3 Steps Every Brand and Agency Should Take to Launch a Digital Marketing Campaign

By
Mike Krass

on May 24, 2013

This post was created out of a conversation we had with a client recently when they blatantly told us:

That was it. No background on why paid search was chosen, how it had been used in the past or who made the ultimate decision to invest in paid search marketing at this point in time.

We backed this client out of the weeds and asked them a question in response:

This is a critical position for agencies to take to ensure that they launch a digital marketing campaign that will meet the brands needs & goals.

So, when brands plan digital marketing campaigns with their marketing agency, it’s imperative that they follow the three steps outlined below instead of simply throwing work their direction:

1. Client to Hold a Discovery Meeting

Brands should host a meeting with all internal stakeholders and agency partners to clearly outline  roles and responsibilities.

This is also a good time for the agency to ask questions around your brand, goals and past campaign performance.

The common questions we ask include:

2. Agency to Conduct Extensive Research

Once your agency has received your information download in the discovery meeting, we like to conduct our own extensive research to get a clear understanding of the task at hand.

This includes the following work on the agency front:

Conduct a Website Audit: 

Conduct a Marketing Channel Audit:

An Example of Agency Research for ‘Noise Canceling Headphones’

Let’s say your brand sells noise cancelling headphones and you tell us, your agency, to focus targeting exclusively to Apple users.

Two thoughts we have out of the gate:

With that being said, the target Apple user isn’t wrong, we’d just recommend including Android and Windows users as well!

Additionally, this is where Segmentation comes into play. Take a look at a few examples of audiences below:

Had we only listened to the instructions to target Apple users, we could have missed out on a large segment of potential customers!

3. Agency Strategy & Presentation

Once we’ve held the discovery meeting and then performed our own research, it’s up to the agency to pull their findings together and deliver a strategy that accomplishes the following:

We can’t put enough emphasis on this fact: This strategy is NOT TACTICAL.  Instead, it’s a high level presentation of what we want to accomplish and how we plan to do so, not including exact tactical parameters and budget.

Finally: This should be a conversation. A recommendation is never final, as you know your brand better then an agency ever could.

Listen, provide feedback and help us help you achieve your goals.