Successful initiatives require attentiveness. The best marketing campaigns tend to have a manager who is responsible for overseeing day-to-day tasks in service of a larger goal. If a marketing campaign manager excels, they build brand awareness that leads to increased revenue.
What is campaign management?
Campaign management is the process of planning, implementing, evaluating, and optimizing a marketing campaign—a set of time-bound marketing activities intended to achieve a specific goal. Business owners use targeted campaigns to pursue specific marketing objectives that ladder up to their larger business goals, and they use campaign management to keep them on track.
How to manage a successful marketing campaign
Managing a marketing campaign is a lot of work—and, in some cases, a lot of different types of work. You can simplify the process by breaking it down into stages and strategically delegating tasks to team members when possible.
Here’s an overview of the four steps to managing an effective marketing campaign:
1. Plan your campaign
Campaign planning is a critical part of the campaign management process. It involves the following tasks:
- Setting goals
- Identifying key metrics
- Identifying target audiences
- Conducting audience research
- Setting campaign budgets
- Selecting marketing channels and tactics
- Developing key messages
- Identifying asset needs
- Setting a timeline
- Establishing roles and responsibilities
When you’re finished, you’ll have a comprehensive document that outlines your campaign purpose, strategy, and action steps.
2. Implement your campaign
Once you've finished your campaign plan, you’re ready to begin the content-creation
process and launch your campaign. Typically, campaign managers are responsible for monitoring the progress of workflows, reviewing and approving creative, and helping team members troubleshoot as needed.
3. Monitor performance
Once a campaign is live, campaign management involves reviewing published content and advertisements to confirm timely publication and correct display. Marketing campaign managers also regularly review performance data to evaluate campaign success to identify trends and opportunities for improvement.
Some marketing teams also build specific performance review dates into their campaign timeline during the planning process and assign an internal team member with the task of compiling performance data for review.
4. Optimize strategy
Once a campaign has accrued a meaningful amount of data, team members will formally review campaign performance and adjust strategies based on findings. This can involve adjusting strategy for low-performing tactics or even abandoning some tactics entirely.
For example, if a marketing team is seeing low engagement from its targeted audience on Instagram and better performance on TikTok, it may dig deeper into Instagram data to identify the source of the problem. If TikTok is performing well, the brand might choose to move more ad dollars to TikTok. It can then test this assumption during subsequent data review processes.
Benefits of campaign management
Effective marketing campaigns can boost profits and save you and your marketing team time in every stage of the campaign lifecycle. Here’s an overview of the benefits:
Increased return on investment
Effective marketing campaign management helps you select tactics appropriate for your campaign objectives, identify high- and low-performing marketing efforts, and adjust budget allocations based on outcomes. By attending to campaign management, you can calculate return on investment (ROI), making it easy to compare the value of marketing efforts and set targets for improvement.
Improved efficiency
Campaign management helps your entire team get on the same page about who is responsible for doing what (and at what point). Providing visibility into campaign workflows can help you identify and eliminate redundancies or inefficiencies in the planning, implementation, and review processes, reducing workloads and increasing the capacity of your team.
Better performance visibility
Setting concrete goals and reviewing performance data is a key part of the marketing campaign management process, which means that campaign management can help you identify and report successes and provide valuable insights into areas for improvement. You can use this information to adjust ongoing campaigns to improve results. You can also consult previous campaign information to extrapolate about what works for your company—or which tactics best support a particular business goal—and apply your findings to future campaigns.
What to look for in a marketing campaign management tool
- User-friendly interface
- Asset management tools
- Collaborative features
- Marketing automation
- Analytics and reporting features
- Integrations
- Lead management
Marketing campaign management software can simplify the campaign management process, providing superior organization and transparency and reducing your team’s administrative burden.
Here are key features to look for in a campaign management tool:
User-friendly interface
A great campaign management tool is intuitive and easy for team members to navigate. You can evaluate usability by testing key functions before purchasing a software subscription. In general, marketing campaign software should make it easier to complete common campaign tasks like submitting an item for review or notifying team members that a piece of content is ready for publication. If you find yourself wishing that you could just use email, you probably haven’t identified the best tool for your team.
Asset management tools
Marketing campaigns involve a lot of marketing collateral, including campaign plans, ad layouts, graphics, social media posts, blog posts, and other marketing content. Some tools streamline the management process by allowing you to store campaign assets directly in the management tool, making it easy for team members to locate and access items they need—and easy for campaign managers to maintain a centralized library.
Instead of including a link to an external drive or emailing a file, you can simply upload your asset to the management system along with supporting information such as notes and next steps.
Collaborative features
Many campaign management tools are designed to facilitate team collaboration. Look for a tool that allows team members to communicate within the platform and view the progress of a project through stages. For example, an email marketing campaign manager should be able to easily show the content manager how certain blog posts are performing in an email newsletter.
Some tools include in-platform chat functions and collaborative review tools, which can be particularly helpful for companies with large or distributed workforces. In some cases, you may also choose to grant access (or limited access) to your sales team, allowing them to use campaign performance data to anticipate future workflows.
Marketing automation
Some tools can also automate repetitive processes like notifying a team member when a piece of collateral lands in their court, emailing personalized marketing messages based on specific demographic or behavior triggers, or compiling performance data from publication channels. Selecting a tool with these functions can increase efficiency and reduce the administrative labor a campaign requires.
Analytics and reporting features
Some campaign management tools offer cross-channel reporting features, meaning that they can pull data from multiple channels and compile it into a report for your team to review. Selecting a tool with this option can make the critical process of reviewing performance data more efficient.
Integrations
Many tools offer integrations with ecommerce platforms and popular marketing channels—such as Instagram and Facebook. Look for a tool that offers the integrations you need. A tool that integrates with your content management system (CMS), for example, can assist with compiling website performance data—and if you plan to engage in social media marketing, a tool that integrates with social media platforms can help you schedule social posts and monitor social media campaign performance.
Lead management
Some tools can also aid in customer journey mapping, allowing you to visualize the progress of potential customers through marketing and sales funnels. Lead management functions can help you earn new customers, build customer loyalty, and improve retention among your existing customer base.
Campaign management FAQ
What does a campaign manager do?
Campaign managers are responsible for the entire lifecycle of a marketing campaign. They oversee all of the activities that go into planning, implementing, and monitoring effective campaigns.
Does Shopify offer campaign management?
Yes. Shopify tools can help you create and manage marketing campaigns.
What is the key to a successful campaign?
Successful marketing campaigns require clear objectives and KPIs, engaging content, and a strategic marketing mix.
What are the different types of marketing campaigns?
Popular types of marketing campaigns include:
