.

Target to a Niche Audience:

Generalising the target audience of your marketing campaign is not cost or time efficient. Rather than sending your message to all age groups, genders, and demographics, focus your aim on the people who are more likely to buy your product or service, your niche audience.

With platforms like Facebook and Instagram, you can use behavioural and targeted advertising that will help you reach your target audience through those behaviours and interests.

Use A Range of Content Types:

Creating audio, visual and textual content is the best way to address all your audience’s preferences. Most of the time it is most effective to combine all of them.

Easy to Share:

Whether it’s through your website, or on your YouTube channel, your content should be easily shared. Creating content designed to be shareable across several social media platforms will increase your reach and your sales opportunities. But it’s also important to keep in mind that your content should be exciting and interesting enough for people to want to share it.

Inspire Interaction:

Engaging your audience is essential if you expect a positive response. Creating content that encourages them to talk back, comment and express themselves makes your brand more memorable, and in reality people are more likely to share this experience with their friends.

Use a Memorable Spokesperson:

Some of the best marketing campaigns make use of a spokesperson who is recognisable and is someone the audience can relate to. Using a familiar face to generate attention for your product also helps to give a personal edge for your brand. Also, having a known person as the face of your brand further engages your audience as they will be interested in knowing what they are going to do or say next.

Go Against the Norm:

Your audience doesn’t want to see something they’ve seen before. In everything you create for your marketing campaign, try to stand out.

The strategies you choose to implement in your marketing campaign really depend on your product and your target audience. This is where your market research plays its role in shaping the scope of your marketing strategy.

The list above is far from the only approach to creating the best marketing campaign. There are countless other tactics to help you create great marketing campaigns.

To build a campaign strategy to produce the best marketing campaigns for your business, there are a number of different strategies you could use to grow your business.

Social Media:

Having an online presence is, of course, extremely important in today’s digital world. Using social media platforms as part of your campaign strategy, you have the option to develop cool and creative marketing campaigns that may not work on other channels.

With social media, you will also have the option to use influencer marketing campaigns within your strategy which has proven to be extremely successful with other brands. Use should social media to give your brand a ‘world’ online. Create Instagram, Facebook and Twitter pages to keep your audience updated with your latest posts and marketing moves.

Video Tutorials:

With YouTube now very much a giant of the digital era, it’s safe to say that people love watching videos. Creating video tutorials will give your brand an informative edge as you’ll be teaching your audience something new and useful.

Blogging:

If you don’t already have a blog, start one! Blogging is an effective way to establish your brand online. Creating meaningful content will drive people to your blog to stay updated with your latest posts, hopefully sharing with friends. Use platforms like Medium to publish content online and answer questions on Quora and Reddit.

SEO:

Understand how Search Engine Optimisation works in order to make the most use of it. SEO can be a powerful way to find and drive traffic. Often misunderstood, it simply refers to using the right content, page set-up and links to be seen favourably by Google for a specific keyword. Using Yoast tutorials is a great way to get you started.

Influencers:

To gain visibility on social media, sometimes you’ll want to go beyond your own audience and followers, so you have to utilise an existing loyal audience base. Social media influencers make money by promoting products online to their social media followers.

As previously mentioned, some influencer marketing campaigns have proven to be among the most recent successful marketing campaigns in recent years.

Lead Magnet:

A lead magnet is an offering of some value to a prospect in return for their contact information. The aim of a lead magnet is to maximise the number of targeted leads for an offer. Working on your lead magnet can lead to exceptional results.

Facebook Ads:

Rather than sending out general advertisements to a broad audience, you can select the most appropriate audience on Facebook and create targeted marketing campaigns for your target demographic.

LinkedIn: 

You can use this platform to introduce yourself, promote your business and explain why you stand out from the rest. While this content may be overlooked on other social media platforms, many people on LinkedIn are interested in finding out more about the workings of your business. LinkedIn is also a good place for ‘thought leadership’ content showing your expertise in a particular subject related to your business and businesses that operate as a B2B.

Affiliate Scheme:

Creating an affiliate scheme can lead to a number of benefits in the long term and short term. Affiliate marketing will help your business growth by creating a network of other companies or people promoting your produce.

Email Marketing Sequences:

Lastly, sending out emails to your subscribers on a regular basis creates a platform for your audience to have direct communication with you. The best email marketing campaigns encourage your audience to open the email, click on the call to action and potentially lead to sales of the products and services it is promoting.

Email marketing is one of the cheapest ways of driving your marketing campaign forward. Here is some top tips from us!

How to Approach Your Marketing Campaign

After taking a look at multiple marketing strategy approaches, we can summarise some common approaches to the best marketing campaigns.

Understand the Market:

Understand your competition, your audience and the platforms available to you! Make sure that your knowledge of all aspects is balanced, contextual and purposeful. Knowing your audience really well but not understanding the competition in the market will harm your results. Focus on market research and the best marketing campaign strategy can be formed around your findings.

Create a Variety of Content:

Your audience will have a variety of tastes and preferences. From video to audio to text, there are a large number of ways you can approach content creation. Understand how to combine every available method, how to use them separately and which sector of your target audience each relates to.

Use Social Media:

Different social media platforms open doors for various exposure opportunities. Make sure you understand the different content that can be created for each platform.

It’s important to have an active social media presence as a large number of your target audience will be found there, but quality content will help cut through the ‘noise’.

Getting Down to Business – Running Your Marketing Campaign

There are some steps you need to keep in mind when running successful marketing campaigns in order to stay focused, within your budget, and achieve the right results. Follow the guidance above and start planning a marketing strategy for business success.

Behavioural Advertising vs. Targeted Advertising

Within online advertising, your advertisements can appear where they are most relevant. With options like behavioural advertising and targeted advertising on Facebook and other platforms, you can select exactly when, where and to who your advertisements are shown. Although these two options may sound similar, there are differences between them.

Firstly, behavioural advertising involves advertisements based on the audience’s behaviour online. For example, after running a Google search on yoga mats for sale, an advertisement offering music for yoga could appear on webpages for the searcher. 

Of course, this may not always be effective because the searchers aren’t interested in the product specifically because of their Google search.

On the other hand, targeted advertising is something we’ll have seen very often, for example on Facebook. Through your likes and interests, advertisers will be able to identify you as a potential customer. On that basis, some ads are only presented to specific demographics or a specific age group.

Using this type of advertising ensures that you’re reaching your niche audience, and gaining the best possible engagement rate through your online advertisements.

The Best Marketing Campaigns

Here are some examples. 

Every year, consumers witness an enormous number of ads. By looking at real-life examples, you can learn from some world-class marketing techniques and try to subtly apply them to your own marketing campaign.

From Pepsi to Gucci, over the years we’ve seen both successful marketing campaigns and failed marketing campaigns. As marketing has evolved, campaigns have also evolved with influencer marketing campaigns becoming more and more popular with brands due to the successful return on investment they create. 

Here are some of the best marketing campaigns from recent years that stand out to us:

The New York Times – The Truth is Hard to Find

At a time when political and social tensions all around the world are at a peak, journalism becomes all the more important. People turn to the news in search for the news, and the truth. This campaign by The New York Times depicts journalism in a new light. The video ads were first aired during the Academy Awards to an audience considered to be receptive to the message they were portraying, and from there the campaign gained positive feedback and shares from viewers.

Why was The New York Times successful with this marketing campaign?

A positive aspect about this marketing campaign and a reason for why it was a great marketing campaign was it didn’t excessively push the brand. The message of the marketing campaign was to change the idea of journalism as a whole and not just the work of The New York Times.

Spotify: Play This at My Funeral

In collaboration with the advertising agency, Wieden + Kennedy New York, Spotify launched this advertising campaign.The videos consisted of artists commenting on playlists which featured their songs. One of the videos which went viral was the ‘Play this at my funeral’ video featuring Joe Jonas and ‘Global warming is real, let’s dance’ featuring Alessia Cara.

Why was Spotify successful with this marketing campaign?

This campaign clearly shows how you can use the information available at your fingertips, to create engaging content for your audience.Spotify was able to make use of data provided to them by their own listeners, create a connection with their audience and turn into one of the best marketing campaigns of that year.

Gucci – #TFWGucci

The luxury brand Gucci jumped on the meme trend by creating content to drive hype and enthusiasm around the brand itself using the hashtag #TFWGucci.This is an example of how a brand can use already popular trends and ideas to market their products and potentially produce a viral marketing campaign.

Why was Gucci successful with this marketing campaign?

With this campaign, a number of digital creators were invited to create images and graphics for the campaign which made the campaign more interesting with the variety in style of imagery.

It should be recognised how Gucci managed to break a number of their brand stereotypes, by tapping into a trend created by younger consumers who do not specifically fit their existing and well-established targeted demographic.

Airbnb – We All Belong

Because of its diversity and presence all across the world, Airbnb focuses on showing their support of accepting people no matter who they are and where they come from.

Why was Airbnb successful with this marketing campaign?

Airbnb released their ‘We All Belong’ campaign days after President Trump imposed his travel ban. In contrast to the events in the headlines, Airbnb sought to remind people of their values.

Be The Match – Be The Guy

Be The Match is a non-profit working to help cancer patients and to save lives through bone marrow transplants.

Why was Be The Match successful with this marketing campaign?

The aim of this campaign was to encourage men to donate bone marrow for cancer patients.However, rather than using the more obvious emotions of guilt and compassion, Be The Match touched on the feeling of empowerment within us all.Be The Match was able to break with audience’s expectations, making Be The Guy a stand-out campaign.

Apple – The Earth Ad

Following President Trump’s decision to remove the US from the Paris Agreement, Apple posted a video showing the beauty of our Earth and its priceless value. The entire video was shot on iPhone.

Why was Apple successful with this marketing campaign?

The shots were widely varied, and included scenery and landscape shots from different climates and regions around the world, expressing the global nature of the brand. Ultimately, Apple successfully communicated with their audience on a political and social level.

Heineken – Worlds Apart

This Heineken ad focuses on the element of diversity and the differences amongst us all. However, there are some things in life we can agree on. To Heineken, that would – of course – involve their beers.

Why was Heineken successful with this marketing campaign?

Worlds Apart is presented as an experiment where two people with completely different ideologies choose to set their differences aside and sit down to discuss their differences over a cold beer.

IKEA – The Place App

IKEA are known for creating great marketing campaigns every year. They created a campaign around the IKEA Place app and through augmented reality technology provided a view for their customers and audience to see how furniture would look in your apartment without having to physically place it there.

Why was IKEA successful with this marketing campaign?

IKEA understood the problem faced by their audience and they found a great way to a successful marketing campaign to show their consumers how they were making buying from their company easier for their audience.

Summary: Marketing Campaigns And Your Business

Whether you have a startup business or an established business, working on your marketing is pretty much essential. To create the best marketing campaign for your brand, you need to have a clear image of your goals for your business and understand what marketing tactics your business needs.

How Can We Help?

We work with you and your team to build solutions that will work for you, using marketing tools that fit your needs, your budget and your overall aims. As an award winning digital marketing agency, we have made a successful digital marketing strategy for many local businesses. These strategies have maximized the return on their investment in marketing and added leverage to their digital activities into leads, sales and growth.

Through our variety of content marketing services, our team can craft industry-leading content that engages, educates and inspires. This allows us to drive traffic to the platforms that matter most to your audience.

ProfileTree has been acknowledged as an award-winning agency for our web design services that we have provided clients. We have watched our clients’ online presence grow with the support of our fantastic search engine optimisation services as well as our own internal brands.

Our team is built with a range of experts in different digital marketing fields. We offer the best digital marketing services for small businesses and large businesses around the world. 

At ProfileTree, we also provide a wide range of businesses, both big and small, with different digital marketing courses to support their business growth. Senior members of the ProfileTree team also work with our clients on a consultant basis to provide additional high-quality digital marketing advice and training to enhance existing efforts.

Ready to discover how ProfileTree can help your business grow online through proven, specialist digital marketing, SEO, content, training, social media marketing and web design? Get in touch today!

Marketing Campaigns FAQ

What’s better – online or offline campaigns?

Both online and offline marketing campaigns have advantages. Online campaigns provide better targeting and metrics, while offline campaigns can offer more creativity and impact. We recommend utilizing both channels.

What budget do I need for marketing campaigns?

Budgets can range dramatically based on your industry, offering and campaign scale – from $500 for a small local effort up to millions for a global brand initiative. In most cases, we suggest starting small and demonstrating campaign effectiveness before increasing budgets.

When will I see results from a marketing campaign?

You can begin analyzing performance indicators like clicks, conversions and sales lift immediately during a campaign. However, it takes time to build awareness and trust. Plan campaigns for at least 3-6 months, evaluating periodically and allowing them to optimize before changing course.

Marketing Campaigns Conclusion

There are many types of marketing campaigns available to drive real business growth. Each approach from online advertising to tradeshows has advantages that smart marketers can utilize. Begin by auditing your audience, pricing models and overall marketing objectives. Then, determine which campaign strategies make sense for your current stage and resources.

The most essential element is developing effective creative assets – compelling offers, landing pages, and impactful messaging tailored to your products. Combined with robust targeting and budget optimization as the campaign runs, there are no limits to acquiring and retaining new loyal customers over time through multi-dimensional marketing campaigns.

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