How to create a Marketing Campaign.

Photo by Merakist on Unsplash

A year ago, I made the tough decision to close my four-year-old makeup artistry business. It was a painful choice, but sometimes, running a failing business can be even more painful. There were multiple reasons for my business’s failure, and one of the key factors was poor marketing. Back then, I thought that a great product would sell itself, and I often found myself blindly copying what others were doing in the industry without truly understanding why. At times, when I couldn’t simply copy and paste, I would find myself down in the dumps with my emotions. These were sad times, but we live and learn.

Fortunately, I’ve learned valuable lessons about creating effective marketing campaigns from Olabinjo, and today, I want to share those lessons with you through a real-life example — my own failed business. So, buckle down, people. While I’ll use a physical service as an example, these principles can be applied to both digital products and services.

For those new to the concept (welcome to the club), let’s start with a brief explanation of what a marketing campaign is:

What is a marketing campaign?

According to HubSpot, marketing campaigns are organized, strategic efforts to promote a specific company goal. Every business, regardless of size, can benefit from a well-planned marketing campaign.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s take a deep dive into the topic of the day.

How to create a marketing campaign:

1. Define your goal for your campaign:

What do you want to achieve from this campaign? Grow your client base? Get more followers? Sell more products? Whatever it might be, be sure it falls into one or more of these categories:

• Awareness
• Acquisition
• Activation
• Retention
• Revenue
• Referral.

I cannot overemphasize the importance of having a SMART goal. So, it’s okay to have a high-level goal at first, but ensure you break it down into smaller, SMART goals to make real progress.

Using my past business as an example:

My high-level goal would be to become a highly sought-after makeup artist. Some of my SMART goals would be as follows:

• Grow my social media following from 0 to 1000 followers and 2000 views in 3 months (Awareness)
• Fill up my September calendar with bookings worth a hundred thousand naira (100K) (Revenue)

2. Determine how you’ll measure success based on your goals:

Metrics will vary depending on your business. For mine, they included:
- Number of followers per month
- Number of leads (client inquiries)
- Number of bookings
- Frequency of inquiries
- Audience engagement with my posts (saves, shares, likes)

Milestones can also keep you motivated, such as celebrating reaching 300, 600, then 1000 followers.

3. Understand your product/service thoroughly — what does it do?

In my case, I ran a makeup artistry business where I only provided makeup services (no head wrapping also known as Gele tying or sales of products).

For digital products and startups, benefits are often mixed up with features, so let’s cite a startup, in this case, Ourpass. What does OurPass do? They provide financial services for small businesses — simple. It’s essential to spell this out clearly to avoid ambiguity.

4. What’s your business model — How does your business make money?

In my case, I earned by providing makeup services for women attending events. For OurPass, their revenue came from a share of every transaction made using their product.

5. Understand who the product serves:

In the past, I consistently made the mistake of saying my business was for all women (too generic). If you find yourself in this bucket, kindly create a persona so you do not have to shut down your business prematurely. This article should help you with persona creation.

A persona for my ideal customer

6. Put together a customer journey map:

This involves mapping out how your customers find solutions (your product/service) to their problem. You can create this map by asking present or potential customers some of these questions:
- How do they currently solve or manage the problem?
- How did they find the solution?
- If they’re not currently addressing the issue, what barriers are preventing them?

Remember, you can always probe deeper for more information.

Example:

For brevity, I only included a summary of my customer journey map but this template from HubSpot will help you structure the journey better.

• When my customers needed a makeup artist, they often went through various steps, including checking social media profiles of makeup artists, searching for makeup artists in their city, and asking friends or family for referrals.
• The final purchasing decision was made based on the quality and price of the service.
• For people who have never paid for Makeup services, most barriers are due to cash constraints, dislike for makeup, inability to find one that suits their preference, never needed to or ability to do their own makeup.

Analysing the barriers can reveal gaps but if you cannot find any gaps to fill, move on and focus on people who care about what you do already.

7. Create a marketing strategy document:

To create a strategy, it’s essential to think critically and answer questions like:

• Where are my customers: Find out where they hang out offline and online through research, not random guesses. Most of my customers went to the mall for fun, partied a lot, and bought food at a restaurant called item7. While for online presence, they could be found on the streets of twitter, snapchat, WhatsApp and Instagram. They also spend a significant amount of time on YouTube watching makeup videos for times when they wanted a quick but clean look for casual outings.
• How do they currently solve their problem? Understand your competition and existing solutions. Most of my current/potential clients paid a well-known or referred makeup artist to do it for them, or they do it themselves or have their friends do it when they are short on cash.
• What are your customer’s goals: They want to make a statement when they walk into an event/occasion.
• How does your product or service help them achieve those goals? I provide clean, skin like makeup that looks and feels like an enhancement of their natural features and lasts all day.
• How many potential customers are in your channels of choice? You can ask professionals in your field so you can glean from their experience, look at your current client base, rely on industry data but it’s ok to take a wild guess if you have exhausted all options. I would take a random guess that Instagram had about 2,000 potential customers.
• How much does it cost to acquire this customers? This particular portion requires a post of its own but a key tip to remember is that the customer lifetime value should be way higher than the acquisition cost.
• What unique insights do you have about the customer? I believe that everyone has something unique to offer, so it’s important to dig deep into the feedback your customers (and potential customers) provide. This feedback can come from comments on your social media posts, emails, and other interactions. Paying attention to these details can give you a competitive advantage. For instance, I received numerous compliments on my exceptional customer service, which made customers feel comfortable investing in my services. Additionally, many previous customers reached out to me for advice on skincare and makeup tips.

To better understand our customers and demonstrate that we have solutions to their problems, let’s synthesize the answers to the following questions together:

Channels

• Instagram
• TikTok
• WhatsApp (with the advent of WhatsApp channels, sending consistent valuable content will definitely keep you top of mind)
• Pinterest: This channel is underutilized and can be very helpful for beauty businesses.

What’s my unique value proposition.

Sweatproof, skin like and breathable makeup guaranteed to last all day long.

My Strategy

• Content marketing: In terms of content marketing, it’s important to note that it goes beyond simply posting pictures or videos. It involves sharing high-quality content that serves to educate, empower, or entertain your audience. As a makeup business, my focus would be on creating informative videos to help my customers learn how to achieve specific looks by themselves and make informed choices when purchasing high-quality products.
• Excellent customer service: This includes being pleasant and attentive both before and after bookings, publicly expressing gratitude on social media (unless the client prefers otherwise), maintaining a professional appearance, being punctual, and maintaining transparency throughout appointments. Moreover, offering tips and tools that can help makeup last longer, such as blotting paper and advice on dealing with unexpected tears (like using a cotton bud), is a thoughtful touch. To ensure ongoing improvement, regular check-ins and requests for feedback at the end of the day can be beneficial.
• Sharing testimonials and reviews: Posting or reposting images taken by clients on my Instagram, especially when they are delighted with the results. Showcasing the reactions of clients once their makeup is completed can serve as motivational content for potential customers, inspiring them to desire a similar experience.

PS: You can have great strategies and not still get any customers if your product/service is bad so fix up boo. Thank you.

8. Take action:

Now that you have your strategies on paper, it’s time to set a timeline (start and end date) and start implementing your plan. Whether it’s content marketing, advertising, or other tactics, take action to bring your strategy to life.

9. Don’t forget to measure:

The work doesn’t end with the campaign launch. Continuously measure your progress based on your key performance indicators (KPIs). It’s also helpful to track other metrics that may provide valuable insights.

10. Retro and post-mortem time:

I love retros so much, they can be heartbreaking, but they are also very eye opening and help you identify loopholes. My pastor says doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result is synonymous to madness, so do not skip that retro and postmortem analysis, it will save your business. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• Can my target audience be narrower or broader?
• Do I communicate my value proposition clearly?
• How long does it take for the customer to receive value from my product?
• Is my marketing strategy sustainable?
• Have I created the best medium to communicate to the prospective customer.
• Will I need to keep acquiring customers to gain or sustain revenue?
• How often do I expect customers to use my product?
• What is their average spend for my business?
• What competitive advantages do I have compared to other businesses in the same niche/industry?
• How will I respond to competitors’ strategy?

This article was put together to assimilate what I learned about marketing campaigns and channels from Olabinjo Adeniran during my time at Treford Africa. Feel free to leave a comment rating my understanding of the subject matter and any other insights you might have. Thank you, and don’t forget to leave at least 10 claps (or more if you are extremely impressed).

Little big updates: I turned 22 on September 21st, so here’s a picture of me looking fly. For collaborations, send me an email to krisidonije@gmail.com. Thank you.