The Internet allows reach to new marketplaces and customers across the globe and is the preferred marketing tool for businesses today. How can your business ensure that your message is heard over thousands of competitors and how best can you translate your online campaign into a winning asset for your business? Here’s how:
 
Set objectives
Create a detailed plan for your campaign clearly delineating your business’s marketing objectives. They should be specific, measurable, realistic, time-bound, and targeted to the right audience. No matter the size or type of business you are in, taking time to set goals and objectives for your campaign will lead to greater success in new customer acquisition and revenue generation.
 
Know your audience
When brainstorming or validating ideas for the campaign, keep your audience as the top priority. Ask questions about the demographic interested in your business, topics popular with your audience, the need you are fulfilling, and finally, the type of campaign that will be most effective with those prospects. Knowing who will participate in and consume your campaign helps in more targeting planning and sets it apart.
 
Know your platforms
After identifying your target audiences, learn about the channels, websites, social-media, applications that they frequent/religiously use. If your demographic is young, invest more in developing your campaign for social media or for mobile devices. It will make little sense to send e-mails. Use online tools like Analytics or Insights to get information on what element of your campaign will lead to maximum engagement.
 
Branding
Consistency in representing your business online is paramount. Create an explicit look for your campaign – starting from basics such as colours, fonts and templates to the language or business image your campaign will project. This will develop brand value speaking directly to user about what your business represents. It reflects your business brand – a highly-valued asset - and will set the tone for all future campaigns.
 
Responsiveness
The experience and interest of a user when interacting with your business will be most productive when your campaign provides a seamless and mobile-friendly experience. Most people nowadays use devices. Ensuring that your campaign is dynamic and responsive will engage users and hook them to your offerings. At the same time, ensure that your campaign can respond to customer requests and enquiries on the go.
 
Promotion
Parallel to planning, the success of your campaign will depend on its strategic promotion. Think about how you want to get out there. Identify channels to spread word about your campaign to relevant audiences. Promote it through friends, co-workers, the media and online communities. Ideate on new and innovative ways for your campaign to attract audiences and for it to spread through shares, likes and invites. Nothing is off limits.
 
Measure and Adapt
Have a system in place to track the performance of your campaign and measure what works and what doesn’t. Test and evaluate reasons why the assumptions you made in the planning stage aren’t producing results. Don’t be resistant to change if something isn’t working as anticipated. By continuously measuring and testing your campaign performance will you be able to identify the unknowns and work to solve them.