5 Key Questions to Ask Before Launching a Social Media Campaign

The end of 2014 is rapidly approaching and the start of a new year can mean big changes for businesses. The new year can set new goals, new business objectives and shifts in marketing strategies. The start of the new year is also a great time to set aside time for new projects and to incorporate new campaigns into your marketing strategy.

But before you delve into all of your options for new marketing campaigns, or even adding a new platform to your social media presence, a few key questions need to be answered to make sure you are on track for success.

1. What Are The Goals?

Goals can be tricky to define. Of course the easy answer would be to say “more sales,” but the direct connections between social campaigns and sales are often difficult to measure. Instead, pick goals that are related to a specific objective with key performance indicators you can measure on a regular basis.

For example, if you want to sell more of your products on your online store, you need more visitors to your website. An easy, measurable KPI would be to measure traffic that is being generated by your campaign. Set up your Google Analytics or using trackable links like bit.ly.

2. How Will I Measure My Success?

Each goal defined from the first key question should have specific, easy measurements to track successes. Make sure to know not only what is being measured, but also how to measure them and how often as well. Know if you can do these measurements manually or if you will have to invest in additional reporting or analytics programs.

For a Facebook campaign, a goal might be to grow a page’s audience. I can easily measure the audience growth through regular evaluation through Facebook Insights or through an analytics program.

3. What Is My Budget?

It is essential to know what your campaign’s budget will be. Break down each component of your campaign to specifically where and how much of the budget will cover each piece of your campaign. This includes costs of labor, graphics or design work, analytics or extra software and other components.

4. How Much Time Will It Take?

Time is a big factor in launching a new campaign. Time can include the labor to set up and maintain the campaign, but also how long the campaign will last. Will the campaign be over a few weeks, or a few months. Keep in mind that different campaigns will yield much different results based on how much time is invested and how long they last.

A Facebook advertising campaign needs a time for split testing and optimization before yielding the best results for a page.

5. Who Is My Target Audience?

You brand and business should have a good idea on who the ideal customer is and their behaviors and lifestyle. Use that data to your advantage when considering a new campaign. If you are planning a Facebook advertising campaign for a page that sells camping equipment, use Facebook graph search to see how many users list keywords as an interest on Facebook. With a quick search, I can see that more than 12 million users list “camping” as an interest.

Combine that with your location, age and other key demographics to set up a campaign that targets exactly the right type of customer.

By defining clear answers to these key questions, your campaign’s strategy will be focused on the right types of goals for your business.

5 Key Questions to Ask Before Launching a Social Media Campaign