A viral TikTok video or a trending topic can often seem like a random, organic occurrence that no one is really in control of. However, it is the digital marketer's job to engineer and cultivate this kind of online attention, and the process behind it is very particular.
It's a long, complex, and research-heavy project, with weeks or even months of work behind the scenes before a campaign goes live. In this article, we'll highlight the key elements of a high-performance digital campaign and explore how these strategies guarantee success.
Ideation and Strategy
The first stage of any digital campaign is to get to know the company and market you're working with. This is essential for marketing companies working with a new client, but it's also important for in-house teams to conduct research regularly and keep their strategy up to date.
SWOT analysis is a common framework marketers use, which stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. By identifying these, marketers can paint a clearer picture of what they should try to achieve, what they should take advantage of along the way, and what they should avoid during the process.
Establishing goals is the next step, and there's another common framework here: SMART goals. By making your goals Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely, you'll have a very clear picture of what you want to achieve, and you'll be able to objectively measure your progress and success.
Research and Segmentation
Understanding your audience is arguably the most important part of any marketing campaign, and a lot of man-hours go into audience research and segmentation. The ultimate goal is to identify the demographics, pain points, preferences, and behavior patterns of your target audience so you can shape the campaign messaging around them. Common research methods include:
- Questionnaires
- Surveys
- Focus groups
- Social media listening
- Customer interviews
- Market research reports
- Buyer personas
Many marketers use buyer personas to paint a picture of the ideal customer journey, and this helps them understand what they need to do to encourage conversions and avoid creating barriers to purchase. From there, marketers design the sales funnel by mapping out the steps they want the audience to take.
Choosing the Right Channels
Campaigns are spread across multiple channels like different social media platforms, pay-per-click ads, and email or push notifications. Generally speaking, the more channels you work with, the bigger your budget will need to be. You'll find that the biggest brands cover every single channel possible, but smaller businesses will need to limit themselves. Discovering which channels the target audience hangs out in is another area that requires research.
The bulk of the work comes from the fact that each platform and channel needs its own content in a unique format, such as:
- Reels and shorts for TikTok and Instagram
- Video ads for YouTube
- Memes and image-based ads for Facebook
- Engaging copy and images for Google display ads
- Deals, news, and CTAs for push notifications
- Lead magnets and compelling content for email newsletters
- Detailed posts and articles for blogs (and long-form video versions for YouTube)
- Podcasts
- Influencer marketing partnerships
And these are just the "standard" content types. Many campaigns will also involve newer and more experimental content such as digital influencers or user-generated content trends.
The Content Creation Process
Source: Unsplash
The process behind content creation is rapidly changing right now, thanks to new AI-powered tools, but deciding the creative direction is the most important part. There are so many different angles you can take, including:
- Minimal and professional (think Apple)
- Gen-Z style social media and memes (think Netflix)
- Emotional storytelling (think John Lewis)
- Product and pricing-focused (think Temu or Shein)
Teams always come up with a few different possibilities, and to discover which one truly works, they need to draw up some examples. AI-powered tools are really speeding up this process now, with companies drawing all the power they need from a GPU cloud server to create and render AI-generated assets. Some campaigns will only use these assets during the ideation stage, but others will also use AI tools for the final product.
Execution and Going Live
While going live sounds like the end of a campaign, it's really only the beginning. The first content to go out will usually include A/B tests, and its main goal is not to encourage conversions but to bring in data for the marketers to analyze.
After just a few days or perhaps a week, patterns will start to emerge. Versions of videos, images, or copy that don't perform well will be pulled and replaced with the highest-performing versions, and the best-performing channels will receive more investment.
If nothing is performing well enough to hit the SMART goals, a re-think is probably in order. Marketers will go back to the content possibilities they brainstormed before and pick a new one to create content for. Then they can rotate the content in and see if it performs any better.
Real-Time Optimization
While the bulk of the A/B testing will happen at the start of the campaign, tweaks and adjustments will continue to happen throughout. This is unique to digital marketing because it's a result of the instant and fast-paced nature of the rollout, engagement, and results.
Going viral, for example, is a time-limited phenomenon. If the marketing team sees the engagement on one of their videos explode, they need to move quickly to expand coverage, engage with the audience, and create follow-up content that will keep the trend going. They should also liaise with their client or finance team to implement time-limited deals, flash sales, or other offers that will encourage conversions while engagement is high.
As time goes on, the team might also notice that the ROI on a particular channel is consistently low. This calls for a bit of research to determine the cost and benefit ratio of dropping that channel and redirecting the budget elsewhere.
Measuring Success and Reporting Results
As the campaign continues, performance will be continuously recorded, and the team will gather and visualize the overall results. These will be measured and framed against the original SMART goals defined at the start of the campaign, and will often include metrics such as:
- ROI (Return on Investment)
- ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)
- Website traffic increases
- Number of leads generated
- Number of conversions generated
- CPL (Cost Per Lead) savings
- Number of impressions
- CTR (Click-Through Rate)
- ATP (Average Time on Page)
- Bounce rate
- CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)
Generally speaking, success is all about maximizing value while minimizing cost, though higher investment rates can be necessary for new brands and startups. The more campaigns you run, the better your results should be.
Final Thoughts
If you're new to digital marketing, the main takeaway here is probably just how involved the entire process is. Digital marketing campaigns are complex and constantly evolving, which is why it takes a whole team's full-time attention from start to finish. Even with the efficiency gains from AI tools, strategic thinking and spontaneous creativity are essential to really succeed.
Cover Image Source: Unsplash
