Marketing campaign management: your go-to guide

In a world of omnichannel marketing, it’s hard to know where to start. You probably have tons of ideas for programs and initiatives—new social media platforms to try, new email campaigns and audiences to experiment with, events, contests, virtual seminars, podcasts... 

Campaign management is a smart way to turn your never-ending idea list into focused, high-impact work. In this article, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know about managing marketing campaigns—from terminology and best practices, to campaign management systems and processes, and more.

What is campaign management?

First, the basics: a campaign is a focused set of marketing activities planned with a specific purpose in mind. Campaign management is the process of planning, executing, monitoring, and evaluating your efforts to ensure they perform well and are executed efficiently. This process encompasses the entire lifecycle and it’s critical to keep efforts on target and on (or under) budget.

Of course, as campaigns and channels have gotten more sophisticated, so have their management tools and techniques. We've evolved from relying on gut instinct or a see-what-happens mentality to consulting robust data and analytics to optimize, especially in enterprise marketing. (We’ll dive into these processes in more detail later.) This evolution has helped businesses get the best possible return on investment and remain competitive in tough markets.

What are the benefits of campaign management?

When you have multiple campaigns running simultaneously, all with their own unique goals, stakeholders, and dependencies, effective management is a necessity. Campaign management not only keeps marketing teams organized, but it also allows them to:

Why is campaign management important?

Given how complex campaigns are today, it’s hard to carry one out successfully without strong management processes. With the right approach, you and your team can:

With that in mind, it may be time to invest in campaign management processes and tools if you need to step up the quality of your marketing in general.

What does a campaign manager do?

A dedicated campaign manager is the key to running your process in an organized way that takes all teams into account. While this role may be defined differently from one organization to the next, campaign managers are generally responsible for the entire process. Here’s a granular look at what they do:

How to create a marketing campaign

Now that we know what campaign management is, why it’s important, and who should handle its many moving parts, let’s dive into the actual steps of managing an effective one.

Identify goals and metrics

Launching a campaign without knowing its objectives is like playing darts in the dark. It’s imprecise (and sometimes painful). Plus, it drives up costs, wastes precious time, and probably won’t give you the results leadership is looking for. Clear objectives allow you to monitor performance and proactively course-correct. Some example goals could be to:

Once you have clear goals, decide which metrics you need to monitor the measure performance and keep the project on track. For example, you might use the following metrics to track progress toward the example goals above:

Segment audiences

The better you understand your audience, the more successful your efforts will be. By separating your audience into unique segments, like demographics or consumption behaviors, you can target your marketing even more effectively. One of the best ways to do this is to create personas representing members of your ideal audience.

Target personas, which can range from lightweight descriptions to epically detailed dossiers, are often used to create a more complete picture. To get a holistic view of the actual humans you’re trying to connect with, gather information like:

Establish resources and budget

Another important step in the process is to get a realistic idea of how your existing resources—budget, team bandwidth, and the like—map back to your purpose and goals.

If you aren’t starting with a set budget, sit down with your leadership to create one. Look at historical channel and funnel performance to understand what kind of budget is needed to support your goals.

Similarly, you’ll need to understand your team’s capacity, which will depend on the importance of the campaign. If you have project managers, lean on them to provide a realistic timeline and don’t overextend your team’s bandwidth—both of which may result in a shoddy campaign that negatively impacts your brand.

Brainstorm content

Once you’ve aligned on goals, asked tough questions, and secured your resources, it’s time to unleash your team’s creativity. Many marketing teams kick off their planning with a team-wide brainstorm. This is a smart way to receive early buy-in and generate excitement from contributors, as well as come up with a long list of out-of-the-box ideas.

This isn’t the time to limit yourself—explore all channels and mediums before deciding which will best reach your target audience Here’s a non-exhaustive list of potential avenues to explore:

Once you’ve generated your ideas, it’s time to check in with your principal stakeholders again—does your final list align with their vision?

Create content

Next comes content creation—which is no small task. Content creation doesn’t just mean crafting work that lines up with strategic goals and generates leads; it also means managing processes and workflows so you don’t fall behind schedule.

Work with your team to clearly define things like owners, due dates, and review windows. At this point, you’ll want to use a campaign tracker—check out our marketing campaign template, our product launch template, or our content calendar template for inspiration.

Distribute content

To make sure your content isn’t just floating in the void, you need a high-level distribution plan across owned, earned, and paid channels. This plan should outline how your content will be shared and promoted across various channels to reach its target audience. 

For instance, after publishing, you may want a blog post to be posted across social channels, included in email newsletters, and promoted in paid digital campaigns. By creating a well-planned distribution strategy, you can maximize the impact of your marketing efforts.

Track and analyze results

Once your campaign goes live, it’s time to start crunching the numbers and evaluating your ongoing progress. Use regular reports to keep tabs on your key metrics, and share them with stakeholders frequently. You’ll want to plan ahead for periodic progress updates, and a holistic postmortem once the launch is complete.

The more organized your metrics tracking is, the easier it will be to present results to stakeholders. Here are some analytics to consider tracking and why they’re beneficial:

Types of marketing campaigns

Marketing campaigns can take on many forms, each with its own unique goals and strategies. For example, what works for an email likely won’t work as well for social media. Here are some examples of marketing campaigns, where they’re likely to succeed, and what tools to use to deploy them.

Email marketing campaign

Use to improve: Conversion rates, lead nurture, customer retention

This type of campaign may be an effective way to reach your audience and promote your products or services. 

Email marketing campaigns can also help you nurture existing customer relationships with consistent and personalized messaging. Your emails might include industry news, how-to guides, product updates, or exclusive discounts. 

When you consistently deliver your audience valuable content, you increase the likelihood of converting them into customers and retaining them. For a successful email marketing campaign, you’ll need:

Social media campaign

Use to improve: Brand awareness, engagement, reaching a new audience

A social media campaign is a great way to increase brand awareness and engage with readers. You can reach a large and diverse audience with social media platforms through paid or organic posts. With paid social media posts, you can also target your specific audience segments.

Create a dialogue and engage in conversations with your audience to build stronger relationships and increase customer loyalty. These campaigns are also a good way to gather feedback and find new ways to improve the customer experience. For a complete social media campaign, you’ll need:

Content marketing campaign

Use to improve: Lead generation, brand trust, website traffic, search visibility

Content marketing campaigns are a great way to provide your target audience with valuable and informative content. This content should answer common questions, address pain points, or provide practical tips to help establish your brand as a trusted, credible source. 

This not only leads to increased brand trust, but it can also help improve lead generation and drive traffic to your website. For the best content marketing campaign, you’ll need: 

Branding campaign

Use to improve: Brand awareness, brand loyalty, customer retention

This type of campaign helps establish or reinforce brand identity in the market. It can also help differentiate your product from competitors. Using strong storytelling, visuals, and messaging can establish a unique personality that leads to loyalty. 

For a standout branding campaign, you’ll need:

Product marketing campaign

Use to improve: Sales, product awareness

Product marketing is a great way to introduce a new product to the market and generate buzz and interest around it. It can help differentiate your product from the competition and communicate a unique value proposition to potential customers. 

Compelling messaging, visuals, and other marketing collateral can persuade potential customers to try your product, ultimately boosting sales and revenue. Additionally, building anticipation around the release of a product can create a sense of exclusivity or urgency around your product. For a well-planned product campaign, you’ll need: 

Features of a great campaign management tool

A robust marketing campaign management tool will streamline work, keep partners on the same page, simplify reporting, and free up time. Here are some of the most important features to look for when choosing a campaign management tool:

Even when all goes according to plan, marketing campaign management is an intricate, time-intensive process. But leveraging the right tool can make integrated marketing campaigns easy, and, dare we say it, fun.

Airtable offers marketing campaign managers a powerful platform that accelerates the full campaign lifecycle. Stay on top of all of your marketing processes and workflows, from establishing strategic goals and planning out resources to tracking content assets and compiling valuable reports.