If you’re just starting your company’s marketing efforts, it’s a good idea to think carefully about how to carry them out, where and when to broadcast advertising materials, and what target audience you want to reach. From this article, you will learn where to start when launching a new product or starting a marketing campaign for your company.
Where to start planning a marketing campaign?
When starting your advertising efforts, it’s worth considering:
- what you want to communicate to your audience,
- what your target audience is,
- where your potential customers might be,
- what your competitors are communicating, where they are appearing and what marketing tools they are using.
The message directed to your audience is extremely important. Often it is the one that determines the use of your offer. Therefore, it is worth considering what values should be associated with your product or service.
“Advertising is supposed to sell” – is a popular statement. Unfortunately, modern audiences are overstimulated by a huge number of advertising messages. There is even a phenomenon known as “banner blindness,” which involves ignoring ads because there are simply too many of them.
Accordingly, you can adopt one of two strategies:
- communicating a short and specific message that only informs about the offer,
- focusing on the values you want to be associated with your brand.
Depending on your industry and offer, choose the strategy that is more likely to achieve higher conversion rates.
Before scheduling an ad, it is necessary to analyze your target audience. You need to know who you are targeting with your message, and then tailor the content in such a way as to best interest and retain the potential customer with your ad and encourage them to take advantage of your offer.
In order for your advertising to be effective, it is necessary to choose the right broadcast locations. Only then will you be sure that the message reaches people who are genuinely interested in the product or service you are offering. Issuing ads in places where your customers are not present can lead to inefficient use of the budget and lack of expected results.
Before launching your first marketing campaign, it’s also a good idea to analyze your competitors’ activities – where they advertise, what they communicate and how they communicate it. Working on so-called benchmarks will allow you to better plan your campaign, avoiding mistakes that your competitors may have already made and tested.
Marketing strategy key to success
A marketing strategy is nothing more than a plan outlining what you want to achieve, along with a detailed description of all the next steps. Therefore, before launching a campaign, think about what goals you want to achieve and what channels you will use to communicate with your audience.
Also include in your strategy a schedule of activities – determine when and at what times the ads will be displayed. In addition, prepare descriptions of the tools that can support your goals. This will give you a clear picture of what to expect at the various stages of implementing the strategy.
What kind of advertising to choose?
Many entrepreneurs want to start marketing activities at the lowest possible cost, while expecting the best possible results. Such a combination is possible thanks to online advertising, which is relatively inexpensive, allows for optimization, precise targeting and makes it possible to measure results.
The first steps, which do not require a lot of money, include:
- creating and moderating a “My Business” business card on Google – its establishment, optimization and maintenance are free. However, it is worth paying attention to a few key aspects that can affect the display of your business card in high positions in the search engine and ensure that it conveys complete information to potential customers;
- maintaining social media profiles – currently the most popular platforms are Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Through these channels, you can establish relationships with customers and increase your brand’s visibility among new audiences. Choose those platforms where your potential customers are present, and then provide them with valuable and unique content on a regular basis;
- maintaining a company blog – this is a solution that does not require a large financial outlay, but requires having a person on the team who can create valuable content in accordance with SEO principles. Many companies use the support of marketing agencies or SEO agencies in this regard;
- taking care of a positive user experience (UX) on the website – make sure your website is intuitive, clear and visually appealing. Technical issues such as loading speed and proper operation of all functions are also important.
Other basic marketing activities you should start with to promote your business are:
- SEO (search engine optimization of a website),
- SEM (search engine marketing),
- Google Ads campaigns,
- paid campaigns in Meta Ads.
How to plan your first marketing budget?
Planning an advertising budget is not an easy task. Most often, the marketing department is responsible for it, and then the budget is approved by the accounting department and management. If you work in a company with such a structure, the budget planning process is clear. However, if you operate in a small company, where you perform more tasks than the people assigned to a specific department, it is worth looking at the budget from the perspective of each of these three structures. This approach will help you make an informed decision that takes into account the different points of view.
It is assumed that the marketing budget is between 5 and 10% of the company’s revenue. This is one of the most popular rules, but not the only one. You can allocate any part of the revenue to marketing – the main thing is that the amount should be adequate for the planned activities. A budget that is too low may prevent you from achieving all of your goals, or make your campaign have such limited visibility that it will not have the expected results.
A helpful tool for budget planning can be the calculation of CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) – the average revenue generated by one customer. This will give you an idea of how much you can spend on acquiring a new customer in a way that is profitable for the company.
First steps in promoting your company – summary
If you have gone through all the stages of planning your company’s first marketing campaign described above, you have a ready-made marketing plan. However, if not everything is clear to you, you need support in organizing activities or defining an advertising budget – contact us!
At Media In, we have a team of specialists at every stage of planning and implementing marketing campaigns. We help both large companies with a nationwide reach and small, local entrepreneurs to run effective campaigns.
