What is an advertising campaign and how do you create one?

Almost every entrepreneur is aware that advertising is a lever of commerce. If it is well thought out, it is truly powerful - it promotes the brand, its products and encourages potential customers to buy. Campaigns work particularly well. What are they and how can they help your business?

Advertising campaign - what is it?

An advertising campaign is a planned strategy of activities forming part of a company's marketing plan. The term is not limited to the use of individual Advertisement - means a series of ventures, all centred on the same idea and using the same slogan . The individual elements are designed to meet the stated objective by effectively reaching a specific target group.

What can we distinguish between the objectives of an advertising campaign? The most common are:

• increasing brand awareness;
• image building;
• acquisition of leads;
• increased consumer confidence in the brand;
• increasing traffic to the website;
• increasing sales.

Where to carry out advertising campaigns?

Advertising campaigns can be implemented using a variety of media channels, such as:

• radio;
• internet;
• TV;
• Prasa;
• outdoor.

Which ones provide good results? It depends. The answer may vary, for example, depending on how the company operates and its industry.

An idea for an advertising campaign - use the possibilities of InPost

With our capabilities you will create advanced advertising campaigns. What is worth finding out about? We are able to provide media such as:

• advertising on Parcel Machines® (wrapping the machines and displaying sponsored content on their screens);
• advertising in the Parcel Manager;
• product sampling;
• website banners.

In other words, we guarantee effective online and outdoor channels . We will find a solution tailored to your business needs and expectations.

What types of advertising campaigns are there?

An advertising campaign can be conducted both online and offline. The former refers to activities carried out exclusively in the virtual space, such as advertising on websites, e-mail marketing or advertisements in social media. On the other hand, the second group includes: campaigns on television, radio and in the press, posters and flyers and various events.

We can also divide advertising campaigns according to the intensity of the activities, i.e:

• impact campaign - focuses on sending frequent messages for a set period of time, followed by a period of 'silence' (lasting, for example, a month or more), after which the same messages are played with even greater intensity;
• permanent campaign - is run continuously and is characterised by a constant frequency of adverts;
• pulse campaign - messages have variable intensity, but the differences are not as great as in the first case.

It is good to properly plan all three - depending on the circumstances. The impact option can be considered particularly important. It is particularly useful when introducing new products and services.

How to create an effective advertising campaign? - stages, principles, assumptions

Even a good advertising campaign will not be effective if it is not properly planned from the outset. To increase the chances of success, it is worth considering the following steps in planning an advertising campaign:

• Competitor analysis and market research - before investing funds in promoting your products or services, it is worth checking demand. It is also important to know the strengths and weaknesses of the offer you want to advertise, and to be aware of your competitors and how they operate in the market.
• Accurate definition of the target group - this is an extremely important step, but one that is often unjustifiably overlooked in practice, and on which, among other things, the choice of message type and communication channel depends.
• Set a budget - this will put you in control of your finances and allocate funds more sensibly.
• Setting a target - as we mentioned, this can be a single objective. It is important that it is tailored to the brand's target audience.

If the above steps have been completed, it is time to move on to the creative part. One of the more important, and at the same time more difficult, steps is to creating a slogan . The most important message of the advertising campaign should be contained in a few words. It must be easy to remember and catch the ear.

At this stage, you are also faced with designing graphics and preparing appropriate advertising content. Both the text layer and the visual layer should be adapted to the a specific audience as well as a communication channel . The next step is developing a timetable for the display of advertising and determining in which media it will appear - these parameters depend on how much you want to spend on the campaign.

The final developed advertising campaign should see the light of day. Remember to continuously analyse and optimise its individual elements.

How do you test the effectiveness of an advertising campaign?

If you want to check whether the goal and objectives of an online advertising campaign have been met, then you need to keep up to date with the statistics. Effectiveness is mainly measured by the number (sometimes quality) of actions taken by the target group. Nevertheless, costs are also important. Find out about the most important indicators:

• CTR (Click Through Rate) - the so-called click-through rate. It defines the ratio of the number of clicks on an ad to the number of times it is displayed. A high click-through rate is advantageous, while too low a click-through rate may indicate that the adverts have not attracted enough interest to be clicked on;
• number of ad impressions - a parameter indicating how many times an advertisement has been displayed to users;
• conversion rate - an indicator expressed as a percentage of how many people performed the desired action, e.g. subscribed to a newsletter or bought a product;
• website traffic - determines how many people accessed the website by clicking on the ad;
• CPC (Cost Per Click) - i.e. the cost per ad click. If the indicator is too high, this may indicate a lot of competition or low ad quality;
• CPA (Cost Per Action) - i.e. the cost per conversion (action) performed;
• rejection rate - tells you how many users came to the website thanks to the advertisement, but left without taking any action. A high value may indicate that the website is not user-friendly.

There is no universal recipe for an effective advertising campaign. What has worked for one company will not necessarily work for another. This is why constant monitoring and analysis of activities are so important. Get to work!