Why Start with Action Campaigns

The truth is that well-orchestrated marketing strategies should all begin with action campaigns. An action campaign presents a specific, clear message within a defined, and often short-term, time frame. It shouldn’t be confused with an awareness campaign, which is created primarily to increase your brand awareness.

Ideally, businesses should seek to combine action campaigns within their overall awareness campaign, giving them the best of both worlds. Awareness campaigns are great for branding, but without the combined presence of an action campaign, they can be slower moving and take time to see results. (Building a brand will always take some time!) An action campaign, on the other hand, promotes quick results and gives your business the ability to accurately measure and track your progress since they are confined to specific time periods. 

Examples of Action Campaigns

To best understand the benefits of action campaigns, let’s consider some specific situations where they make the most sense within the greater scope of your marketing campaign. 

• You’re Launching a New Product or Service. 

  When you have a product to launch or a new service to offer, your primary goal is to inform your audience and then drive sales. Consequently, action campaigns are ideal for product launches. An action campaign will go beyond simply informing your audience about your products or services and give them specific information on how to take action. In other words, it will gently push your audience in the right direction and tell them everything they need to know to become a buyer.

• You’re Hosting an Event.

  This type of action campaign can take place during a holiday-themed event or any time your business is an event sponsor. Such an affair can be a prime opportunity to market your business. A well-formulated action campaign will raise awareness of the event (and your brand), along with promoting registration, ticket sales, etc. This will ensure you have an audience to present to when the time comes. After all, you want a well-attended event, not an empty room.

• You’re Trying to Meet a Sales Goal.

  Another way you can implement an action campaign is to generate leads and meet various sales goals. An example of this can include using an action campaign to promote a new eBook, which brings consumers directly to your website where they offer their contact information in exchange for the download. The idea is to offer your customer something useful, while simultaneously generating leads.

• You’re Recruiting Employees.

  You want the very best when it comes to the talent you hire for your team’s roster. Recruiting employees isn’t as easy as it was in the past. Thankfully, action campaigns can be a way to encourage a new level of engagement and generate a higher quality of applicants.

• You’re Building a Social Media Following.

  Social media is an important element of any marketing strategy. A good action campaign will encourage visitors to go like your Facebook page, for example, perhaps by providing an incentive for doing so, resulting in a greater social media following.

• You’re Offering a Special or a Great Deal.

  In this situation, your product or service might not be new, but it’s now on sale. An action campaign works well to create urgency in the minds of consumers. You can use a deadline and say something like, “Free____with any purchase, only valid through the end of the month.”

• You’re Wanting to Increase Your Frequency.

   An action campaign can be useful even if you aren’t launching a new product or running a special deal. You can simply use it to increase your frequency by blasting your message in "overdrive" for the first three months after your overall campaign launch. Launching more ads via a timely action campaign builds momentum quickly and usually produces faster results than if you were to simply “stick to your normal advertising schedule.”

Your Next Step

We hope it's clear that action campaigns are the ideal start to any effective marketing plan. But not only can your business kick off your marketing strategy with action campaigns, it’s also a good idea to regularly implement them throughout your awareness campaign in order to give your sales the occasional “boost.”