Every industry uses PR and Marketing Campaigns; whether you work in nonprofit, corporate, or even own a small business, any leader can create, implement, and benefit from a campaign with these five steps.
After starting my first business, All in PR, I evolved my principles of publicity, event planning, and electronic media that helped me grow into the business owner and entrepreneur I am today. Now, as the owner of Bogues Group, I continue to find the best practices and strategies for PR and Marketing.
A marketing campaign is an organized sequence of actions that help achieve your business and brand’s goal. Because there can be many moving parts, it is best to sit down with your team and follow these five steps to nail your next PR and Marketing Campaign:
1. Define your goal
You can’t have a successful campaign without a clearly defined goal. The more detailed, the better. A simple way to write a goal is to make it SMART – specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. Let’s say you are a small business owner, and your overall goal is to launch a new product. Your SMART goal might look like:
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Specific – Launch a new educational product
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Measurable – Sell 10 products
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Attainable – Realistic because of past sales
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Relevant – Promoting the product on specific platforms
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Timely – The first week of the launch
Your new goal now sounds like – “I will launch a new educational product successfully by selling 10 products within the first week of the launch based on past sales and strategic promotion.”
2. Determine your budget and timeline
It is important to establish a budget within the beginning stages of a campaign to set yourself up for success and avoid simple mistakes. A budget can be tricky to create depending on the funds available to run an extra PR and marketing campaign. However, it doesn’t have to be all about the money – you and your team can put in hours that will save you money in the long run. Important things to consider when creating a budget for a campaign: the time it will take outside of normal business hours to plan and implement, the cost of materials (depending on the mediums used), and how long it will last.
A timeline is key to creating a budget. If you don’t know how long you plan to run the campaign, you can’t establish how much content you need. Once you determine the amount of time needed to successfully achieve your goal, you can map out a more detailed plan. This is where you really get specific in what content will be posted, what days, how often to analyze results, and more.
3. Identify your specific target audience
Different groups of people like different things; this is also true when it comes to campaigns. No matter what your goal is, every PR and Marketing campaign should have a specific target audience in mind. In today’s world, each generation has different likes, views, ideas, and interests.
Different groups within those generations can vary as well. A few factors that are important to consider when choosing a target audience is age, location, challenges faced, and language (even slang).
4. Choose the mediums
Depending on your budget and your target audience for the campaign, there are a few different mediums or platforms, that can be used to successfully deliver your message. Younger generations tend to be more tech-savvy and get most of their information and news from social media platforms. Social media platforms are also easy on the budget because sharing content is free. On the other hand, older generations tend to use more traditional media like newspapers, television, radio, and more. These types of platforms also tend to come with a monetary cost – printing, paying to feature content, etc. People are influenced in decision-making by their past experiences, culture, and beliefs; different mediums have different benefits for reaching a specific group of people.
5. Analyze the results during and after the campaign.
It is important to analyze the result not only when it is over but also as checkpoints throughout the campaign. Whether you are trying to increase followers or sell more of a certain product, you can track your goal’s progress continuously. Your PR and Marketing Campaign is not set in stone; if one part isn’t working as well as you had hoped but another area is doing better than expected, try switching it up to see if there are different results. After the campaign is over, it is important to sit down together as a team to discuss the campaign’s success, challenges, and lessons learned.
Making sure to not only plan for the campaign launch but also taking time to evaluate the results after execution, ensures you’re making data-driven decisions so that you’re always getting the most out of your marketing spend. Not sure where to start? Click here to learn more about how Bogues Group can help you nail your next campaign!