Successful digital marketing campaigns take planning. Or sheer luck, but let’s not rely on that shall we?
I work to the 2:2:2 rule. No one knows exactly where it came from, but it works for me and my clients. Whether you are launching a new product, promoting a special, or increasing your Christmas sales, you start your campaign two months from the date you need it to end.
Let’s take Christmas as an example. Your deadline for campaigning should be the last possible date you can rely on Australia Post (or your preferred courier) to deliver your product in time for 25 December. Or Christmas Day itself if you can offer immediate delivery to an email inbox to solve a last-minute gift.
Working on 2021 cutoff dates for Australia Post, means 13 December for most parts of Australia, so start your Christmas campaign in mid-October!
Two months out – Plan your digital campaign
Planning starts with determining your goal, target market, preferred social media platforms, a measure of success, and who is responsible for what.
Let’s assume you sell widgets that all 17-year-old boys will want for Christmas. A super quick plan might look like this:
- Goal – Sell 100 widgets
- Target market – Parents of 17-year-old boys (they have the money!)
- Preferred social media platforms – Facebook (41% of all Facebook users are aged 45 and over)
- Measure of success – Sell 100 widgets by Christmas
- Who is responsible – Outsource the campaign to The Social Nest (wait, really? Well, that’s just super smart of you!)
Next, still in planning, you need to prepare your marketing materials and create a schedule for your two-week digital campaign. Start by making all your digital images, videos, reels, and captions. Then I highly recommend scheduling most of your campaign well before the execution on whichever scheduling program you like best – Hootsuite (my personal choice), Sprout Social, Later (great for creating artistic Instagram Grids) or straight through Meta for Facebook and Instagram. You should also consider the content to include in your lives or stories during this time. You’ll thank yourself when the time comes.
PRO TIP: Use these first two months of your digital marketing campaign to start dropping teaser posts – a hint of what is coming. You can invite people to DM you for more information, create a Collection List on Instagram and use it to market directly to these interested people through stories during the Execution phase!
Two weeks – Execute your digital campaign
Executing a digital campaign takes work, even if you have already scheduled as much as possible for automatic posting. During execution you need to:
- Hang out in your own comments and messages as often as possible. If you respond to a comment immediately, it may lead to an immediate purchase and who doesn’t love that?
- Be brave and do a live (or even a daily live) and connect straight to your clients, answer questions on the spot, and let them in on little behind-the-scenes secrets. Keep it simple, short, and authentic; just showing up is half the secret.
- Boost posts and invest in paid advertising, even a little bit of well-targeted advertising can go a long way to boost your campaign sales.
Two days – Go hard, be everywhere, and make it happen
For the last two days of your digital marketing campaign, throw the basic rules of social media out the window and appear a couple of times a day in people’s newsfeeds. Go live a few times, reshare your business posts to your personal page, boost an extra post, share your post to a relevant group or two, and most importantly, make sure you do a great story each day.
If the offer is limited time only, or you are approaching your cutoff date for posting, be sure to let people know. They may have seen your softer marketing and intend to purchase; these little reminders can help get them across the purchasing line.
For more specific Christmas marketing ideas, check out my 12 days of social media at Christmas.
