You might have the best product of service in the market. But if no one knows about it, you won’t attract leads. A well-planned campaign strategy is key to getting your brand and offering in front of the right people at the right time. But what exactly is a marketing campaign anyway?
In this essential guide, we’ll show you exactly how to create a successful campaign and turn potential customers into your biggest spenders. We’ll share examples of the most common types of marketing campaigns, different channels to use and how to set (and achieve) the campaign’s aim.
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The definition of a marketing campaign
A marketing campaign is a planned effort by a business or organisation to promote something – like a product, service, or idea – to a specific group of people. It usually involves a mix of messages shared through different channels (like social media, email marketing, paid ads, direct mail or events) over a set period of time.
The goal is to grab attention, spark interest and get people to take action. That action might be something like making a purchase, signing up to your mailing list or following you on a new social media platform.
In a nutshell, a marketing campaign is a coordinated push to get your message out there and make something happen.
Benefits of marketing campaigns
Marketing campaigns come with a bunch of real, practical benefits. Here are the big ones:
1. Building brand awareness
They help people know you exist. Whether you’re launching something new or reminding folks you’re still around, campaigns put your name in front of the right eyes.
Plus, using consistent messaging across different channels helps shape the way people see your brand, building trust and recognition over time.
2. Increasing sales or conversions
Good campaigns guide people towards action, like buying something, signing up, downloading, visiting, etc. They’re built to move the needle.
Campaigns also provide clear direction and focus for your marketing efforts. Instead of scattering money and time randomly, campaigns let you invest resources in a coordinated push, which usually leads to better returns.
3. Stand out to your target audience
A well-run campaign can help you stand out in a crowded market. Especially if your message hits home and others are just making noise.
Customers tend to use brands they know the most about, and consistent, creative campaigns are a great way to gain an edge over your competitors.
4. Trackable results
One of the best things about marketing campaigns is that they’re trackable. You can plan your goals from the get-go, and once the campaign has run its course see what worked, what didn’t, and use those insights to get sharper next time.
Types of marketing campaigns
Before you start planning a campaign, you need to know why you’re planning it. What are the goals of the activity? And how do they align with your broader business goals? For example, if you’ve noticed regular customers dropping off at the 12 month point, you might want to plan a campaign that re-engages them before they leave.
Here are some of the most common marketing campaign types based on purpose…
Brand awareness campaigns
A brand awareness campaign is a marketing strategy centred around increasing the visibility, recognition and impression of your brand in your target market. The goal is to make customers, or potential customers, more familiar with who you are and what you do.
This might include:
• Defining your brand messaging and tone of voice as part of brand guideline development
• Turning employees into brand ambassadors
• Engaging with your target audience on social media
• Making appearances at relevant events
• Featuring on guest articles and podcasts
• Running retargeting on pay per click ads
Customer acquisition campaigns
Customer acquisition is all about growing your customer base and planning tactics for attracting new leads. As a first step, you’ll need to identify who your potential customers are, creating a target persona to better understand their behaviour. For example, are they Googling questions about your product offering during typical work hours? Checking their Instagram feed on a Saturday morning?
The next step is nurturing that potential customer until they come sales ready, then striking while the iron is hot. This type of campaign might include:
• Running targeted social media adverts
• Creating valuable blog posts and videos to engage your target audience
• Sending promotional emails to new subscribers with deals and updates
• Partnering with other brands or affiliates to reach new audiences
Product launch campaigns
You’ve spent hours researching suppliers, crafting the perfect design, creating stunning packaging and finetuning pricing to take your new product to market. And… crickets. You’ve not sold a single unit. Why? You’ve missed the mark on your marketing.
A product launch campaign is all the marketing activity planned before, during and after the launch of a new product or service. It aims to build awareness, generate interest and drive sales. Here’s what might form part of your strategy:
• SEO content for your website category, product or service pages
• Pre-launch email and social campaigns to tease existing customers and build anticipation
• Broadcasting your launch event, digitally or in person
• Post-launch content and social marketing, customer support initiatives to continue driving engagement
Re-engagement (or win-back) campaigns
Research suggests that acquiring new customers costs five to 10 times more than selling to a current customer. So, before you start looking to generate brand new leads, it might be more cost-effective to re-engage your inactive customers first.
That’s where a re-engagement campaign comes in. This type of campaign is focused on winning back those customers who have stopped engaging with your brand. Here are some tactics to consider:
• Targeted emails or email sequences showing everything they’re missing out on
• Direct mail campaigns sent directly to their door
• More aggressive incentives like discounts or special offers
• Push notifications to app users
• Tailored ads designed to win back this specific audience segment
Customer retention & loyalty campaigns
Since acquisition can be costly, another great way to keep customers engaged and loyal (before they end up on your re-engagement list!) is through a retention campaign. This type of campaign is designed to build strong customer relationships in the long run, increasing their lifetime value and encouraging them to make repeat purchases.
Here’s what you could include in your customer retention campaign:
• A loyalty plan to encourage and reward repeat purchases
• Personalised communications
• Regular engagement through newsletters and organic social media
• Gathering customer feedback to improve their experience with you
• Social proof – feedback from customers who’ve already taken advantage of this scheme
Referral campaigns
This type of marketing campaign incentivises your existing customers to recommend your business to their network of friends, family and colleagues. They typically offer rewards to both the referee and referred customers when a successful referral leads to customer acquisition.
This typically includes:
• Launching a referral scheme
• Encouraging existing customers to enroll in the scheme – e.g., by creating social posts, blog posts, marketing emails and website banners introducing the scheme
• Creating a referral link or code to track a successful sale or sign up
• Rewarding the customers who have engaged with an incentive
Seasonal or event-based campaigns
Seasonal campaigns are used to promote products or services during a specific time of the year. Usually a short-term campaign, they are designed in alignment with spending habits and interests of consumers during those periods. For example, a Valentine’s Day campaign might feature a gift guide of your suitable products, or you might run 12 giveaways on the run up to Christmas.
Here’s what a seasonal campaign might look like:
• A dedicated landing page themed around the holiday
• A seasonal greeting card with a discount
• An email marketing campaign highlighting seasonal must-haves
• Refreshing your outdoor signage and banners design
• Attending fairs, markets, festivals or exhibitions that only happen at certain times of the year
Plan a marketing campaign in 8 steps
Planning a marketing campaign doesn’t have to be complicated. But it does need to be intentional. Whether you’re promoting a new product, trying to grow your audience or re-engaging past customers, a campaign gives your message structure and direction.
Here’s how to plan a campaign that gets results…
1. Start with a clear goal
Before you do anything else, answer this: What do you want to happen as a result of this campaign?
• Do you want more people to know your brand?
• Are you trying to drive sales of a specific product?
• Do you want people to sign up for your newsletter or book a call?
Set one clear, measurable goal. That goal will shape everything else, from the message to the channels you use.
2. Know your audience (like, really get under their skin)
You can’t market to “everyone.” Get specific.
• Who are you trying to reach?
• What do they care about?
• Where do they spend their time online?
• What problems are they trying to solve?
At Bubble, we start every single marketing campaign with indepth persona work to get to the bottom of who it is the campaign needs to reach. We work with our clients to find out what their target audience wants to achieve, the problem they want to solve, how they access their information, where they spend their time.
If you’re not sure, talk to a few real customers. Their answers are often better than anything you’ll find in a spreadsheet.
3. Craft your core message
What’s the one thing you want people to remember?
This is your campaign message – the hook, theme or idea that ties everything together. It should be simple, relevant to your audience and clearly connected to your goal.
Tip: If you can’t say it in one sentence, keep refining.
4. Choose your channels wisely
Don’t try to be everywhere, because your customers certainly aren’t. Choose the platforms that make the most sense for your audience and message:
• Social media (Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok)
• Email
• Paid ads
• Events or webinars
• Your website or blog
• Influencer partnerships
Focus on doing a few things well instead of spreading yourself thin.
5. Set a timeline and budget
Decide when your campaign will start and end. Will it run for two weeks? A month? A quarter?
Then figure out your budget. This includes paid ads, creative tools, freelance help, or anything else you need to bring the campaign to life. Keep some wiggle room for unexpected tweaks.
We’ve created a rough guide on how much businesses tend to spend on their marketing further down this page…
6. Create the content
Now it’s time to build the pieces:
• Ad copy or visuals
• Landing pages
• Social posts
• Emails
• Videos
• Graphics or animations
Make sure everything aligns with your core message and brand tone. And keep your goal in mind; every piece should point toward it.
7. Launch, monitor, adjust
Go live – and keep an eye on how things are going.
Check in regularly to track performance. Are people clicking? Buying? Signing up? If not, don’t panic, just tweak. Adjust headlines, images, targeting or timing.
Campaigns aren’t “set and forget.” The best ones are flexible.
8. Wrap up and learn
When it’s over, take time to review:
• What worked?
• What didn’t?
• What would you do differently next time?
Document your findings. Every campaign is a chance to learn and level up.
Big ideas. Big results.
Join the 600+ brands growing with Bubble – and start your marketing campaign today!
How to measure the impact of a marketing campaign
You planned your campaign, launched it and watched the clicks roll in. Great start! But now comes the important part: measuring what actually worked.
Measuring impact isn’t just about counting likes or opens. It’s about understanding whether the campaign moved the needle towards your goals. Here’s how to do that in a way that’s practical and meaningful.
1. Start with your campaign goal
Everything hinges on what you set out to achieve. Was your goal to increase sales? Get more newsletter signups? Raise awareness?
You can’t measure success without a clear goal. So before diving into the data, go back to the why behind your campaign. That’s the benchmark you’ll measure against.
2. Track the right metrics
If you’re looking at your data collection and it feels like you can’t see the wood for the trees, try focusing only on the metrics that tie directly to your goal.
Here are a few examples:
• For product or sales campaigns: conversion rate, revenue generated, average order value
• For awareness campaigns: reach, branded search volume, social shares
• For lead generation and re-engagement: number of signups, cost per lead, email open and click rates
• For engagement: time on site, return visits, content downloads
The right metrics will vary depending on your campaign type,but they should always point back to your main objective.
Remember to take a baseline so you can measure any uplift from your campaign.
3. Use UTM links and tracking tools
Want to know exactly where your traffic came from? Use UTM parameters (the little tags added to the end of URLs that track the source, medium, and campaign). You can build these using a UTM builder like Google’s ‘Campaign URL Builder’.
Pair this with tools like Google Analytics, HubSpot or your ad platform’s dashboard. They’ll show you how people interacted with your campaign and what paths they took.
4. Compare before and after
Sometimes the clearest way to measure impact is to look at what changed.
• Did website traffic increase after launch?
• Are more people buying, booking, or subscribing?
• Did customer behavior shift during the campaign period?
Remember that baseline you noted down during step 2? Compare it to your results (during and after). This helps isolate what impact the campaign may have had.
Don’t forget about the long-term impact of your campaign, either! Some campaigns don’t pay off instantly – maybe your awareness campaign didn’t boost sales today. But it did introduce thousands of people to your brand, which could lead to further growth. Set a calendar reminder and keep an eye on long-term metrics like:
• Increases in direct traffic
• Growth in social media following
• Better brand recall or engagement later on
For more useful tips and tricks, check out our essential guide to measuring digital marketing performance + the key metrics you should be tracking.
5. Calculate return on investment (ROI)
If you spent money on ads, content, or creative, you’ll want to know what you got back.
Use this simple formula:
ROI = (Revenue from campaign – Cost of campaign) / Cost of campaign
A positive ROI means you earned more than you spent. Even if you didn’t, the insights you gained might be worth it, especially if they help you improve next time.
FAQs
Here are the most commonly asked questions our marketing team gets asked all the time when it comes to planning and pulling off a successful campaign.
How long does a marketing campaign last?
It depends on the goal. A short-term promo might last a week. A product launch or brand awareness push could run for a month or longer. Most campaigns fall somewhere between 2 to 8 weeks, but there’s no fixed rule. Long enough to make an impact, short enough to stay focused and measurable.
How much does it cost to deliver a marketing campaign?
Typically, a business’s annual marketing campaign budget is between 7-10% of its revenue. However, startups and businesses going through rapid growth could allocate more (between 12 and 20%), whereas established businesses could spend less.
Here are some top tips for allocating budget for a marketing campaign:
• Start with your goal – don’t spend blindly.
• Break your budget into parts: content creation, ad spend, software/tools, freelance or agency help.
• Put the most money behind what drives results (e.g. if email converts better than Instagram, prioritise that).
• Leave a little buffer for unexpected tweaks or boosts.
• Track every penny so you know what’s worth repeating next time.
Marketing vs advertising campaigns: what’s the difference?
Marketing is the big picture – everything you do to promote your product or brand. Advertising is one piece of the puzzle, usually paid messages (like online ads, billboards, or TV spots) meant to reach people fast.
So essentially, all advertising is marketing, but not all marketing is advertising.
What’s the best channel for my campaign?
The best channel is wherever your audience actually pays attention.
• For professionals, try LinkedIn, email marketing or posters in commuting spaces like public transport
• For young consumers, TikTok or Instagram
• For repeat customers, your website, SMS or newsletters might work best
Go where your people are, not where you think you should be.
Where can I find examples of great marketing campaigns?
You can find examples of successful marketing campaigns over in our project portfolio! Whether it’s boosting brand presence at a global scale or reaching thousands of users on social media, we’ve worked on all kinds of campaigns.
What is an integrated marketing campaign?
An integrated marketing campaign is a multi-channel strategy that shares a unified brand message across a variety of channels. All marketing channels work together to reinforce the same message, boosting awareness and engagement for the target audience.
Thanks to their consistent messaging, integrated campaigns are found to be 31% more effective than posting on standalone channels.
How does a B2B marketing campaign work?
B2B (business-to-business) campaigns focus on reaching decision-makers at companies. That usually means:
• Longer sales cycles
• Educational content (like whitepapers, webinars, or demos)
• Clear, measurable value
The main goal for B2B marketing campaigns is to build trust, provide value, start conversations, and eventually, win a deal.
Can small businesses be successful with marketing campaigns?
Absolutely! Some of the best campaigns come from small teams with smart ideas, and some of the biggest brands were practically unheard of until their campaign launches.
You don’t need a massive budget to get attention. All you really need is a clear goal, the right message and a good understanding of your audience. Consistency and creativity often beat big spending.
Ready to launch your next marketing campaign?
Whether you’re starting from scratch or need help sharpening your strategy, we’re here to make it happen. From setting smart goals to picking the right channels, creating a standout message and measuring results, we’ll help you build a campaign that actually delivers.
Get in touch today to chat through your ideas with our friendly team of marketing campaign experts and kickstart your next project.
