As a digital marketing agency, we’ve driven millions of website hits, millions of leads, and even millions of sales.
So if you are a small business or a young professional who wants to learn more about marketing management, then you’re in the right place.
Today, we’re going over how marketing managers can create successful campaigns, step-by-step.
Our digital marketing agency saves small businesses from bad marketing and no growth, but of course,
in order to do that efficiently, our marketing managers have to have exceptional skills in marketing management.
Unfortunately, a lot of the schools today are teaching outdated marketing approaches.
And the internet is flooded with fake gurus who teach marketing but actually have no real experience.
This can be an easy trap for anyone just starting to seek help in the world of marketing.
That’s why you should learn from people who have real experience AND can prove it for more than one company.
And these are just results we’ve gotten for our company, using our own techniques.
We have over 10,000 hours of real digital marketing experience and have helped hundreds of companies find the best solutions to their marketing problems.
How have we managed to do this?
Through our team of marketing experts!
In order for them to provide these efficient solutions, our marketing managers have to have exceptional skills around marketing management.
And those skills are exactly what our marketing managers possess.
We’re going to give you some powerful approaches if you want to learn marketing management or become a better marketing manager.
In this blog, you will learn how marketing managers can create successful campaigns, step-by-step.
Marketing Management: How to Create Successful Campaigns
Step 1: How to onboard a new marketing campaign
Whether you are starting a new marketing campaign from scratch or you are inheriting an existing marketing campaign, it is very important to know two things.
#1 You need to establish your marketing goals.
Now oftentimes we have clients that will say their goal is to get more sales.
But that is a very high-level goal. With that, you’ll want to unpack your goal into something more actionable.
To break down your goal into actionable parts, we will start to talk about leading and lagging indicators.
A lagging indicator is usually a result, such as more sales, more leads, or more traffic, which are great goals to have.
But in order to get to a result or a lagging indicator, you need a leading indicator which is usually an action.
Leading indicators are things that you can control right now every day or every week.
And these are the marketing goals that you want to establish.
For example, for LYFE marketing, our lagging goal for our YouTube channel is to get to 10,000 subscribers.
That means our leading goal is to post on YouTube at least three times per week for the next 12 months.
We expect that if we execute our leading indicator, our lagging indicators, i.e. results, will follow.
As a marketing manager, you need to know both leading and lagging goals.
#2 You need to know your budget.
When you onboard a marketing campaign, you need to understand your campaign budget.
If you are unsure about your marketing budget or about how to accurately calculate your marketing budget, we have a detailed blog that can help you how to maximize your small business marketing budget.
Ultimately, the main thing here is that you want to make sure your budget matches your goals.
Therefore, if you want $1 million in sales for example, then you need to be ready to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And truthfully, you want to be as realistic as possible because that’s the responsible thing to do as a good marketer.
Too many people strive for the overnight success dream, but the reality is good marketing can take time.
Now that you have determined you need to establish some marketing goals and a budget, then you can move to step number two, which is “how to structure your marketing plan.”
Step 2: How to structure your marketing plan
The first thing we recommend that you do is to create a marketing funnel, or very clearly understand the marketing funnel that already exists.
If your company is already generating any sales, then you likely have a marketing funnel whether you are aware of it or not.
It’s important to know which part of the funnel you will need to influence with your marketing campaign.
Understanding the marketing funnel will help you pinpoint which phase of the funnel needs adjustments.
To get a better understanding of the marketing funnel, let’s take a closer look at a marketing funnel.
And then break down a marketing funnel for B2C (business to consumer) and B2B (business to business) companies.
At the top of the funnel you have the awareness phase.
For both B2B or B2C companies this is where potential customers become aware of your business either via search, or an ad, or someone referring them to you.
The next part of the funnel is the interest phase.
This is where your potential customers start to learn more about your products or services.
After that phase of the funnel is the consideration phase.
This is where your potential customers really start considering buying your products.
They may start to read your reviews or compare your products to others that are on the market.
After the consideration phase is the intent phase.
This is the phase where the potential customer is ready to buy and just needs a little push to complete the transaction.
If you’re a B2C company, that means that a visitor has maybe added something to their cart.
And if you’re a B2B company, that means that a visitor may have requested a meeting or a live demo.
Quickly after that, the potential customer enters the evaluation phase.
This is when the potential customer is thinking about the experience they are having as they are checking out for a B2C company or completing the contract for a B2B company.
At the very bottom of the funnel you have the actual purchase, which is when the potential customer turns into a real customer.
As you can see, there is a whole process to getting a customer to actually become a customer.
In addition, a funnel can continue after the purchase point, especially if you want to get more sales from your current customers.
But those phases we mentioned are going to be the main areas that most marketing managers need to focus on.
As you are doing your marketing management, you want to start asking yourself, “Which phase in the marketing funnel does my business need the most help with?”
You will find that some companies need overall awareness before they can optimize any other part of their funnel.
You may also find that some companies have a lot of awareness, but struggle to convert those leads into sales.
However, once you know where your marketing needs the most help, then you can focus there and start to develop those leading indicator goals.
For example, in the awareness phase, you have to focus on reaching a lot of people.
And if the business budget you have set is low, that means you will likely need to use an organic marketing strategy.
Now let’s move on to step number three, which is how to set up your marketing campaigns.
Step 3: How to set up your marketing campaigns
The first thing you need to think about here is production.
What we mean by “production” is you need to know WHO or WHAT you need and WHEN you need it.
To figure this out, go back to your leading indicators and think about how you are going to accomplish them.
Maybe you need a content writer, a designer, or an advertising budget.
Or maybe you need to set aside a few hours a day, to hire an agency, or some other tools to help you be efficient.
The bottom line is, you need to be very clear about what deliverables you need and when you need them.
After production, we recommend that you track your progress.
Now that doesn’t mean you are looking for that lagging indicator or that main result that you want to accomplish.
Rather, you’ll want to track whether or not your growth is headed in a positive direction. Ideally, it’s easy to identify a trend line that is going up overtime.
For example, if you are posting on YouTube every day for six months and you are not getting any views at all, then that is a sign that you need to stop and reevaluate your marketing strategy.
One of our agency’s favorite tools to use to track progress is Google Analytics.
It’s super simple to set up on your own and should take you no time to get setup and get started.
Once you’re set up for success with Google Analytics, you can move on to step number four, which isn’t really a step but it is a critical tip to live by.
Step 4: Stick to your plan
We’ve said it before but good marketing takes time.
We can’t emphasize this enough.
Unless you have a really big budget, we’re talking at least $100,000 a year, then you more than likely will need to focus on one thing at a time.
That means you want to put together a really good strategy and make sure it works BEFORE you move on to something that is new and trendy right now.
We recommend you give your strategy at least six months before you give up. And this is six months of pure excellence!
That means you are not missing deadlines and you are putting together a good amount of quantity and quality work.
Remember to still be tracking your results and making sure you’re building some momentum or seeing a positive trend line.
Even if the positive trend line is slow, it is still positive.
Now let’s move on to our last step.
Step 5: Reporting
If you are doing any kind of marketing management or if you are a marketing manager yourself, then at some point you will need to do some reporting.
Whether you are reporting to yourself, stakeholders, a manager, or a client, this is an area where you need to effectively communicate how your marketing is going.
When you are communicating, you need to understand your audience.
If you are talking to another marketing professional or someone with a marketing background, then you can probably use more advanced explanations of your progress.
But if you are talking to someone who does not know a lot about marketing, then you want to try to break it down as simply as possible.
For instance, you wouldn’t start talking to a stranger about ROAS, ROI, conversion campaigns, and lead-to-sale conversions because there’s a slim chance they would understand what you were talking about.
Everything that we cover in this blog are things that you want to communicate to whoever you are reporting to.
So that means you want to relate things back to the goals, the budget, the funnel, and the positive trend line.
You’ll notice that bad marketers only care about telling you how good their bad results are.
A bad marketer will tell you about all the leads they have generated but have very little results for conversions.
As good marketers, it is our responsibility to communicate effectively and with integrity.
So know your numbers, know your audience, and be as transparent as possible whether the results are good or bad.
Developing detailed reports that are comprehensive enough for your audience to understand is what will help everyone be on the same page.
Conclusion
There you have it – five really awesome tips for marketing management. Tips that we stand by and are proven because we’ve used them for our own marketing campaigns.
In addition, we’ve managed campaigns for our clients that have driven millions of hits, millions of leads, and millions of sales.
That’s why we believe you can stand by these valuable tips we’ve provided here.
And there’s so much more you can learn about marketing for your business!
Whether you are a small business owner or a young professional who wants to learn more about marketing management, then you’re in the right place.
Our team of marketing experts are ready to help you make yourself a better marketer! Contact us today.
