How to Build a Digital Campaign that Speaks to Your Customers

Building Blocks of a Successful Digital Media Campaign

Many companies are engaged in highly self-focused marketing. They give customers plenty of information about who they are and what they’re doing, but they aren’t demonstrating clear value on their customers’ terms. As a result, customers are overlooking what those brands have to offer and why they should trust them.

Sound familiar? If your digital campaign strategies have been falling short, consider how you can make that essential shift to showcasing what you can offer your customers and why they should trust your brand.

The Shift: From Features to Outcomes

Often, the focus of your marketing campaign is on how your company works. As you put together your marketing plan, you’re thinking about the elements that set you apart, from the specific features you offer to how your brand functions on the back end. For the most part, however, customers don’t care about how you work. Rather, they care about what they gain from choosing your brand.

Self-referential marketing can be particularly damaging in competitive markets, where customers are seeing messaging from all sides. If you’re focused on explaining exactly why customers should choose you from your point of view, you’re missing out on the opportunity to let them know what value you can provide for them—and that may mean that your efforts are getting lost in the process.

Instead, create outcome-focused value propositions. Tell customers what they’ll get from choosing your brand—and why they should choose you over their competitors. In general, that’s because you can offer them something more: better outcomes, higher cost savings, or a more efficient solution that fits with their values. For example, Slack’s tagline notes that it can make people “more productive at work with less effort.” HelloFresh helps customers “change the way they eat.” These taglines focus on the specific value their brands can offer customers and, as a result, provides a higher degree of customer confidence.

 

The CRM Advantage

Choosing the right CRM is essential for creating digital marketing plans that are tailored to the needs of each customer. Start by using CRM data to segment your audiences so that you understand what each one is looking for. That allows you to personalize your outreach efforts to each segment and each individual customer’s needs. You can create higher-quality marketing materials that are specifically geared toward customers’ actual needs and preferences, which means more highly-targeted marketing that speaks more effectively to their goals and helps guide them through your sales funnel.

CRMs fuel smart targeting for ads, email, and sales follow-up. You can keep up with how customers have connected with your brand, what products they are interested in, and what information they’ve searched for on your website, as well as what ads, including emails, they have responded to in the past. Then, you can tailor future communications to those needs. In addition, your CRM can help show you when customers may have gone too long without connecting with your brand. You can then reconnect with them, bringing them back into your sales funnel instead of allowing them to turn to your competitors.

Building the Foundation for Effective Digital Campaigns

Are you ready to start building a more effective digital campaign? There are several steps to keep in mind.

 

1. Clarify Goals and Define KPIs

Before you start building your digital campaign, make sure you know what your goals are and what KPIs you’ll be taking into account. Your focus may be different depending on what you’re trying to accomplish with a specific campaign. For example, if you’re trying to generate more overall brand awareness, you may be specifically focused on how many people recognize and connect with your brand, while if you’re focusing on building your reach, you may want to focus on leads. Make sure you’re familiar with the difference between vanity metrics, like shares and views, and actual, concrete metrics like leads or conversions.

2. Profile Your Audience

Conduct a deep profile on your target audience. Make sure you know not only what industries you’re reaching out to, but also the specific roles you’re marketing to. What do they do? What is their decision-making power in the company or as an individual? In addition, carefully consider the triggers that drive decisions so that you know how to guide them through your sales funnel.

3. Map the Buyer’s Journey

A key part of building your digital campaign is mapping the buyer’s journey. You need to know what steps they’ll take along that process in order to establish clear touchpoints and opportunities to connect with the members of your target market. With that information, you can craft a digital marketing campaign that allows you to remain in contact with your leads and guide them through your sales funnel.

Crafting Messaging That Resonates

Create messaging that genuinely resonates with the members of your target market. Translate your solutions into customer outcomes. What do they actually accomplish? Is it cost savings? Improved efficiency? Solving a problem? Craft your messaging around those real solutions so that your customers understand the value your brand has to offer. Don’t forget about emotional relevance—decreased strain, for example—alongside operational benefits.

Use data-driven insights to help shape headlines, CTAs, and ad copy. As you get to know your target market better, you can shape messaging that is better aligned with their specific needs.

 

Creative and Channel Strategy

The messaging you craft should match the platform you’re using to share that information. LinkedIn, for example, is ideal for establishing your authority in your field, while Google allows you to craft messaging tailored to the specific intent of your target market. Your retargeted ads, on the other hand, are designed to nurture potential customers who have already connected with your brand in some way. By tailoring your marketing to those strategies, you better position yourself to meet the needs of your target audience.

Don’t forget the importance of simplicity! Clean visuals and sharp messaging drive better overall performance, allowing you to meet your goals more effectively.

Measure, Learn, Optimize

Setting up a digital marketing campaign isn’t a one-and-done effort. Instead, make sure you’re collecting data across ads, CRM, and analytics. You may want to watch things like:

• Cost per lead
• Conversion rates
• Pipeline attrition

Make sure you’re tracking these data points over time and making regular changes for optimal performance.

Quick-Start Checklist

Ready to get started?

1. Conduct a CRM readiness assessment
2. Segment your audience
3. Map your message for different segments
4. Launch your campaign
5. Monitor performance and adapt as needed

Creating an effective digital campaign takes time and effort—especially in today’s fast-paced market, where you must personalize your content to the specific needs of your target audience. However, with time, you can tailor your digital campaign to those needs, increase your leads, and improve overall performance.

Ready to shift your marketing from features to outcomes and start seeing results? We’re here to help.