You just launched it — the campaign you’ve spent months planning, fine-tuning, and developing creative to support. Now what?
Some may say to let it run and check in after 60-90 days. While that’s kinda true (machine learning can take time!), your campaign shouldn’t be set aside until you dust it off for reporting. If you’ve spent time and resources to effectively plan and prepare, you should do the same to effectively manage it, too. But how?
It all starts before you launch. Start small; don’t jump headfirst into a full multi-channel or omnichannel approach. Plan for smaller-scale or single-channel efforts first so you can focus on testing based on audience engagement.
Then, identify your campaign goals and KPIs:
- Audience – Who are you trying to reach?
- Events – What action(s) do you want them to take?
- KPIs – Which metrics are the best indicators of success?
Firmly establishing these details and ensuring all KPI data is pulling properly before launch (coupled with the mindset that changes may be necessary for optimal performance) will position you for success when it comes to campaign monitoring and optimizations, since you’ll have the key parameters laid out in front of you. Otherwise, once your budget runs out, you’ll be looking back at a bunch of data that doesn’t mean anything, but could have.
Think of it this way: It’s like cooking your favorite meal (Italian, if you ask me). Once you tell Alexa to start playing, you should continuously stir the pasta rather than dancing around the kitchen until the water boils over. Okay, bad analogy—I’ll keep the creative copy to the copywriters—but you get it.
Once the campaign is live, let the data tell the story. Monitor performance closely and keep an eye out for these early warning signs indicating you may need to optimize:
- Audience – Are you not seeing key job tiles, companies, or other demographics in your outreach audience?
- Engagement – Are you seeing low engagement? This could be indicated across many metrics, including:
- CTR – While a lower click-through-rate (CTR) is common in awareness/outreach campaigns, a very low CTR indicates your ads aren’t resonating with the audience, preventing engagement.
- CPC/CPM – A high cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-thousand (CPM) can result from low-quality ads that aren’t driving enough traffic.
- Time on Site – People clicking on ads but not staying on your site indicates your ads are engaging, but the site content isn’t. Be sure your messaging is consistent and relevant across channels.
- Conversions – Are leads coming in, but not moving through the sales funnel? This may mean you’re not reaching the right people who can be nurtured into marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and sales qualified leads (SQLs).
Depending on what you’re seeing, it’s best to implement strategic, data-driven optimizations to course correct:
- Know Your Baseline – Are your KPI benchmarks SMART [Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound]? If you’re comparing against broad industry or platform benchmarks, you could be over- or under-inflating performance. Focus on what’s attainable and realistic for your brand based on historical data.
- Check Your Audience – If you’re not seeing target demographics, personas or accounts at the outreach level, you won’t see them at the retargeting/consideration or conversion levels either, so you’ll pull the wrong people down the funnel (or won’t pull anyone at all). When refining, don’t just add more demographic- or interest-based parameters; build a strong exclusions list to filter out unqualified audiences.
It Works: We recently launched a set of journey-based campaigns for a MedTech client. By bolstering our exclusion list with job titles we didn’t want to see at the outreachlevel, we were able to reach a more qualified audience. Within a few months, our primary target job title was in the conversion-level audience. - Adjust The Messaging – When you’re in the throes of product development and research, it can be easy to want to say everything at once. But, that’s likely not what your audience wants, especially in the top-of-funnel awareness stage. Focus on value-based content—with increasing value as your audience progresses down the funnel—and test new messaging to see what resonates.
- Reallocate Budget – If you’re still not seeing the results you want, consider shifting budget from one channel to another.
It Works: After a few months of exceptional impressions and clicks, but few qualified web visitors, we shifted a client’s budget from Google Display Remarketing to Google Demand Generation for more premium placements to better retarget their niche medtech audience. After only two months, the Demand Gen campaign achieved a 98% engagement rate from high-quality traffic. - Stay Scrappy – Mindset is important. Campaigns take work, so be ready to be nimble and make small, data-informed changes to hit your goals.
CAUTION! Be careful not to over-optimize. Changing too many things too quickly will block you from knowing what’s really working. Instead of overhauling your strategy, implement small tweaks to gather insights.
If I can recommend one thing, it’s to never, never, never give up. Seeing early warning signs, but not sure what to adjust? Let’s connect and map out a path forward.
