How to get more clients with a marketing campaign

Are you creating and sharing marketing material without a goal? It’s easy to do. 
 
If you’re anything like me, you’re so focused on coming up with content that adds value to your audience you might lose track of what your goals were in the first instance. 
 
The truth is that all marketing is valuable to your business and can help you get clients. However, mediocre marketing or marketing without a strategy may cost you clients and slow your growth. You need a plan and goal if you want to get more clients and cash in your business, and a marketing campaign can help with that.
 
Marketing can feel like a chore – something you HAVE to do – and that word HAVE can make it feel like a noose around your business. The thing is, marketing shouldn’t feel that way. And when you have a campaign and strategy, it feels so much more purposeful and rewarding.

Do marketing campaigns work?

Whatever industry you’re in, some companies are struggling to get clients and then there are companies with more than they can support. They may all offer the same services and solve the same problems. 

Usually, the differentiating factors between those who are struggling with getting clients and those who are thriving include:

• How well they know their target audience
• Having a clear brand story and message to communicate with their clients in a way that invites their clients into a relationship with them
• Creating messaging around their services that make it simple to understand
• Using campaigns to attract multiple clients at the same time instead of chasing clients one at a time

If marketing campaigns didn’t work, multinational corporations like Coca-Cola, Apple, and Ryanair wouldn’t run them.

That’s why you need a marketing campaign plan and strategy to get more clients and revenue.

In this article, I’ll cover

• What a marketing campaign is
• Why you need a marketing campaign
• Marketing campaign tools to make your life and business easier
• How to run a marketing campaign step by step to get more clients

Ready to create a marketing campaign strategy? Then let’s begin.

What is considered a marketing campaign?

A marketing campaign is a tactical, organised approach to achieving a specific company end goal. Usually, you’ll design your marketing campaign to reach clients through a combination of different types of media, such as:

• Social Media
• Newspapers
• Influencer collaborations
• Radio
• Print
• Television
• Trade shows
• Public relations
• Events

Essentially, anything that is a promotional push for a specific end goal is considered a marketing campaign.

A campaign strategy can be as brief or as detailed as you want. Typically, the campaign plan and strategy will include:

• A plan for the marketing materials and assets you will create.
• The method you’ll use to share them with your ideal clients.
• Your company goals.
• How this campaign will contribute to achieving your company goals.
• The goals for the campaign itself.
• It will usually also include a marketing brief outlining the goals, ideal audience, region, budget, timeline, campaign narrative, story and theme.

I recommend creating a comprehensive marketing strategy and plan to keep you and your team on track. The time you spend on your plan now will pay off later.

Why do I need a marketing campaign?

Aim to carve out some time to audit your business goals to see where the gaps are that a marketing campaign could help you fill.

There are several reasons that a marketing campaign can help your business perform better. A marketing campaign of any sort has heaps of benefits. Often your it will achieve simultaneous benefits, including:

• Launching a new product or service
• Promoting an existing product or service
• Getting more clients
• Boosting brand awareness
• Gathering client feedback 
• Increasing client engagement and satisfaction
• Driving leads, sales and revenue
• Generating revenue
• Advertising an upcoming event
• Increasing customer lifetime value (CLTV)
• Reducing customer churn

Whether or not you see value in running a marketing campaign, there are specific points in your business life cycle when running a campaign becomes essential. Consider running a marketing campaign if:

• You need more clients
• You’ve never run a marketing campaign before
• You have no clear strategy or have inherited a marketing strategy 
• You’re rebranding or refreshing your brand
• You’re redoing your website
• You’ve narrowed your niche to a more specific audience
• You feel the need to move away from the “same old”
• You need to raise some cash in the short term
• You’ve changed your product or services

Determine your marketing campaign’s purpose

How you approach a marketing campaign will depend on your goals. Creating a marketing campaign that achieves several of the benefits I listed above is possible. However, it will be much more effective if you choose one or two to focus on.

Let’s say you want to figure out how to use a marketing campaign to get more clients; then, you’ll want to focus on identifying your clients’ primary problems. Whatever that problem is, make sure they’re willing to pay for the solution. Suppose that solution is because of their relationship with you, innovation, convenience, or price. You will be in a prime position to drive leads and revenue.

Seeing how you are reading a marketing blog, I’m going to write the rest of this guide as though you were running a marketing campaign. Whether you decide to do that or not, this guide will still help if you want to improve your marketing.

Marketing campaign tools to make your life and business easier

Digital and software tools are essential to a more straightforward marketing campaign and planning process. Rather than creating your campaign one day at a time, you can use tools to automate much of the process and schedule your campaign to suit your timeline.

Planning Tools

Here are some paid and free tools you can use to help with your marketing campaign strategy and outline:

• Trello

Trello is a great tool that helps you coordinate with team members and know which tasks are priorities. 

• Airtable

This tool is excellent for outlining all the content and captions you will share. And you can set it up so it’s in chronological order making it easy to follow along with your campaign timeline.

• Excel/Google Sheets

You can set up these free tools and easily share them with others.

• Pen and Paper!

Map out your campaign plan using a pen and paper. You could print off a content planner as your outline for dates, timelines, publishing etc.

Content Creation Tools

Use these tools to create marketing assets aligned with your brand and marketing playbook.

• Canva

Canva is one of my favourite tools for content creation. They have templates you can easily adjust to represent your brand guidelines. Whilst you can use Canva for free, I recommend going pro if you plan on marketing regularly.

• Freepik

Like Canva, this one offers free and paid options and is great for content creation.

SEO and Keyword Tools

Use these tools to get more reach from your marketing campaign to connect with more potential clients. Strategically include words in your campaign message that your audience type into Google to solve their problem.

• Answer The Public

You can do two free searches per day to help determine what questions your audience is asking.

• Ubersuggest 

This tool is a double whammy! They’ll tell you which areas of your site to improve for SEO and give you keywords to rank on Google.

Scheduling Tools

Depending on where you plan to show up as part of your marketing campaign strategy, scheduling tools can help you easily share your content in various locations and in different formats for your ideal clients to consume. Plus, it’s a great way to repurpose content throughout your campaign.

• Meta Business Suite

A free tool for Facebook and Instagram only. You can schedule stories, ads, posts and carousels here. 

• Buffer

With Buffer, you can post to every platform and schedule Reels to Instagram.

• Canva

Using Canva for content creation means you could double up and save money by using their scheduling tool.

A/B Testing Tools

A/B testing simply means creating two versions of one piece of content and measuring them to see which one performs best.

• Google Analytics

Do this for free with Google Analytics. Then share out the content that performs best.

Marketing campaign and strategy steps

It may seem like there’s tons of work involved with creating a marketing campaign. But it’s easier when you break it down into simple and manageable steps. And the end result is always worth it when your marketing campaign gets you more clients.

Use this cheat sheet as your guide.

#1 Campaign Planning – How to set your campaign goals and key performance indicators

Being realistic with the objectives you set for your campaign is a must. If you’re a million miles off where you want to be, one campaign in isolation will not likely bridge that gap. However, it will probably be a stepping stone in the right direction. Use this checklist to break down the goals and KPI’s of your campaign:

• Determine the purpose and goal of your campaign
• Decide how you will measure the success of your campaign 
• Determine your budget and how much to spend on each part of the campaign.
• Who are you targeting?
• What problem will you solve?
• What’s the theme or concept of your campaign?
• Who will do what?
• What marketing content do you need to create?
• How will your marketing content be created?
• Where will you promote your campaign?
• Will you use paid, earned, shared or owned media to reach your audience?
• How will you reach your audience
• How and when will you share your content?
• Who needs to be involved in making this campaign a success?
• What is the timeline for the campaign?
• What is the offer you will promote and drive during the campaign?
• How much is your offer?
• Is your offer affordable for your target audience?
• Why will they want it?
• How long will it be available for?
• Will you include any bundles or bonuses?
• What will make them act now?
• How will you create FOMO?
• What will the client’s journey be like after they buy?
• How we can ensure they don’t get buyer’s remorse?
• What are the required technology/software tools?
• What do we need to purchase or replace?

#2 How to leverage your marketing strategy and consumer behaviour

You don’t need to create a campaign that will serve everyone. You simply need a campaign that aims to serve a few. The best way to ensure your campaign is successful is to understand, reach and connect with those few by conducting market research. When you have a profound knowledge of your clients and market, that puts you in the position to dominate it.

Reach out to new/existing clients and ask questions to understand:

• What they want related to the problem you solve.
• What do those problems cost them financially, emotionally and physically?
• What would success look like for them if they got help via the solution you provide?
• What’s at stake if they don’t take action to solve this problem?
• The words they’d use to search for your services on Google.
• Where they hang out online and offline.
• What would prompt them to buy or invest now, and what would stop them?
• Are there different times of the year or things that happen in their lives that would make it difficult or impossible for them to go ahead
• Where or how do they currently solve this problem
• What keeps them up at night as it relates to the problem you solve

#3 Make your marketing campaign message clear, not clever

You can create a unique brand story and message specifically for your marketing campaign that will connect with the target clients. However, it shouldn’t deviate too much from your overall brand story. To support your campaign goals and KPI’s utilise what you learned from gathering customer insights. Use these questions as prompts to create a magnetic marketing message.

• What problem will you solve?
• What’s at stake if your clients don’t take this offer now?
• How can you demonstrate empathy during the campaign?
• What can you use to show your credibility and expertise?
• What does your audience need to know before they’ll buy from you?
• What fears or misconceptions might they have about the solution you provide to their problems?
• How will you share why your offer is needed?
• How will you portray the value of your offer?
• How will their lives be different after they solve the problem
• What calls to action will you use to drive results?
• Have you included storytelling?
• Does your message show that you care?
• How will you educate and entertain throughout the campaign to keep people engaged?
• What message will you share that signals your intention to launch something new?
• How will you ask people to signal interest ahead of your launch?
• Will someone who has never heard of us understand our message?
• If someone doesn’t buy, do you have a transitional call to action, such as a lead generator that captures their email address?
• Have you created a tagline for your campaign?
• Have you created a one-liner for your campaign?
• Have you created a message that delivers a paradigm shift?
• Does the text you’ve created in your captions match the images you’ve used?
• Have you made the next steps clear, so people know how to buy and what happens when they do?
• Have you included statistics to support your message or to communicate your experience?
• Have you checked your messaging for insider language/jargon?
• Does your messaging position your clients as the hero and you as their guide?
• Have you called out in your messaging your brand benefits?
• Does your messaging portray why you’re different or better than your competition?
• Have you used emotion in your message to describe how people will feel after solving their problem?
• Have you listed both benefits and features in your message?
• Have you created any large chunks of text that need to be edited and simplified?
• Have you used a mix of long and short-form copy/captions?
• Do all of your links on your campaign have the same call to action?
• Have you included a countdown message?
• Are you sharing too much information?
• Is all of your material honest and transparent?

#4 Marketing campaign assets and materials

There’s no point in adding to the marketing noise or blending in with the crowd. You need terrific assets and materials to match when you want a terrific campaign. Whether it’s your website or a social media post, make sure your designs align with your brand strategy and are fit for purpose.

For your marketing campaign, don’t be afraid to be creative, innovative and experimental with the content you create.

The types of assets and materials you may need include:

• Videos
• Graphics
• Stories
• Photography/Imagery
• Carousel Posts
• Banners
• Infographics
• Blogs
• Landing pages
• Emails
• Newsletters
• Updated Social Profiles
• PR outreach
• Influencers
• Podcasts
• Forum messaging
• Referral schemes
• Direct outreach
• Paid advertisements
• Press releases
• Media coverage
• Case Studies
• Articles
• Testimonials
• Ads
• Opt-in pages
• Opt-in forms
• Event locations
• Webinars
• Live Sessions
• Collaborations
• Presentations
• Handouts/workbooks
• eBooks/Guides
• TV ads/appearances
• Copywriting – captions, websites, lead generators, video scripts and more

#5 Campaign metrics to monitor and analyse

Determining the success of your campaign is difficult without knowing where you were before you started and where you ended up after the campaign finishes. Here are some of the metrics you may wish to keep a close eye on throughout:

• Emails open and click rates
• Email bounce rates
• Email unsubscribes 
• Email conversion rates
• Social media click-through rates
• Social media conversion rates
• Social media growth and follower rates
• Social media reach and impressions
• Social media engagements, comments, shares, and mentions
• Sales and pre-orders
• Special offers or coupons redeemed
• Completed online forms
• Website Traffic
• Opt-in rates
• Cost per click for paid social and digital ads
• Blog comments
• Press mentions
• Speaking engagement requests
• Traffic
• Sales and revenue figures
• New client numbers
• Event attendance
• Referrals
• Cost per conversion
• Cost per click
• Cost per opt-in

#6 How to review your campaign’s success

Campaigns can be tiresome when you do them over an extended period and when they include tight deadlines, long hours or lots of moving pieces. After the campaign is over, it’s worthwhile to take the time to look at the marketing campaign framework you implemented to see what you can learn from it.

• How will you know if your campaign worked?
• What will you do with the campaign data?
• What worked well that you will replicate next time?
• What were the magic moments?
• What tools or assets do we wish we’d had during this campaign?
• Which aspects of the campaign didn’t work so you won’t repeat them next time?
• What should you include next time you run a campaign?
• How could you have saved money?
• What did you learn about your audience?
• What did you learn about the channels you optimised for the campaign?
• What kind of feedback from clients would benefit you in the next campaign?

Having back-to-back campaigns is not easy. Yet, one campaign per year is likely not enough to build a long-term profitable business. Some campaigns won’t be successful. When that happens, it will impact your bottom line, your ego and your team’s morale, but unsuccessful campaigns shouldn’t suck the oxygen from your business either. To optimise campaigns, repetition and a growth mindset will be essential.

What does your next marketing campaign look like?

Deirdre Martin is a business mentor specialising in brand, marketing, sales, and customer experience. She is a keynote speaker, business award winner, and international bestselling author. For a FREE business breakthrough call, go to Deirdre’s calendar and find a time that works for you. Follow on LinkedIn.