Your new or established online businesses will grow effectively and quickly drum up support using marketing campaign elements.

What are the best methods to promote and market your business without taking shots in the dark?

What are the essential elements in building a successful marketing campaign?

Target.

The most unnoticed step in planning a marketing campaign is your audience. Your target audience is the group or set of people interested in your brand, products, or services. They are possible customers of your business and may share similar location, gender, age, education, or other customer demographics.

Who do you want to appeal to? 

Who will benefit from your service?

The more specifically you can describe the person you're marketing to, the better your results. From age to industry to role, determine who you want to reach out to and why they need your services.

List.

Once you have determined your target audience, identify a set of contacts that fit that profile. Vendors' contact lists, opt-in lists collected from your website, and existing customers are excellent sources. People you already have a relationship with will likely read your message more than a stranger.

The number of sources and quality variance for contact lists can be overwhelming. Focus on your target audience. A good source of lists can be professional organizations or publications that serve your specific market.

Remember that you want to build long-term relationships with these contacts rather than manage your campaign as a one-time event. It's better if you can own the list.

Value proposition.

Think about the target audience you have identified. Put yourself in your potential customer's shoes to enable you to get your message right. 

What are the challenges that they face, and how can you help? 

What value can you deliver to help them improve their business or provide solutions to their issues? 

Tell them, plainly and avoiding jargon, how you can do that. Make it real to your prospects by giving them examples of how you have helped organizations similar to theirs.

Call to action.

A call to action helps you identify the prospects who need more engagement. Don't leave the conversation without offering more to those who are interested. Not everyone on your list will buy or opt-in. A small percentage of those will read your messages, and an even tinier portion will express any interest. 

Please give them a reason to ask for more information. 

Case studies, whitepapers, videos, webinars, and any other educational content that you can offer are all great calls to action. 

Delivery method.

How are you going to deliver the message to your target audience? 

More than one method is always better (a.k.a. multi-touch marketing). Different people respond to different types of contact. Include e-mail, snail-mail, Web advertising, social platforms or professional organizations, and even conventional advertising in your list of options.

Follow-up.

Your campaign is simply as sound as your follow-up. 

Your target prospects are busy and they get hundreds of marketing messages daily. It would be best to continue the conversation until they opt-out or buy.

While most of us don't have the resources to conduct testing, try to track and report on the results of each campaign to analyze and maximize results. However, it is far more critical to keep any marketing going than to make it perfect.

Pay attention to the response you get. Ask your new customers how they heard about you. Track as much as you can, but don't stop because you aren't getting your desired results. 

If you have a sound message targeted at the correct prospects, keep at it, and you will eventually connect with them.

Planning a marketing campaign isn't just for giant marketing departments. Work through these steps, and you'll have the elements in place for an effective campaign. Most importantly, could you keep it going? 

No magic marketing technique will get you many new customers, but it will pay off with persistence and the proper education and training.

Also, consider this.

• Learn more about marketing your business online.

• Please view one of our webinars to enrich your online business.

• Discover more about increasing website traffic and improving your search ranking (search engine optimization).

• Find out how to create a comprehensive digital strategy for your business.

• Take a training program and learn how to become an independent entrepreneur.

Have you conducted a successful creative marketing campaign recently? Is there anything that would make building an effective marketing campaign easier? Contact us, and we'll share the inside scoop.