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February 2, 2025
This is the obvious part of the process: At the heart of significant marketing research is an understanding of your business. That is the foundation for a great marketing campaign. In order to understand your business, you need to research your competitors. Don't emulate, but do extrapolate. For instance, take bits of strategy from your competitors' plans. You'll find their plan in their actions. If they plan to roll out a holiday campaign, you'll see it posted on a social platform. What platform did they use? That is a potential question you can answer for yourself. But here is the creative part: WHY did they use that platform? Figure that second part out by taking an educated guess. The answer most likely is that platform is where their consumer is. From this you have learned where a certain demographic shops and what a good plan is for that portion of the calendar year. You have just extrapolated the beginnings of a plan.
Secondly, determine your typical customer. If you have a few platforms and mediums for marketing set up already (i.e. Threads, Instagram, website, a physical location, etc...), who is showing up? Create a customer avatar. This is a visual and written representation of a customer from one of your customer demographics. It should be an exact character, and it should be specific. There are probably at least a few different versions of customers who shop your product or services. Give each of them an avatar. Name them so you can communicate it to your team. You will find that there are various advertising avenues that require you to input your avatar data. Meta, for instance, assumes you have done this work. And if a platform as big as Meta assumes it, you should do it. That is evidence right there that it is integral to your business. If you need info on how to build a customer avatar, go here. Now that you have the avatar that already exists in your wheelhouse, what is the avatar that you would want to reach in your campaign? Maybe it's one or more avatars of customers you already frequently reach, or maybe it is a new one. Create the new one, if so.
Next, decide the purpose of your campaign. What is a measurable goal that you want to achieve? It could be a different market that you want to reach, a new avatar you want to target, new branding to roll out, or a separate medium you want to set up. This campaign will be able to use A/B testing within the measurable parameters you have set.
Everything explained in this article so far is Step One.
Digital Marketing Action Steps
Congratulations, you have completed the initial research. If you look at your marketing campaign as an action plan, Step Two is the first step in the action. If you have done all the research necessary in Step One, you have determined which customer avatar you are appealing to and where you can best find them. It is a known fact that there are over 3 billion monthly active users on Facebook and approximately 2 billion monthly users on Instagram (at the time of this post). However, most of those Facebook users are in India, and the demographic on Facebook is generally older than on Instagram. Facebook may not be your best platform. Through careful research, for example, you have determined that your customer avatar you have named Lisa likes Instagram reels more than any other outlet you could explore. Step Two is simply the creation of that reel.
Step Three is the determination of how much money you would like to spend on the roll out of that content. This step partially comes before Step Two. Sorry if it is a bit complicated, but that is the nature of the strategy. What was your budget? How much of your budget do you want to dedicate to that single post? You determine this by a formula you have created that takes your Return On Investment (ROI) into account. How well will that reel typically perform for that demographic and how worth it is it to put such and such amount of money in? This is where hiring a marketing professional really comes in handy. They have done enough A/B testing of their own to have the knowledge of where to put what money. Consider Ethan FM Marketing as an option. During this step, you absolutely must set up your content in such a way where you can pinpoint the relative success or failure of your campaign. Meta has insights built in to their programming. It is automated. In most cases, it is just the appropriate button toggle.
Once the content is posted, you now have the ability to track its success or failure. Step Four is the monitoring of that post. Your marketing strategy now relies heavily on trial and error and analysis. But the thing that is most important at this time in the process is your next course of action you develop as a result of your interpretation of the data. Interpreting the data is easy. A view on a post is a view. Engagement is a like or comment or share, etc...Breaking everything down into specifics is important, but knowing what to do next is the most crucial piece to the puzzle. Always be actionable! Always take action! Marketing is for doers. There is no room for the passive individual. You have to be willing to gamble on an action, follow through on it, then move on to the next action.
Lastly, Step Five is the next action you intend to execute in order to further your campaign. Think of marketing as a flow. There will be plateaus along the way, but your strategy will forever lead somewhere. You will always be climbing a ladder towards success as you continue on your company's journey. Marketing is the creation of that ladder. Now you understand why I called each actionable point a step.
Furthering the metaphor
Climbing the proverbial ladder to success is made up of two parts. You can be striving towards moving upwards. You can also be looking at where you have come from. Both parts are essential to a good marketing plan. I hope you enjoyed this article about the five steps to a good marketing campaign in the digital age. Sign up and request a newsletter for more information here. This has been a message from Ethan FM Marketing. If the thought of completing all of the above steps seem overwhelming, allow me to help. Visit the Ethan FM Marketing Home page at FutureDrifter.com.
Written by Ethan Frank Markowitz on February 2nd, 2025.
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