The key to a successful and impactful digital marketing campaign takes the talent of a entire team, not just the person managing the campaign. It takes open lines of communication and making sure everyone involved is held accountable for their responsibilities. Don't forget that technology helps too!
It's not easy, but when the campaign ends, and with awesome results, everyone can share in the successes together.
Let's take a look at some secrets to managing a successful digital marketing campaign.
What is Campaign Management?
First, let's define campaign management. Campaign management is the planning, execution, tracking, and analysis of a marketing initiative; sometimes centered around a new product launch or an event. No matter how big or small the campaign is, it usually involves a team departments working together to accomplish a common goal.
Managing the execution of all deliverables within the digital marketing campaign, from strategy build out to implementation, is crucial to the overall success of the initiative. This usually falls on the shoulders of the campaign manager. With so much at stake, they don't want to overlook anything. Even the most creative and thought out marketing campaigns can fail if they're not implemented and evaluated thoroughly and effectively.
Communication is Key
Communication with your internal team
One of the most critical elements of any successful digital marketing campaign is communication. It's so important to communicate internally with the entire team responsible for the execution of the campaign. Start by making sure that everyone on the team is aware of the goals that are being targeted within the campaign, and what the key objective is. If you are responsible for the success of your marketing, you must take the time to create SMART goals that everyone involved with your campaign knows, understands, and accepts before you move forward with any marketing actions.
Throughout the execution of the campaign, it's imperative to make sure that all team members are aware of current and upcoming deliverables and are on track to hit due dates. Hold weekly accountability meetings with your internal team to encourage honesty and candor to make sure that your internal team can address problems quickly. There are often multiple people that can touch one action item within a digital marketing campaign and accountability on all levels with help keep the campaign running like a well-oiled machine.
Communication with the client
Communicating with the client is just as important as keeping the lines of communication open with your internal team. After all, they are the ones that are directly affected by the success or failure of your digital marketing efforts.
Set up weekly or bi-weekly cadence calls with the client to provide updates on what you are currently working on, what is in need of their review in order to stay on timeline, what is coming up, and how you are tracking to goal. The campaign manager or sometimes called the account manager, is the accountability partner for both parties. When the client has visibility into everything you are doing, there is no confusion or push back because they have been involved and kept up to speed from the very beginning.
Define Roles and Establish an SLA
Prior to kicking off a new digital marketing campaign, take the time to define the roles of each member of your team and the role of the client and their team. Consider the following questions:
- Who is the main point of contact on your team?
- What are each of your team members responsible for?
- What responsibilities does the client have within the campaign?
Laying all these roles out in the beginning of the campaign is a huge step toward avoiding confusion and hold-ups that could prevent timely campaign execution.
How Revenue River Manages Campaigns
Here at Revenue River, the campaign manager is the main point of contact both internally and with the client. They are the ones running calls, keeping the entire team on track, and holding the client accountable for their responsibilities. On the client side, we expect to have a marketing contact who can review content and strategy, a sales contact to help us build out their sales system, and a key decision maker that will be responsible for budget and higher level decisions.
Once roles are defined, it's important to review or create a service level agreement (SLA) with the client so there is no confusion over expectations. An SLA is a commitment between a service provider and a client. Particular aspects of the service – quality, availability, responsibilities – are agreed between the service provider and the service user. This style agreement should include items such as:
- Goals of the campaign for both marketing and sales
- Handoff process between marketing and sales
- How to handle work that falls outside of scope
- Timeline for when all content will be published once the draft is sent for review
- Establish a turnaround time on all communication
- Necessity of being prompt and prepared for all meetings
Don't skip this step in defining roles and expectations. This SLA helps to set the tone within the business relationship and serves as documentation if things break down in the campaign.
Tracking Your Success & Report on Results
Managing the success of a campaign involves collecting data and analyzing the results. If your organization uses a software program like HubSpot, you can easily track all your marketing campaigns in one place. To track more general analytics surrounding your website, use Google Analytics.
The most effective marketers take advantage of every bit of data for maximum learning. It's important to track your success both during the campaign and at the end. If you see something that is off, you and your team can quickly change gears to try to resolve it.
Compile the data you have analyzed into a marketing report for the client, either monthly or quarterly. They will have insight into what has been completed and what you are currently working on within the campaign along with the successes or failures of those initiatives. Include the SMART goals that I mentioned earlier and where you are tracking to goal. Marketing reports are an important tool when it comes to communicating and validating the work you have done.
Some Handy Campaign Management Tools
Managing a marketing campaign or multiple campaigns at once can be overwhelming. It's important to have a set of tools that you and your team can use to stay on track. Here are some handy tools to make managing your digital marketing campaign a little easier.
- Teamwork: Teamwork is a project management tool that allows you to assign tasks to team members, communicate, track progress, and so much more.
- Slack: With so many different team members involved in a given marketing campaign, you need a central place to be able to communicate easily and quickly. Slack allows you to connect your conversations with the tools and services that you use to get the job done.
- Trello: Trello is another project management tool that uses boards, lists, and cards that enable you to organize and prioritize your projects in one place. We like to use Trello to keep campaign notes and plan upcoming marketing activities.
There is a clearly a lot that goes into successfully managing your digital marketing campaigns. Not taking the time to effectively manage them can be detrimental. Your campaigns will not produce the results you were hoping for and you would have wasted your budget and valuable internal and external resources.
Open lines of communication, defining roles and expectations from the very beginning, and reporting on results are essential when it comes to the success of digital marketing campaigns. Take the time to build the roadmap of all your marketing activities. Use tools and processes to streamline your teams' efforts and you'll be on your way to managing campaigns that drive results.
*This blog was originally published on November 30, 2018 and has been updated for freshness and accuracy.