Marketing campaigns are essential to spread awareness about your business and build your brand. The most effective way to put your organization in front of new eyes – and attract new customers – is through targeted marketing campaigns. 

This resource will provide a thorough overview of marketing campaigns. Continue reading to learn: 

• What a marketing campaign is 
• Types of marketing campaigns 
• Marketing campaign tactics 
• Components of a successful marketing campaign 
• How to create a marketing campaign 
• Why marketing campaigns are important 
• Examples of strong marketing campaigns 

What Is A Marketing Campaign?

A marketing campaign is a strategic sequence of steps and activities promoting your brand with a specific goal in mind. Marketing campaigns are organized and strategic – working to connect with the right audience for the intended goal. 

Many campaigns are cross-platform, combining multiple mediums including: 

• TV
• Radio 
• In-person events 
• Online marketing 
• Print advertisements

Targeted marketing campaigns achieve a clear objective. They also build an emotional connection with the audience to leave a lasting, memorable impact. By leveraging your brand identity, personality, and emotion, marketing campaigns guide your audience toward the desired action. 

While campaign-specific goals determine strategy, a strong campaign combines one or more marketing activities to move your brand closer to its overall marketing goals. Some businesses – especially larger corporations – have multiple marketing campaigns running at once. Each campaign targets a different goal, but they work together, contributing to the general marketing plan. 

Marketing Campaigns vs. Advertising Campaigns 

What’s the difference between marketing campaigns and advertising campaigns? It can be difficult to understand the difference, but there are small nuances. In general, advertising campaigns are one component under the larger umbrella of a marketing campaign. 

Type of Campaign	Purpose
Marketing Campaigns	Broader, long-term strategies to promote a brand, specific message, product, or service across several mediums. While some of the strategy incorporates paid media, marketing campaigns are a mix of organic and paid promotion.
Advertising Campaigns	Focused on short-term promotion and results. Ad campaigns rely on paying for a platform, medium, or space to promote your message.

Types Of Marketing Campaigns 

Multiple types of marketing campaigns work to achieve different goals. An overall marketing strategy defines your brand’s overarching plan, but campaigns target smaller, short-term initiatives. 

Different types of marketing campaigns include: 

• Brand development and brand awareness 
• Acquisition 
• Engagement 
• Brand loyalty and referral 
• Product marketing 
• Content marketing 
• Publicity 

In the sub-sections below, I’ll discuss each type of marketing campaign in greater detail. 

Brand Development and Brand Awareness Marketing Campaigns

Brand development and awareness campaigns are designed to introduce your brand to new audiences. They’re two independent types of campaigns that share similar qualities – brand development campaigns and brand awareness campaigns. 

Brand development campaigns introduce your brand to a broad audience – some may know you, some may not. These campaigns establish visibility and authority on topics through visual branding and thought leadership. There’s no purchase intent here – it’s focused on generating awareness about a brand and highlighting what sets you apart from competitors. The target audience in a brand development campaign isn’t ready to buy now, but might think of you later.

This type of campaign lays the foundation for conversion in later stages. The main point is to create an emotional reaction of some kind (humor, frustration, nostalgia) to connect with consumers and make an impression. It can be utilized by new brands looking to establish themselves or existing brands looking to expand. 

Brand awareness campaigns strengthen the awareness of a brand and its offerings. Regular brand awareness campaigns help maintain a brand’s popularity. 

Different types of brand development and brand awareness campaigns can include: 

• Brand launch 
• Rebranding
• Contest marketing 

Acquisition Marketing Campaign

Acquisition marketing campaigns are meant to persuade prospects to take a specific action. Some examples include providing contact information or making a purchase. This type of campaign is meant to quickly convert interested leads into paying customers. 

Engagement Marketing Campaign

Engagement marketing campaigns are meant to nurture meaningful relationships with existing and potential customers. 

They’re aimed at building trust through: 

• Personalized content 
• Inspiring stories 
• Solutions to customer concerns 
• Opportunities to give feedback 

This type of campaign helps keep customers engaged with your brand between purchases. 

Brand Loyalty and Referral Campaigns

Brand loyalty and referral campaigns encourage existing customers to become brand advocates. They incorporate exclusive, personalized experiences and promotions. 

In loyalty and referral campaigns, customers are incentivized to promote your brand to others. Some examples of campaigns include: 

• Loyalty programs that offer points, discounts, early access, or other rewards
• Rewards and incentives like discounts, free products, and exclusive access
• Community building that creates a sense of belonging and fosters interaction among customers
• Soliciting feedback and engagement to show the brand values customers’ opinions 

Product Marketing Campaigns

Product marketing campaigns are aimed at marketing specific products or services with the intention of increasing sales. 

A few examples of product marketing campaigns include: 

• Product launch: A campaign to introduce a new product or service in the market. It’s used to increase awareness of the product and emphasize why customers need it.
• Seasonal push: A campaign used to promote a seasonal product, sale, or service. 
• Upsell campaigns: Used to push higher-value or premium products instead of their initial purchase intent. 
• Cross-sell campaigns: Pushing complementary products or services you provide along with their initial purchase.

Content Marketing Campaigns

Content marketing campaigns serve relevant and useful content to your audience. It involves solving the consumer’s problem, showing how your services can help. 

Content marketing campaigns are often multi-platform. You start with a message – usually written copy – and repurpose it across design, audio, and video on multiple platforms and formats. 

This type of campaign is big for search engine optimization (SEO) and establishing authority or thought leadership in your industry. 

Publicity Marketing Campaigns

Publicity marketing campaigns, similar to public relations, create brand awareness and social proof using media news stories and references. Newsjacking is a form of publicity marketing where you inject your brand into a breaking news story with timely and relevant content. 

This type of marketing campaign is about reaching out to journalists and other external websites with press releases. It’s essentially using the press to promote your brand. Unlike traditional advertising, this appears “organic” although it’s paid and planned. 

Marketing Campaign Tactics

Where types of campaigns set overarching strategies and goals, tactics are vehicles to push the message to consumers. 

Common marketing campaign tactics include: 

• Email marketing 
• Social media 
• Direct mail 
• Online marketing 
• Traditional advertising 
• User-generated content (UGC)
• Influencer and affiliate marketing 
• Visual marketing 
• Event marketing

I’ll expand upon each tactic in greater detail in the subsections below. 

Email Marketing 

Email marketing uses emails to push your campaign. Accounting for about 80% of all outbound marketing messaging, email gives customers valuable information regularly. It can be used to inform customers of sales, offer coupons or discounts, or promote new products. 

Email gives customers personalized content and helps collect feedback through surveys and questionnaires. It also provides first-party data and helps with lead generation, brand awareness, and engagement between purchases – nurturing a connection with your audience.  

You own your email list, so you don’t have to rely on catering to social media platforms or algorithmic changes. Most importantly, email is relatively low-cost. 

Social Media

Social media is used to promote your brand – or specific products or services – on various platforms. It involves targeting specific audiences based on demographics and online behaviors. Your social media marketing is made up of content that promotes, educates, entertains, and/or inspires. 

Social media is a vehicle that pushes customers further down your sales funnel and allows them to engage with your channels at various stages of the buying process. It’s a way to get quantitative and qualitative customer feedback. 

Direct Mail 

Direct mail marketing involves sending physical mail to customers. This includes: 

• Postcards
• Letters
• Brochures
• Catalogs, or
• Gift boxes

Sending direct mail allows potential customers to see and touch marketing materials, putting your brand in their hands through an interactive experience. It’s also the third-highest ROI as a campaign medium.

Online Marketing 

Online marketing campaigns utilize several tactics, including paid search ads and organic search optimization. 

Paid search marketing appears in search engines and targets customers for different reasons. There are two types of paid search marketing: 

• Pay-per-click (PPC): Bid on keywords that are relevant to your audience and push “sponsored” ads at the top or bottom of the search engine results page (SERP). 
• Display ads: Visual content placed on relevant websites or platforms. Content includes banners, images, and videos to promote products, services, or brands

Organic search marketing doesn’t require paying for ads, but you invest time and money to achieve success. 

• Search engine optimization (SEO) is publishing content using SEO best practices to rank on search pages organically. As I mentioned, this doesn’t require paying, but you have to work harder for visibility on the first page. It involves analyzing what people want to know and the words they use to search for it. 

Traditional Advertising

Some marketing campaigns rely on conventional advertising techniques. These techniques include: 

• Television 
• Radio
• Magazines 
• Billboards
• Other mediums 

This type of campaign is usually focused on brand awareness or product/service marketing. 

User-Generated Content (UGC)

User-generated content (UGC) is when your audience creates content for you. When users generate content, it makes it more likely that their followers will view and potentially follow your brand. 

The best UGC trends go viral – that’s part of the goal of UGC, depending on the specific campaign. 

Another form of UGC involves creating a forum where customers can help each other out and answer questions. This is a good way to conduct customer research and gives your company an idea of common problems while bringing your customer base together. 

Influencer and Affiliate Marketing 

Influencer and affiliate marketing involve using influencers – or affiliates – to push your product and brand. It can include social media influencers posting about your product or brand. 

This type of marketing can also include affiliate blogging. That’s when you have bloggers provide a link or unique code in their posts promoting your product. 

Visual Marketing 

Visual marketing is the use of professional photography and video content to market your brand or a product/service. It plays a role in several of the previously mentioned tactics – in 2025, visual marketing is the most effective way of marketing. 

Visual marketing can be an individual campaign or its own overall marketing strategy. 

Event Marketing 

Event marketing is opening your business to engagement with potential customers and partners. 

Some examples of event marketing include: 

• Hosting a workshop
• Purchasing a tablet or demo products 
• Presenting a series of seminars in-store 
• Sponsoring a local event 

This type of marketing campaign builds short and long-term relationships and earning potential. 

What’s In A Marketing Campaign?: Components of a Successful Plan

Now you understand different types of marketing campaigns and tactics for spreading the message. But what goes into a marketing campaign? Several components make up a successful marketing campaign, including: 

• Goals and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) 
• Message or Purpose 
• Assets 
• Content Format 
• Channel/Medium
• Execution Plan 
• Budget 

I’ll break down each component in the subsections below. 

Goals and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Goals and KPIs are essential to guide and assess a marketing campaign. 

When defining a goal, you’re determining what the campaign is trying to achieve. You need to set specific, measurable goals. One of the most common methods is setting SMART goals. SMART goals are: 

• Specific 
• Measurable
• Achievable 
• Relevant, and 
• Time-bound 

This method of goal-setting avoids vagueness and makes it easy to track and adjust goals. 

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are defined metrics to assess the success of your campaign. Different campaigns require different KPIs. For example, product marketing campaigns set KPIs of sales data, while brand awareness might set organic search impressions and reach as KPIs. 

Message or Purpose

Your message or purpose is the “why” behind your campaign. This is less internally focused and more centered around the message you push to consumers through your campaign. 

Assets

Creative assets are the driving force behind your campaign and how you spread your message. 

Assets include: 

• Copy 
• Visuals 
• Video 
• Any free downloadable 
• Website updates
• Any other assets

Content Format

You have to determine the type of content you’ll create for the campaign. Reuse the same content in multiple formats to get the most out of your investment, depending on the campaign. 

Start with a written message, and you can reuse it for: 

• Copy 
• Blogs
• Images 
• Videos
• Infographics
• Podcasts
• Downloadable resources
• More

Channel/Medium 

The channel and medium you select are where your content and messaging will be distributed. This depends on the purpose of your campaign and what you hope to accomplish. 

Multiple channels or mediums can drive the same marketing campaign. 

Execution Plan

The execution plan is your project plan and how you intend to complete your campaign. You have to ask yourself: Who are the individuals who will get the job done?

This is where you define and designate assignments such as: 

• Copywriting 
• Design
• Media buying 
• Reporting 

In this phase, you have to consider where you’ll need to outsource – whether you hire freelancers or partner with an agency. 

One of the most important parts of an execution plan is setting timelines and milestones to track execution. 

Budget

Your marketing campaign budget is how much you allot for resources and external costs to create and maintain it. 

That includes: 

• Hiring agencies and freelancers
• Cost of creating content 
• Advertising spend  

It’s a combination of internal resources, external resources, and hard costs. You need to track progress throughout the campaign to make sure spending doesn’t go over budget. 

How To Create A Marketing Campaign

With an understanding of the strategies and tactics, and knowledge of what goes into a marketing campaign, it’s time for the meat of this resource – how to create a marketing campaign. 

Here are the key steps for a marketing campaign: 

• Understand the scope and elements 
• Determine your budget
• Set a clear purpose, objectives, and goals
• Establish metrics to measure success
• Identify your target audience 
• Create a strategy, message, and creative assets
• Determine what mediums or channels you’ll use
• Set a timeline
• Review your campaign for improvements
• Launch your campaign 
• Monitor performance and success

In the sections below, I’ll break each step down in greater detail. While this guide is in chronological order, many of the steps play off each other. You should always consider the full scope of your campaign when tackling each phase. 

Understand the Scope and Elements

The scope of your campaign provides direction and keeps your team accountable. First, define the overall goal of the campaign. This ensures you stay on track and don’t fall off. 

Along with your goal, you should draft a mission statement. What is your marketing campaign striving to achieve and why?

You should come out of this initial phase with an understanding of what’s to come, including: 

• Planning your campaign 
• Creating and distributing assets
• Assessing your success and analyzing data for future campaigns

Determine Your Budget

One of the most important aspects of your marketing campaign that impacts every step beyond is the process of determining your total budget. 

You should research price points for key needs to estimate your total costs. For example, a visual marketing campaign involves hiring a professional photographer. Consider all content creation for the campaign and the cost to create assets. 

Also consider additional costs outside of content creation, like a copywriter’s fee, paying influencers, or the costs of employing staff for the campaign. 

Budget varies by industry, business size, campaign priority, and other factors. 

Set a Clear Purpose, Objectives, and Goals

A purpose, objectives, and goals play off step one, where you understand the scope and elements. Define your purpose by asking yourself why you’re launching the campaign. Answers should include increasing brand awareness, product launches, seasonal sales, or other relevant goals. 

You should also outline broad objectives you hope to achieve. This includes general items such as an increase in profits, growth of brand awareness, or more engagement. 

As I mentioned earlier, you should be setting SMART goals. It places numerical values on your goals and keeps you on track. 

Establish Metrics to Measure Success

Set key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of your goals, provide insight into what you need to adjust, and determine the ROI of your campaign. These metrics should be grounded in your strategy and its core objectives. 

Some examples of metrics tied to core objectives include: 

Objective	Metric
Product marketing	Pre-orders, sales, and upsells
Brand awareness	Sentiment, social mentions, press mentions, website stats
Engagement	Blog shares, social shares, and email interactions
Acquisition	Leads, sales, and upsells

If you’re running on multiple mediums, you should establish metrics for each – some examples include: 

Medium	Metric
Social media	Likes and comments
Email	Open rates and click-through rates
Website	Blog views, clickthroughs, social shares, and lead form submits

Identify Your Target Audience 

Your target audience is “who” your campaign will be aimed at. Define this group as specifically as possible to ensure you tailor your messaging to them. Don’t spread yourself too thin and try to market to everyone. 

The characteristics of your target audience to define include: 

• Age
• Gender 
• Economic status 
• Location 
• Consumer behavior
• Interests
• Needs

Consider your target audience at every step of your campaign – from determining your message to selecting mediums and channels to use. Objectives also play a role in who you’re targeting and where. 

You should figure out what stage of the buyer’s journey you’re targeting. Consider identifying and defining your audience’s interests and pain points, including: 

• What are their general interests?
• What mediums do they consume content on?
• What kind of content do they connect with?
• What kind of problems can my brand solve? 

Create a buyer persona for your specific campaign to help identify your ideal customer. 

Create a strategy, message, and creative assets. 

The next step is the creative process of taking your objectives and crafting a strategic message that’s placed in front of the appropriate audience to push your goals forward. It’s what you want to say and how you want to say it. 

This section packs a lot of information into two core categories: 

• Creating a strategy and message
• Developing creative assets

Establishing your messaging, find a persuasive voice that sells a solution, not a product or brand. Address the consumers’ pain points. 

Your strategy and messaging should align with wider business goals. Consider the following components of establishing a strategy and message: 

• Concepts
• Messages
• Colors
• Copy 
• Mission
• Vision
• Visual identity

Stay consistent with your business brand while maintaining a unique identity for your specific marketing campaign.

When it’s time to create assets, map out a plan to create visuals, prepare written copy, and hire any external resources necessary. 

Determine What Mediums Or Channels You’ll Use 

Next, you need to determine how you plan on spreading your campaign. This includes determining the channels and mediums you’ll run your messaging on. 

Here are some of the channels to consider: 

• Owned media channels: mailing lists, websites, social accounts
• Earned media: PR placements, network marketing 
• Paid media: Search advertising, paid social, radio ads, TV placements, billboards, etc. 

Again, don’t spread yourself too thin. Focus on the channels or mediums that make the most sense for your objectives and target audience. Consider the budget and types of content you’re pushing, as well as past campaigns.

Look into: 

• Which channels you get the most engagement on
• Where you have the biggest reach 
• Which channels have performed the best in the past

Set a Timeline

Timelines keep your campaign on track. You should set a relatively rigid timeline and deadlines to make sure the campaign stays on track and comes to fruition. 

Doing so: 

• Allows you to dedicate resources
• Holds team members accountable 
• Establishes a final finish line

When setting a timeline, break it down into: 

• Planning stage
• Research and asset creation 
• Administrative work (uploading and managing assets) 
• Communication requirements and meetings 
• Analysis 

Estimate how much time you’ll need for each task and assign them to team members to complete. Check in every week or so to update your timeline if needed. Make sure you consider changes in the plan and your team’s workload. 

Visual mapping helps visualize the span of a campaign. It can help you evenly disperse campaign promotions and post equally on every medium. You also get a visual idea of where time and energy are going. 

Review Your Campaign For Improvements

Review data periodically and make revisions to your campaign as needed. If your review determines, revise your messaging or invest in new channels. You want to avoid making the same mistakes over and over. 

Some of the most common setbacks in marketing campaigns include: 

• Lack of a clear strategy 
• Lack of resources
• Outdated marketing theory 
• Poor engagement

Launch Your Campaign

Once you have everything together, it’s time to launch your campaign. Break your release into phases: 

• Pre-launch: Laying the groundwork. Get emails drafted and ready to push live. 
• Launch: Not necessarily a single day, but it’s when assets are pushed live and the campaign officially takes off
• Post-launch: Continually monitoring your campaign and a post-mortem type review, where you track wins and keep a close eye on analytics

Monitor Performance and Success

Monitor performance and KPIs throughout your campaign. Again, this helps assess how effective your messaging and creative assets are. If any adjustments are needed, you’ll identify them through monitoring your performance. 

At the post-mortem stage of your campaign, ask yourself: 

• What could’ve been done differently? 
• How could we have saved money? 
• Why did certain things go wrong? 
• What did we learn about our audience or specific channels?

Why Are Marketing Campaigns Important?

We’ve covered all of the strategic information about marketing campaigns, but why are they so important? Marketing campaigns benefit businesses and brands in several ways. 

Some areas that marketing campaigns help include: 

• Building a strategy to help you reach business goals
• Get more customers 
• Increase sales 
• Generate brand awareness
• Improve brand image
• Form an emotional connection

Why Is Planning Important?

A strategically planned marketing campaign is more likely to succeed than throwing darts and expecting something to stick. 

The planning stage benefits everyone working on the campaign by: 

• Providing clear direction for everyone involved
• Brainstorming and gathering creative input from team members
• Effectively distributing assets

Examples of Marketing Campaigns

I’ve covered a ton of information about marketing campaigns and how to build yours. The theory behind marketing campaigns may not paint a clear picture. Here are a few examples of successful marketing campaigns you can use for inspiration. 

Dos Equis – “The Most Interesting Man In The World”

Dos Equis – a Mexican beer – incorporated humor without trying when they launched their “The Most Interesting Man In The World” campaign. The campaign, which featured an older, classy-looking man dubbed “the most interesting man in the world”, ran for twelve years, from 2006-2018. 

Their marketing campaign was memorable, repetitive, and had a catchy slogan. It created the sense that any person who drinks Dos Equis could become an interesting, “cool” person. The “most interesting man” created an iconic, mascot-like representation of the brand. 

Nike – “Just Do It”

Nike launched the “Just Do It” campaign to inspire its audience to push through discomfort or resistance to achieve a goal. With the campaign, customers share their own stories of overcoming adversity and facing difficulties. 

The campaign tugged on an attitude of empowerment and empathy in achieving athletic goals. “Just Do It” inspired customers across the globe and remains one of Nike’s marketing campaigns to this day. 

Allstate – “Mayhem”

Allstate’s “Mayhem” campaign caught consumers’ attention from the first push. The insurance company took the concept of mayhem – any risk that could cause damage or injury – and turned it into a brand mascot type. 

The “Mayhem” campaign discusses “scary”, uncomfortable, or negative topics in a palatable way. Allstate fully integrated “Mayhem” on all of its social channels, website, promotional materials, commercials, and media outreach. 

Get High-Quality Visuals For Your Marketing Campaign With Casey Templeton

This article covered a wide-ranging overview of marketing campaigns. Now that you’ve read through, you should understand the definition of a marketing campaign and why it’s important to your business and brand. 

Visuals are the most effective type of media to incorporate into marketing campaigns. To set your brand up for success, consider hiring a professional photographer for business branding photos that can be used in marketing campaigns and beyond. 

Casey Templeton Photography provides professional commercial lifestyle and corporate photography services in the greater Nashville, TN area and beyond. Casey has years of technical practice behind the lens and business branding experience across various industries and business sizes. To learn more about creating a marketing campaign or to get the ball rolling on a project, fill out our contact form.