Without a marketing campaign, your website is as good as any other web page on the internet that no one gets to see. In order to bring in new clients and generate more revenue, you need to constantly sell it to your visitors and potential customers, convincing them your site, your product, or your service satisfies one or more of their needs.
What is a Marketing Campaign?
A marketing campaign for a website is the strategic implementation of marketing plan that helps push your website out into the world, giving it maximum exposure and putting it directly in front of your targeted consumers. The tools and methods involved in a good marketing campaign include (but are not limited to):
- Social Media Platforms – One of the best ways to publicize your website? Make sure your followers on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms are seeing it. This method is preferred because of the relative ease and low cost of publishing, advertising and promoting content.
- News and Entertainment Media – Get your marketing in front of people via advertising in media, like television commercials, website posts, or movie product placements.
- Traditional Advertising – The good, old fashioned way to get exposure. Everything from posters, bus stop benches, billboards, even t-shirt slogans fall under this category.
A business that wants to run a successful marketing campaign would do well to utilize all three methods, as they each have their own distinct advantages. If you’re a smaller business or one with a limited budget, aim for the more cost-effective, including social media and online advertising, which can lead to big results through fewer dedicated marketing dollars.
Factors That Will Ensure Marketing Success
To see the best marketing results, there are a few critical steps you must follow. This list is by no means exhaustive, but is designed to help you get a clearer picture of important factors that make a big difference when it comes to your bottom line.
1. Consistency
A marketing plan for your website shouldn’t be something that you start and stop. It needs to be consistent and ever forward-moving. Set marketing goals, like revenue per campaign, brand awareness via clicks or views, or social media shares, and update or change when you see success or failure. Progress is crucial, and the success of a specific marketing initiative doesn’t signal overall business success. Continue building on your potential and forge ahead diligently.
2. Budget
Businesses that don’t invest in their marketing campaigns will never see campaign fruition. Marketing is an integral part of any business (just look at the prevalence of business and MBA degrees) and should always be top of mind for any business. You should have a specific budget set aside for marketing and keep your marketing goals, especially return on investment, front and center. Their success should be measured individually – whether or not you need a marketing budget should not be up for debate.
3. Diversity
Spread your campaign initiatives across a number of platforms; don’t just stick to one. Although most of the world does its shopping online, you’re not likely to reach 100 percent of your prospective customers there. Spend money on a Facebook campaign, but don’t forget to hand out pens and t-shirts at meetings and sporting events. Sponsor a local community event and you will be sure to have the grateful patronage of the people around you.
4. Calculated Risks
Business involves risk. You haven’t come this far without taking a leap of faith, however small. In your marketing campaigns, come out of your comfort zone and test the waters. Do you design jeans for women between 18-30 years old? Try advertising your jeans to women outside of this age demographic and see how it goes. Who knows? You might unexpectedly discover a new market. At the very least, you can use the shopping habit research you gather to inform you next product design decisions.
5. Variety
The key to successful advertising? Novelty. What would the Super Bowl be without the ads, right? Those few minutes of advertisement pretty much define how well a company will do in the months following the game. Kudos to companies that put all they have into creating entertaining, captivating, humorous and attention-grabbing ads. While you might not be expected to spend their kind of money, use what you have smartly to come up with varied and creative ads that won’t bore your customers to tears or, worse, offend them and achieve the opposite of what you intended.
6. Sturdy Technology
Your marketing will go nowhere if the technology you use for it isn’t stable. The launch of any marketing campaign, no matter the platform, means there will be a rise in traffic to your website, which should be ready to handle the sudden influx. Before you even begin your campaign, you should have a meeting with your hosting provider to see what can be done about it. With easily scalable packages being the standard today, you should be able to easily upgrade to a more robust solution.
A final word of advice: keep an ear to the ground and learn from trends. Marketing evolves as people’s habits and norms change – keep up and stay in tune with the times.
