14 Steps to Create a Successful Advertising Campaign

Every day, various advertising campaigns are created around us. We subconsciously become attracted to the brands without paying attention to them. From Coca-Cola campaigns to Jeeps and Toyota, etc., all of these are intended to reach a large target audience in a short amount of time. But a campaign simply does not succeed. Many factors affect the creation, design, and running of advertising campaigns.

Effective factors include before campaign execution (pre-production) and after the execution and during execution. In this section, we tried to acquaint you with the most important parts of the process of designing, creating, and running advertising campaigns.

Steps of Creating an Advertising Campaign

  1. Recognize the Current Situation or Analyze the Brand Position
  2. Campaign Targeting (Mission Determination)
  3. Define Target Market (Specifying Market)
  4. Specify the Target Location
  5. Product’s Service Life
  6. Select Promotional Messages
  7. Produce Promotional Content According to the Tone and Sound of the Brand and the Goals of the Campaign
  8. Advertising Media Selection
  9. Choose a Custom Release Time Planning
  10. Integrated Marketing Communications
  11. Campaign Budgeting
  12. Predicting Unexpected and Possible Events During the Campaign and Planning to Solve Possible Problems
  13. Content Schedule and Executive Calendar
  14. Measure Results

Recognize the Current Situation or Analyze the Brand Position

Each plan should be designed and developed according to the potential of that firm or organization as well as the Brand. Without full recognition of the organization and production and financial potential, a successful advertising plan cannot be considered. Therefore, in the first step, you have to review brand potential. It is best to answer these questions at this point:

  • What is the position of the brand in the market?
  • With the existing potentials, can we increase the brand’s market share by promoting?
  • Are previous customers satisfied with the brand’s services or products? How much this amount?
  • Should we change service or product delivery patterns to increase audience feedback or increase market share?
  • What has been the brand’s advertising history?
  • What advertising tools are available to the brand?
  • What opportunities do the brand face?
  • What threats cause the brand to lose its reputation and conclusions?
  • What are the brand’s competitive advantages?

A good advertising consultant, before thinking about income, should put himself in the place of the brand and the employer and see what is the best and most effective method! Understanding the current situation helps advertising consultants to provide the best plan for the advertising campaign to the employer and the brand.

Campaign Targeting Mission Determination

Campaign Targeting Mission Determination

Campaign Targeting (Mission Determination)

One of the most important parts of designing and creating advertising campaigns is goal setting. Targeting can include the following:

  • Attract new customers
  • Introduce a new product or service
  • Increase in Sales
  • Increase brand awareness
  • Increase market share
  • Increase communication with current customers
  • Expand the market or Develop new markets

What is the purpose of an advertising campaign? Considering that prominent brands sell more than other small and medium ones, we find that in the first stage, most campaigns are formulated to increase brand awareness or communication with current customers. Even when the campaign is aimed at introducing a new product or service, brand awareness is never forgotten. Because all brand owners have come to the conclusion that investing in branding brings them more sales and customers.

Define Target Market (Specifying Market)

To identify your target market, you need to know about competitors, customers, and the industry in which the brand is present. For this purpose, it is better to answer the following questions:

  • What gender are your customers?
  • What is the level of income of your customers?
  • What age group are your customers the most?
  • Where are your target customers most present?
  • What topics are your target customers most interested in? What are their characteristics?
  • Who are your main competitors?
  • What percentage of your market share do your competitors have?
  • Why did your brand audience choose your competitor to receive the product or service?
  • How has the industry and brand market been, is, and will be in the past, present, and future?
  • What is the best time to sell in this industry?

By answering these questions, you can identify your market. For more information on this and how to answer these questions, I suggest you read the article what is marketing.

Specify the Target Location

Specify the Target Location

Specify the Target Location

It is important to note that campaign targeting is based on geographical location. What areas you plan to target will influence the advertising message, the release time, and of course the advertising budget. Of course, this section includes market research, but due to the special importance of this issue (which is usually less considered), we removed it from the market section. Therefore, determine exactly in which city or cities and in which areas of those cities you intend to attract the target audience.

Product’s Service Life

When the purpose of a sales campaign or to introduce a product or service is to pay close attention to its life cycle. A product that is at the beginning of the process and needs a lot of awareness is different from the product that most people know. Paying attention to this issue can have a significant impact on cost and time and even conclusions.

Select Promotional Messages

To advertise any product or service, we need to examine the keywords to present that product. For example, if the goal is to introduce expensive jewelry, words such as expensive jewelry, luxury, and special can be part of the keywords. This type of keywords is one of the easiest ways to choose an advertising message. When defining an advertising message, you should note that:

  • The message should attract the target audience.
  • Define the message in line with the purpose of the campaign.
  • The message should contain the tone and sound of the brand.
  • The message should be simple, fluent, and short, and not complicated.

Unfortunately, in some advertising campaigns, hard and indirect messages are used to introduce the brand or product, which has a negative effect on the conclusion.

Promotional Content Creation

The most important thing is how to deliver the advertising message to the audience. One of the most important parts of this stage is to create promotional content including graphics, images, videos, and animations that can best deliver the message to the audience in the shortest time. The big mistake most companies make when it comes to advertising campaigns is not to take it seriously and focus more on media choice. While producing attractive and professional content, the conversion rate in advertising can be greatly increased. Here, we suggest that you be sure to see the examples of Advotisa in the production of animated advertisements and advertising videos.

Media Selection

Media Selection

Advertising Media Selection

Proper and purposeful use of advertising media is another important factor in creating a successful campaign. It has been seen that many advertising agencies since they have been more active in media have offered that media without thinking about the desired brand. It is a big mistake to come and choose the media regardless of the brand and its audience. For example, it has been observed many times that due to the attractive environment of Instagram, this social network has been selected as the main media while the brand’s customers are looking for it in other places or are present in other media.

Choose a Custom Release Time Planning

As choosing a medium can have a significant impact on the outcome of the campaign, choosing the right time to post advertising content in the media is also very important. The right timing can dramatically increase your ad visibility. For example, during Covid-19 quarantine, choosing a billboard seems like a silly decision. Because most businesses and activities are recessed and traffic is less. Or to sell a food product Lunch and dinner times are the best time to offer. These are just a few examples of the importance of timing in posting promotional content.

Integrated Marketing Communications

The definition given by Wikipedia to describe an advertising campaign places a lot of emphasis on integrated marketing communication. Integrating marketing communications, or IMC for short is a conceptual approach offered by most organizations to develop a strategic roadmap for marketing and advertising plans. IMC is developed as a strategy to manage the customer experience of advertising and marketing for a brand. The key to IMC integration is for better results for both the brand and the customers of a brand. This means that it tries to integrate all aspects of marketing and advertising: this includes sales advertising, advertising, public relations, direct marketing, and social media.

Campaign Budgeting

Campaign Budgeting

Campaign Budgeting

One of the most challenging parts of campaigning is pricing and budgeting. Organizations sometimes have a specific budget that is not matched to their goals. If a professional advertising consultant encounters this, he should offer simpler and cheaper marketing methods to the organization because advertising is one of the most expensive methods of offering goods and services.

Advertising costs and campaign budgeting are usually based on goals. If the goal of an organization is to sell 10,000 products and introduce the brand and product to 10 million people, it must spend a lot of money on advertising. Certainly, a budget of $1000 cannot be considered for this purpose. So if you are looking for a goal, evaluate how much you have to spend to achieve it. A good consultant will tell you what is the best solution based on your budget and the current state of your brand and what you should spend.

Note that the best way to budget a campaign is to estimate the cost according to the goals of the campaign.

Predicting Unexpected Events

You have to consider all the events and phenomena around the world and especially your country. For instance, there is a series of consequences in the US election. If your campaign is going to run at this time, you should be able to predict what opportunities and threats your ad campaign will face in any case. By anticipating these events, you can design basic solutions to deal with or use them to implement them if necessary.

Content Schedule and Executive Calendar

No advertising plan succeeds without planning. After reviewing all the points of the campaign, according to all the mentioned items, content, and advertising calendar should be compiled. This calendar states what should happen each day and what is the duty of each advertising department at that time. In this regard, you do not need expensive software to develop an advertising program. Excel and Google Calendar are the best options.

Measure Results

At the end of each advertising campaign, a thorough assessment of what happened should be done. It usually determines how many views, how many visitors, and how many audiences are engaged in each media. This measurement is to estimate the result that was initially mentioned in the goals section of the advertising campaign. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can help organizations figure out what happened to the campaign they ran.

Be careful not to fall into the trap of advertisers!

Unfortunately, some of the campaign designers are more concerned with the economics of the issue than with the mission. In principle, the following criteria are 5M:

  1. Mission
  2. Money
  3. Message
  4. Media
  5. Measurement

Some of the companies and advertising agencies, instead of thinking about the methods that have the lowest cost and the most feedback, utilize methods in which they provide the most services and thus the most profit. In fact, customers are looking for a mission, but companies and advertising agencies are thinking about money and budget. On the other hand, some companies have been seen to work only as project management, but their way to make more money is to offer heavy advertising programs to get more management rights, which means not focusing on effective advertising methods.

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