How to Create a Successful Digital Marketing Campaign: Step by Step Guide

You need more than a website and social media profiles where you share content whenever you feel like it. When it comes to online marketing, planning becomes even more important as there are various platforms and strategies to make the most of that platform. What works for websites might not work for social media or paid ads. 

You don’t need to be a digital marketing expert to generate positive results, though. With a well-thought-out campaign strategy, you’ll know how to spend your resources optimally. 

Here’s how to craft campaigns that go beyond customer acquisition to build lasting connections. 

 

What Is a Digital Marketing Campaign?

A digital marketing campaign is a coordinated series of actions and strategies that typically use various digital channels to promote a product, service, or brand. While it uses online platforms, its goal can extend to growing the offline presence of the business too. 

Some of these strategies include paid channels such as using pay-per-click ads (PPC), while other strategies like email marketing use unpaid platforms. 

The core components typically includes:

• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Social media marketing
• Email marketing
• Content marketing
• Digital ads

Traditional marketing campaigns, on the other hand, use print media, television, and radio. This means it’s more difficult to reach specific demographics and measure the results of the campaigns.  As such, these types of campaigns are usually less cost-effective, interactive, and adaptable. 

Because of digital marketing’s better targeting capabilities, personalization plays a key role in launching an online marketing campaign and presents one of the biggest opportunities. Influencer Marketing Hub’s Digital Marketing Benchmark Report 2024 found personalization to be a key strategic element in campaigns. 

38.5% of businesses prioritize personalization in their digital marketing strategy.

Main Goals of a Digital Marketing Campaign

Setting clear, measurable goals is crucial for any marketing campaign. After all, how are you going to determine if your campaign was successful or not?

Aside from ensuring that your marketing activity aligns with the objective of your company, having well-defined goals also makes it easier to optimize your strategies. This way, you have a chance to realize mid-campaign if it’s going off course and apply changes to help you reach (and possibly exceed) your initial goals.

Examples of common goals for campaigns include to:

• Generate leads
• Improve your organic reach
• Boost your website traffic
• Rank higher in the search results
• Increase your conversion rate
• Build brand awareness
• Grow your number of social media followers
• Establish your brand as a thought leader in its niche
• Increase your sales/revenue

Types of Digital Marketing Campaigns

There are various different types of digital marketing campaigns that you can create. Here are examples of the campaigns most commonly used, along with their unique features and typical purpose:

• Social Media Marketing: Involves using social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and TikTok to reach and engage with your audience. It offers unique features like advanced targeting and real-time interaction. Plus, high-quality content also has the potential to go viral. 
• Email Marketing: Involves sending targeted email messages to a list of subscribers to promote your product and nurture leads. It’s cost-effective and allows for a high level of personalization as tailored messages can be sent to specific segments of your email list. If your focus is on customer retention, email campaigns can be a great way to build and maintain those long-term relationships. 

• Content Marketing: Involves creating and sharing valuable, relevant content like blog posts, videos, infographics, and social media updates to attract and engage your target audience. In some cases, it can also be used for thought leadership. Its versatility is one of its standout features as content pieces can be repurposed for various platforms. 

• Influencer Marketing: Involves collaborating with individuals who have an engaged following on social media to promote your offering to their audience. Unlike other traditional and digital strategies, it’s more authentic which can help campaigns to generate a deeper level of trust. Plus, the content created can make excellent social proof.

• SEO: Involves optimizing your website using keyword research so that it ranks higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs). There are various types of SEO. For example, with an international marketing strategy, you’ll focus on international SEO over local SEO. Whichever route you go, know that it can take time to build. That said, as it results in long-term results it’s popular for building a strong online presence.  

• PPC: Involves placing paid ads on search engines and/or social media platforms. Unlike many other strategies, you pay only when someone clicks on your ad giving you much better control over your marketing budget. You can also expect to see results faster making it popular for time-sensitive campaigns promoting limited-time offers and seasonal promotions. 

What Do You Need to Consider Before Launching a Campaign?

Launching a digital marketing campaign without adequate preparation can result in missed opportunities and wasted resources. Before you launch a campaign, consider the following essential factors:

• Business objectives
• Your message
• Target audience
• The competitive landscape
• Available platforms
• Costs of digital marketing platforms and tools, content creation, content distribution etc. 
• Available budget
• Timeline

Knowing what you’re aiming to achieve and whom you’re trying to reach are crucial. Then, identifying your resources and potential challenges beforehand helps ensure your efforts will be strategic and targeted leading to better results and a stronger return on investment.

Key Steps For Creating a Digital Marketing Campaign

Many of these above-mentioned essential factors will mark a step in the process of bringing your campaign to life. You’ll see that it takes more than thinking briefly about your goals, market, and budget. Each of these will need to be tackled in-depth, often with the help of a full-service digital marketing company.

Define Your Goals

As mentioned earlier, setting goals is fundamental to the success of any campaign. It provides direction and a way to measure success. It’s so important that it deserves to be mentioned again.

Basically, ask yourself what you’re hoping to achieve by spending resources on a campaign. And, no, it doesn’t necessarily need to be to generate more sales.

Setting goals like increasing website traffic, enhancing brand awareness, generating leads, or improving customer engagement are equally important. Paying attention to these areas too will also have an impact on your bottom line at the end.

When defining your goals, they should be:

• Specific (e.g. listing what needs to be completed and by whom)
• Measurable (e.g. including a quantifiable element like the number of app downloads you want to generate)
• Achievable (e.g. increasing the app downloads by 10% instead of 1,000%)
• Relevant (e.g. focus on increasing app downloads instead of social media followers to launch your new loyalty app)
• Time-bound (e.g. increase app downloads by 10% in three months)

Identify Your Target Audience

A great benefit of digital campaigns is its targeting. To leverage this unique feature to its full potential, you need to know exactly who your target audience is. 

Three of the methods you can use to research your audience – analytics tools, surveys, and social media analytics.  

Once you have more insight into the different audience members, you can create buyer personas based on common traits. Your buyer persona should include basic information as well as personal characteristics and behavioral insights like:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Educational level
• Income range
• Job title and industry
• Goals
• Pain points
• Values
• Preferred communication channels
• Factors that influence purchasing choices

To tie all these details together, create a short narrative. Here’s an example of how to do that:

Daniel is a 38-year-old marketing manager at a mid-sized tech company. He is keen to explore artificial intelligence (AI) and is always on the lookout for tools that can streamline his workflow. He prefers reading written content like blog posts and whitepapers over watching videos and listening to podcasts. Social proof plays a key role in his purchasing decisions and he finds detailed product reviews and testimonials more helpful than free trials or product demos.

You can use these personas for audience segmentation allowing you to create highly personalized marketing messages. 

Conduct Market Research

When it’s time for market research, focus specifically on market trends and customer behavior. 

Market trends matter because they’ll help you to stay ahead of the competition and identify opportunities for innovation. By staying informed about market trends, you can anticipate shifts and adapt your strategies accordingly. 

Let’s take the skincare industry. Sustainability is currently one of the key market trends. Consumers are growing more interested in environmentally friendly options. 

Armed with this information, you can create a marketing campaign to announce a refill program, for example. This will resonate with your audience and help to show that you’re in tune with trends.

Then, understanding how your customers interact with your brand allows you to optimize their experience at every touch point. Customers expect personalized experiences tailored to their behavior. For example, if they prefer email newsletters over white papers, you can prioritize your content marketing campaigns accordingly.

Market research techniques and tools that you can use include:

• Competitor analysis
• SWOT analysis
• Google Trends
• Semrush

Develop a Content Strategy

While content marketing is regarded as a digital strategy in its own right, all digital marketing campaigns rely on content. As such you’ll need a content strategy, whether you’re busy with SEO or social media. 

A well-planned content strategy ensures consistency and effectiveness. 

Use your target audience and campaign goals to decide which content types will be right for your campaign. Examples of types of content that you can incorporate include:

• Blog posts
• Videos (short-form as well as long-form)
• Infographics
• Podcasts
• Social media posts 

While some content types are more visual than others, all content should incorporate visuals. 

Another way to create engaging content is to use storytelling and ensure that your specific target audience will find it informative and valuable. 

Choose Your Digital Channels

Another reason why it’s crucial to do target audience research first is because it will show you where your potential customers spend most of their time. 

Let’s say you’re targeting consumers in their late 20s or early 30s. In this case, you’ll have better luck with social media and search engine optimization than email marketing. According to the Digital 2024: Global Overview Report published in partnership with Meltwater and We Are Social, these are the top types of sites used by this age group.

Also, consider your campaign goals. For example, if that’s to grow your social media following, it will almost always involve posting on social media. If it’s to attract more organic website traffic, search engine optimization will be one of the digital channels. 

Aside from attracting different audiences, each channel also has its own strengths and weaknesses. Here’s a breakdown of how social media, email marketing, SEO, and PPC compare:

Social Media: Social media is cost-effective, interactive and has a wide reach. Though, managing the different social media accounts is time-consuming. Negative comments or reviews and frequent changes in algorithms can also put your brand’s visibility and reputation at risk. 

Email: As emails go straight to the intended recipient’s inbox, communication can be highly personal and direct. You can also use email marketing tools to automate campaigns. While automation capabilities can help you to save time, there are other time-consuming tasks involved. For example, it takes time to build an engaged list of subscribers, making it better for goals focused on long-term growth. 

Search Engine Optimization: You can attract audience members with high intent via search engines. If you optimize for local search specifically, it also allows you to attract customers in your immediate area. However, like with social media, you’re subject to algorithm changes. 

PPC: With pay-per-click marketing, your ads can reach target audiences searching for specific keywords on social media networks and the search engine results pages (SERPs). Aside from reaching a large audience, you can drive fast results which you can easily track. That said, there’s high competition for popular keywords, making this channel challenging.

 

	Pros	Cons
Social Media	✅ Cost-effective ✅ Interactive ✅ Wide reach	❌ Time-consuming ❌ Brand reputation is more at risk
Email Marketing	✅ Direct and personalized communication ✅ Many tasks can be automated	❌ Need an email list before you can start
SEO	✅ Easier to reach customers with high intent	❌ Slower results
PPC	✅ Generate fast results which are easier to track	❌ High competition for popular keywords

 

All in all, the best approach is to use a mix of channels. This way, you can reach a broader audience, reinforce your campaign message, and limit the impact that algorithmic changes can have on your visibility.  

Set Your Budget and Allocate Resources

A detailed budget is important for two main reasons. It helps to manage campaign costs and allocate your resources effectively. The first is key for avoiding overspending while the second helps to maximize your campaign’s impact.

Considering that over a quarter of marketers highlight a lack of budget as their biggest challenge, spending time on budgeting becomes even more crucial. 

25.4% of marketers list a lack of budget as their leading issue.

When planning your budget, consider the following:

• Your campaign KPIs
• Duration of the campaign
• Resources available 

These factors will help you to decide how to allocate your resources. For example, if growing organic reach is your main goal, you’ll prioritize activities like SEO that can impact it directly.

For short-term campaigns, you’ll probably spend more over a brief period of time. However, if you’re planning a long-term campaign, you’ll need to ensure that there’s a steady flow of resources to maintain the momentum.  

At the end of the day, it’s crucial to choose the most effective digital channel for your business goals and focus on that.

To give you an idea of how other marketers are allocating their budgets, here’s a look at where other marketers are spending most of their money.

Measuring Campaign Outcomes

The success of a marketing campaign hinges on more than just creativity and reach. It’s about measurable outcomes.

Understanding and analyzing these outcomes allows businesses to make informed decisions. It gives them an accurate idea of what worked and what didn’t. This way, they can optimize future campaigns based on data and instead of a hunch.

Plus, by measuring campaign in digital marketing outcomes religiously, you can track your performance over time.

If you neglect or skip this step, your income and market share will be impacted negatively. The time spent on the campaign would also have been wasted. So, rather spend a little bit of extra time measuring results than what you need to start all over again and without any data.

To do this, you’ll need to decide which key performance indicators (KPIs) you’ll want to use. Performance metrics commonly used to evaluate the performance of a campaign include:

• Conversion rates
• Click-through rates (CTRs)
• User engagement
• ROI
• Bounce rate
• Cost per click (CPC)
• Cost per acquisition (CPA)
• Customer lifetime value (CLV)

Data is at the core of effective analysis. These include web analytics and social media insights.

For example, setting up a tool like Google Analytics will give you great insight into how users interact with your website. This way, you can identify “new” traffic sources which can be incorporated into your next digital marketing campaign.

When studying your data, look for patterns. For example, if email marketing played a key role in your campaign, were there certain days that generated better CTRs? You can combine this with the data available on best times to send an email and find that sweet spot.

You’ll notice that measuring campaign outcomes hasn’t been listed as part of the above-mentioned steps. That’s because continuous monitoring is essential. Regularly review your KPIs to ensure your campaigns remain on track and make adjustments as needed.

Adjust your strategies to focus on what works. For example, if Facebook drives more conversions than Instagram, allocate more budget to that platform.

Experiment with different versions of your ads, landing pages, or emails to see which performs better. A/B testing can help you pinpoint the most effective elements of your campaigns. It can be as simple as changing the subject heading of your email newsletter and sending two versions to see which one generates a better open rate.

Examples of Successful Digital Marketing Campaigns

For examples of what a successful campaign looks like, you can check out results that we’ve generated for Urban Mavericks, Intellectsoft, and Nestlé.

For example, for Urban Mavericks, our campaign strategy relied heavily on content creation. The goal was to create visually-appealing, educational content that their audience of environmentally-conscious consumers would want to share. We used a mix of email marketing, social media marketing, influencer marketing, and paid ads (specifically on Instagram). 

We shared infographics via email as well as social media, showing how content can be repurposed to help stretch your marketing dollars. The result of this digital marketing campaign was that customer acquisition cost (CAC) decreased by $10 while conversion rate, the number of new leads and revenue growth all increased. 

Our work for Intellectsoft also focused heavily on social media. Their goal was to boost online visibility, brand awareness as well as digital engagement. 

Content marketing was also a key element to earn online engagement to help us reach this goal. Like in the case of Urban Mavericks, our content marketing strategy also focused on infographics, but in this case we felt that blog posts and videos were needed too. Over 200 content pieces were created!

For Nestlé, we had to target quite a different crowd, evidence of how we can flex and flow. The product marketing strategy for their Nestlé Cini Minis targeted energetic consumers between the ages of 13 and 27. Needless to say, much of our energy was spent on social media. Combining paid social with social media management, we could increase their engagement rate by 7 times.  

Conclusion

If there’s one thing that stands out when it comes to creating a marketing campaign, it’s the importance of research. Know your target audience and where they spend their time.

Find out what works for your competitors. And, if it’s not your first campaign, look back at your own results to see what has worked for you.

At the end of the day, the best approach is to use a combination of channels and strategies, irrespective of your goal. Whichever route you take, content will be foundational. So, when you budget, be sure that content creation gets enough resources.