4 Results to Look For in Marketing Campaigns

(The 4th one may surprise you)

Every marketing campaign produces results. It’s just that we don’t fully control what those results will be. What you want is a huge success – millions of visits, thousands of sales, swamped order processes.

Sometimes however, the campaign’s result is, “Nothing Happened.”

Nobody wants that result, of course. So how do you avoid it? That’s what we’ll cover in this article.

The First Secret: Start the Campaign with a Goal

Every marketing campaign needs to have a goal as its target. A result you want to see from it. Something tangible. Something you can measure.

THE GOOD NEWS: You can choose almost any goal you want!
THE BAD NEWS: You can easily choose the wrong goal, if you’re not careful.

Let’s avoid the bad news right up front, by talking about good useful goals for campaigns to target. Goals that everyone can appreciate, and that are easy to work toward.

We picked 4 such goals from our own marketing histories to highlight. These four, in our opinion, give the biggest “value” to the business, both in terms of planning them, and in reaping rewards.

Four High-Value Goals for Your Next Marketing Campaign

1. Higher website traffic – More people visiting, learning about your product/service. This widens your potential customer base.

You can specify a percentage (10% increase over the next 3 months) or you could try for a hard number (50,000 more visitors). Either way works—it gives you a concrete number to target.

2. Improved web conversions – More of those visitors taking an action, like contacting you or requesting information. This sharpens your potential customer’s interest in your product/service.

If you’re after conversions, identify the exact type of conversion you want first. Then build the campaign to drive people there. For example, collect email sign-ups by advertising a guide on a targeted landing page. (Happens all the time…because it works!)

3. Social mentions – People mentioning and linking to your brand on social media. This builds up your domain authority, and widens your potential customer base.

You might think this is just “going viral,” using a paid method. You’d be right (or close enough to it). Never rely on viral marketing for business though. It can give a healthy short-term boost, but then it dies away, dropping revenue back down. If you’re not careful, you’ll spend a huge amount of money chasing those numbers again & again.

Best practice for a social mentions campaign, then, is to use it as a short-term awareness booster.

4. Sales ROI boost – Your sales efforts gain better traction. Not just sales numbers going up. Customers are friendlier & more open to you. Number of closes goes up without Sales making any extra efforts.

What sorcery is this? It’s because your marketing softened them…improved their perception of you. Talk about a side bonus!

Four Proven Campaign Targeting Methods

Okay, they all sound good. So how do you target these results?

Each has at least one method of doing so. More exist, but these should work for your business in most situations.

1. HIGHER WEBSITE TRAFFIC – Target the campaign toward a new audience.

This should be an audience you’re confident would appreciate your product/service (that takes research!), but may not have been exposed to it before now.

Plan for the campaign to take at least 3 months, so it builds exposure.

2. IMPROVED WEB CONVERSIONS – Use a value-packed lead magnet.

Your campaigns should promote a useful piece of content to the audience, like a guide or tool.

(It must be content THEY find valuable, not content YOU find valuable. Those are very different things.)

This encourages readers to spend time learning.

3. SOCIAL MENTIONS – Use more than one social channel for the campaign…as long as you already have a presence on those social channels!

Don’t start off an Instagram campaign if you only have 2 posts up. Use organic engagement for a while first. Then, when you’re comfortably ensconced on the channel, coordinate similar campaigns between 2 or more.

Bonus recommendation: Emphasize a strong visual in one social channel, and a strong offer in the other. They should have the same fundamental information, just different emphasis. It throws a wider net around people’s attention.

4. SALES ROI BOOST – Time the campaign to run alongside, or right before, a sales action.

That way the campaign acts like a cheerleader for your Sales team, nudging people toward them.

Make sure you use retargeting for this campaign; it can salvage abandoned carts like crazy. (More on retargeting in a future post. Go subscribe to the Full Stack Blog feed so you’ll hear about it!)

Stick to One Goal for One Campaign, to Get More Results from Your Marketing

Let’s finish off with a final marketing word—Aim for ONE goal per campaign. You may see results in other categories too. That’s great, but treat it like a bonus.

One campaign, one goal. Focus is your friend.

What did your last marketing campaign target? How well did it work?