You have 10 minutes to convince the person you are marketing to that they need your product or service. What would you say?

You set the price, of course. You have a budget in mind. You researched the person’s interests. You crafted an effective message that will inspire them to action. You even considered their interests as you designed the product or service. Now, it’s time to launch your marketing campaign and get results!

Before you begin your online marketing campaign, there are 10 things you need to consider.

1. Setting a budget and objectives

Decide both how much you are willing to spend on this campaign and what you want to achieve from it.

Establish a budget for your online marketing campaign before you begin. How much are you willing to spend on a social media campaign? How about SEO or PPC (Pay-per-click advertising)?

Your budget should include what you are willing to spend and what you are capable of spending. You should also set a target for your campaign. What do you hope to achieve? Perhaps you want to raise brand awareness. Perhaps you want to gain a certain number of new customers. Maybe you even want to increase your sales volume by x% within the next month.

Your budget and target should not be set in stone. If you are doing your campaign correctly, you will be able to measure the results and either adjust your budget or call it a day. If you are not able to achieve your budget and target, it might be time to reexamine your strategy. Are you doing enough social media? Are you spending enough on SEO? Should you focus more on online marketing and less on traditional marketing (billboards, newspaper adverts, radio adverts)? These are just some of the questions you need to ask yourself before you launch your campaign.

2. Create buyer persona and target audience

An online marketer or social media strategist will help you create buyer personas and target audiences to represent your ideal buyer. A buyer persona is a brief fictional character sketch of a person you are trying to sell a product or service to.

Creating a buyer persona and target audience takes a little bit of work, but it’s worth it. The more you know about your ideal customer, the more you can tailor your marketing strategy to appeal to them. For example, if you know that your ideal customer is a woman, between the ages of 25 and 45, who lives in a city, then you can develop marketing materials that will appeal to them. In this case, the fictional character sketch of your ideal customer would look something like this:

• She is a woman
• Between the ages of 25 and 45
• Lives in a city

Having a clear picture of who you are trying to reach is essential in marketing. It can be difficult to know what will work and what will not when you are bombarded with marketing messages every day. Having a clear picture of who you are trying to reach helps you target your marketing strategies more effectively. It also prevents you from wasting time and money on campaigns that are not working. Finally, having a clear picture of who you are trying to reach helps you measure the success of your campaigns. If you don’t know what will work and what will not, you won’t be able to determine the effectiveness of your campaign. For example, if your goal is to increase brand awareness and you know that young people are more likely to be interested in your product or service, you can design a social media campaign to focus on millennials.

3. Create compelling content

You have content for all sorts of platforms. From websites to blogs to podcasts and even videos. From text-based articles to infographics. The list of content options is endless.

There are two types of content. The first is purely informative, providing details about your product or service. This type of content will not compel anyone to take action. It is good for educating potential customers about your product or service, but it is not designed to appeal to anyone in particular. For example, you can have a blog post about the benefits of your product or service.

The second type of content is compelling. Compelling content is designed to appeal to your audience and compel them to take action. When someone visits your website or subscribes to your podcast, they are looking for information, but they are also hoping that you will offer some kind of value. As an online marketer, your job is to provide the value. To provide value, you can do this through marketing research, guest posts, videos, or even infographics. There are many different forms of compelling content.

4. Distribute your content widely

Once you have compelling content, it’s time to distribute it across the platforms you identified in the previous step. The more places your content is seen, the more likely it will be consumed. If someone is reading your blog post on a computer screen, they are more likely to be interested in your product or service. If someone is listening to your podcast, they are more likely to be interested in your product or service. Video content is becoming more and more popular, so make sure you distribute that content strategically as well. If someone is reading your content on a mobile device, they are more likely to purchase your product or service. Think about the places your content will be most effective. Create content plans, identifying the platforms you will use and the type of content you will produce.

5. Measure the success of your content strategy

In order to properly execute a content strategy, you will need to measure its success. There are many different metrics you can use to measure the effectiveness of your content marketing campaign. Some of the more popular ones are:

• ROI (Return on investment)
• CPC (Cost-per-click)
• CPM (Cost-per-mille)
• CTR (Click-through rate)
• TOV (Time on video)

Simply put, the ROI is how much money you are spending compared to how much you are making from the campaign. In this case, your ROI would be 100%. The CPC is how much you are paying to have someone click on your link or to view your content. In this case, your CPC would be $5. CPM is how much you are paying per 1,000 impressions. CTR is the amount of people who click on your link or content compared to the total number of people who viewed your content. Finally, TOV is the average time someone spends watching your video content.

You can utilize a tool like Google Analytics to easily track the results of your content strategy. With this tool, you can track the performance of every piece of content you publish, whether it is a video, an article, or a podcast. In addition, you can track the performance of every single link, advert, or button you put in place during the course of the campaign. This includes the text links on your website or social media accounts as well as any online marketplaces (like Amazon) where you have links. You can get a truly complete picture of the results of your content strategy with Google Analytics.

6. Review and assess the effectiveness of your content

Now that you have a clear picture of the results of your content strategy, you can review and assess its overall effectiveness. The first step in doing this is identifying what worked and what did not work. As you mentioned before, not all content will work for every marketer. Some content will be more effective for certain companies, products, or services. When you compare this to the amount you spent on content creation, you will have a clear picture of whether or not your content strategy was worth it. In the end, you want to establish a benchmark for future content creation endeavors.

7. Identify potential content issues

With your benchmark in mind, it’s time to identify potential content issues. Throughout the course of your campaign, you will encounter various challenges and problems. Some of these will be simple and straightforward, while others will be a bit more complex. As an experienced marketer, you will be able to identify which content issues are most important and will have the greatest impact on your content strategy. Once you have these, you can tackle them first. The rest of the content issues will follow suit. You can create a to-do list of all the issues you encounter during the course of your campaign. This will help you keep track of what you need to do and when you need to do it. You can also use this list to review and assess the effectiveness of your content strategy.