Marketing campaign roadmap: A pathway to marketing success
There are several factors to consider when designing an effective marketing campaign. Here's why you need a roadmap to achieve those goals.
We all can agree that brilliant product ideas are the subject of inspiring conversations.
But it’s only talking until you have a valuable offering for consumers in hand that can be exchanged for money.
Before the money can happen, you must let your audience know about your offering.
(Seriously, consider the marketer who lost their job at the orange juice company because…they just couldn’t concentrate.)
Still here? Great!
So, here are reasons why you need to create a roadmap for your marketing campaign.
Achieve Your Goals with a Marketing Roadmap
With the right marketing roadmap, you will reach your audience.
In fact, failing to execute a marketing plan leaves you wide open to unpredictable results. A marketing campaign also gives you the benefit of arriving at a predetermined destination – your business goals as well as your objectives.
(Be like Yoda, who gets the most leads ever because…he uses the sales force.)
These are the basic steps along the journey:
- Determine the purpose of your marketing campaign.
- Outline your marketing plan as well as timelines for execution.
- Define your buyer persona.
- Review your competitors.
- Determine your marketing budget.
- Establish the metrics along your sales funnel.
- Develop your content.
- Choose your publishing channels.
- Get a roadmapping template.
Why Do an Integrated Marketing Campaign?
Marketing campaigns are initiated at a certain time as well as for a specific length for a variety of reasons. Once you decide on an overarching category, then you can get really granular about the details. (For example, the body of water that always gives the precise details is…the Specific Ocean.)
General categories for a marketing campaign include:
- Brand awareness
- Consumer engagement
- Generate sales as well as revenue
- Product launches as well as promotion
- Lead generation
- Website traffic
A Marketing Plan Keeps a Unified Focus
You have a talented marketing team. Wouldn’t it be great to know that each of your team members is on the same page with your marketing efforts as well as marketing goals? Of course, that’s a big YES! It’s one of the many great reasons we designed the Marketing Orchestration Platform for brands like yours. Our software also solves the #2 biggest challenge for marketers — the lack of a single, unified calendar to visualize content development, campaigns, as well as projects.
A Marketing Activities Template
The market can change rapidly as consumer trends and preferences shift. In fact, giving your team members a marketing plan that can be implemented through a roadmapping template ensures a stable base. (We are not referring to the least stable element which is…Pandemonium.)
It helps your marketers know:
- Where to start
- Where to adjust
- Variations in results
- How to repeat successful results
Marketing Timeframes
Another way to use a roadmapping template to support your marketing team is called timelining. This also allows you to see the chronology of your marketing plan over time. (We heard timeline jokes are popular on this…thread.)
Marketing timeframes help you see:
- Your objectives as well as strategies
- Completed action items and milestones
- Publishing schedule for content
- Issues that arose during a project
A Marketing Campaign Roadmap with Your Target Audience in Mind
We’ll try to break this to you gently – you cannot say “my product or service is for everyone.” To design an effective marketing campaign, you must decide who you are targeting. Additionally, your marketing roadmap must be for a specific audience. (Don’t be like the marketer who totally bombed at harvesting honey because…instead of extracting from the hive’s honey stores, he insisted on going B2B.)
Define Your Buyer Persona
Create your buyer persona by listing the characteristics of the person most likely to buy from you. (For example, the best way to start a marketing campaign for cat food is to…define your buyer purr-sona.)
Include these elements in your buyer persona:
- Demographic – age, gender, education, marital status, race, religion, occupation, income, as well as family size
- Geographic – country, region, state, city, neighborhood, and zip code
- Behavioral – real data based on how they have interacted with your brand in the past
- Psychographic – values, personality traits, lifestyle choices, interests, opinions, as well as motivations
Competitor Analysis
If you were about to enter a big match with an opposing football team, the first thing you would do is size them up. Knowing the advantages of your brand competitors allows you to mimic their strengths as well as find solutions where they are weak. (Consider Netflix whose biggest competition is…sleep.)
Determine Your Marketing Budget
This is where you must face some real facts. Get clear on the exact pricing for all types of marketing campaigns, the expected ROI, as well as how much of your budget you can assign to each.
Marketing Campaigns and Sales Funnels
Marketers also refer to the sales funnel as the buyer’s journey. It’s like casting out a wide net to draw in a large number of leads, nurturing them, filtering out the non-buyers, as well as ultimately converting some of your leads into customers.
Sales Funnel Metrics
Before you start your marketing campaigns, it’s also important to establish your KPIs. Your marketing efforts have measurable results as well as show how your audience is responding.
Sales funnel metrics cover:
- Audience reach
- Audience engagement
- Conversion rate
- Average sales
- Total sales
Nurturing Leads Through Digital Marketing
Measuring the results of your audience as they move forward on their buying journey shows you where gaps exist that need improvement. What’s more, adjusting your content at every stage increases your chances of deeply engaging your leads, accelerating their desire to convert.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is the execution of your marketing strategy. It is the creation as well as the distribution of online materials to stimulate interest in your brand’s offering.
It comes in many sizes and shapes:
- Longform articles
- Blog posts
- Case studies
- Infographics
- Reviews
- Image galleries and slideshares
- Online games, polls, as well as quizzes
- Social media posts
- Podcasts as well as webinars
- Live stream video events and chats
- PPC and CPM ads
Social Media and Channel Marketing
The purpose of channel marketing is to distribute your content to your audience, especially where they are spending their time online. On average, consumers spend over three hours a day on social media platforms. They also view other forms of digital content, such as websites, emails, as well as mobile apps. (So sad for the marketer who lost her job as a tap dancer because…she expected to get paid per click.)
Social Media Marketing
This is connecting with your audience on social media platforms to build awareness of your brand, engage with your customers, drive traffic to your website, as well as generate sales.
Important platforms for social media include:
- YouTube
- Snapchat
Email Marketing
Essentially, this is digital direct mail. It is a means to developing relationships with potential clients as well as strengthening current customer loyalty while promoting your products and services.
Search Engine Optimization
When you do an online search, there are certain words or keywords you use to find what you want. SEO is the science and art of strategically placing keywords on your website and in your content, to ensure your brand’s site pops up on the first page of search results. (An SEO marketer walked into a gym…gymnasium, fitness center, workout, exercise, bodybuilding, weightlifting, as well as aerobics…)
Public Relations
While marketing campaigns focus on promoting and selling your products as well as services, public relations is the strategy for maintaining a favorable view of your brand by the public. In fact, the two are closely intertwined. (Do you ever worry that you’re spending so much time on Facebook that you’re losing touch with people on Twitter? Seriously awful PR, really.)
These PR tools could be included in your overall marketing:
- Press releases
- Public service announcements
- Company announcements
- Speaking opportunities
- Relationships with influencers
- Crisis management
Branding in Marketing
Your brand is more than your visual identification such as your company logo as well as the color scheme. It’s also the messaging you want your stakeholders to get, covering your company values and personality. Marketing campaigns are often focused on short-term goals, while brand marketing allots more effort to long-term goals.
Offline Marketing
Digital marketing is not the only way of getting new customers, although you can use an online marketing campaign to promote your offline efforts. In fact, offline marketing leverages channels such as trade shows, television ads, radio ads, billboards, brochures, as well as other print media.
Why You Need Product Roadmap Software
As you can see, multiple activities are required for effective marketing. Roadmapping also keeps all the parts and your marketers working in harmony. An example is the paid CRM subscription by Hubspot. In fact, we offer a more robust, free template for managing your marketing campaigns. (Regrets for the marketing couple that called off their wedding because…they were not on the same landing page.)
Product roadmap software benefits your brand in many ways:
- Guide for executing your marketing strategy
- Streamlined project management
- Tracks deliverables to generate sales
- Keeps internal stakeholders in alignment
- Measures the impact of your marketing efforts
- Aids communication with external stakeholders
Run Your Marketing with Our Free Template
Finally, with our free template for roadmapping, you could almost execute your marketing strategy blindfolded. (We apologize for the bad puns and will henceforth send them to the punitentiary.) Technology maximizes productivity, so your team is free to build your brand as well as generate sales with success.
To see everything in action, sign up for complimentary access.
