Recently I had an email correspondence with one my brightest digital marketing students. He asked for advice on creating an AdWords campaign plan.
I told him the plan should include certain elements, and only them (it’s easy to make a long and useless plan, and difficult to do it short and useful).
Anyway, in the process I also told him how to make sure he gets the necessary information from the client. These four things I’d like to share with everyone looking for a crystal-clear marketing brief.
They are:
1. campaign goal
2. target group
3. budget
4. duration
First, you want to know the client’s goal. In general, it can direct response (sales) or indirect response (awareness). This affects two things:
- metrics you include as your KPIs — in other words, will you optimize for impressions, clicks, or conversions.
- channels you include — if the client wants direct response, search-engine advertising is usually more effective than social media (and vice versa).
The channel selection is the first thing to include into your campaign plan.
Second, you want the client’s understanding of the target group. This affects targeting – in search-engine advertising it’s the keywords you choose; in social media advertising it’s the demographic targeting; in display it’s the managed placements.
Based on this information, you want to make a list (of keywords / placements / demographic types). These targeting elements are the second thing to include into your campaign plan.
Third, the budget matters a great deal. It affects two things:
- how many channels to choose
- how to set daily budgets
The bigger the budget is, the more channels can be included in the campaign plan. It’s not always linear, however; e.g. when search volumes are high and the goal is direct response, it makes most sense to spend all on search. But generally, it’s possible to target several stages in customers’ purchase funnel (i.e., stages they go through prior to conversion).
Hence, the budget spend is the third thing to include into your campaign plan.
The daily budget you calculate by dividing the total budget with the number of channels and the duration (in days) of the campaign. At this point, you can allocate the budget in different ways, e.g. search = 2xsocial. It’s important to notice that in social and display you can usually spend as much money as you want, because the available ad inventory is in effect unlimited. But in search the spend is curbed by natural search volumes.
I’m into digital marketing, startups, platforms. Download my dissertation on startup dilemmas: http://goo.gl/QRc11f