Crafting a Strategic Marketing Campaign for a Service Based Business

Capturing the attention of potential clients requires a well-thought-out marketing campaign. But it doesn’t need to be difficult or take much time to do.  By structuring your approach with a clear timeline and actionable steps, you can effectively promote your services and attract new clientele.
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Start first by identifying your goals and audience.  Begin by defining what you want to achieve with your campaign. Whether it's increasing bookings, generating new client enquiries, increasing engagement or promoting a new service, this is an important step to complete. It literally will tell you if you have succeeded in your campaign.  Adding in specific indicators will give you even more clarity of success.  This might be you wish to increase your bookings by 20% in the month of February as a result of a Valentines Day marketing campaign.

Knowing your target audience is key to defining your goals.  If your campaign is about couple massage treatment, you need to clearly define why couples would come for a session at your practice so you can tailor your message effectively.  Understand your audience - consider their demographics, where you can find them, what their likes are, and what would motivate them to come to see you.  Why would a couple come for a massage? 

Once you have your goal written and know who you are talking to it is time to craft a compelling message.  What sets you apart from others?  What makes you uniquely you and why should the client choose your business over the competition.  Write down your message and then rewrite it several different ways so you have plenty of options to create different content.  Creating engaging content must resonates with your audience, emphasize the benefits of your services and how you can specifically address what they need.  Here are two examples of marketing messages you could use for a couple massage campaign:

1. “Experience Deeper Connection: Elevate Your Bond Through Tranquil Harmony with Couples Massage”
2. “Join us for a couples massage—a transformative experience designed to deepen your relationship amidst serenity and tranquillity”

These messages speak directly to the result of having a massage with your partner – “strengthening the relationship by relaxing together”. 
Once you have your messages, it’s time to choose placement of your message.  Select marketing channels on how best to reach your audience.   You might do a direct email campaign, use social media, in-house promotion, attend local events, use Google Paid Ads or partner with another business.  Go where your audience hangs.  This is why defining your audience is critical right from the start.  If you are unsure where to locate your client, speak to an experienced marketing person, use google or look at your where your current clients indicated they learned about your services (this information can be gold, and if you aren’t asking your new clients the question “where they heard about your services” then its time to be doing it).
 
You know your goal, you have defined your audience and you have your messages ready to launch across your marketing channels.  It is now time to launch.  But how do you know the best time to kick off your campaign? As a general rule of thumb, planning will take 2 – 4 weeks before your campaign is ready to launch.  The campaign itself may run for 4 weeks but you can choose your own timeframe.  Below is my suggestion on steps with timeframes for implementation. You may wish to use this as a blueprint to launch your marketing campaign for a specific event, such as Valentines Day:

• Prepare your goals, audience and content – minimum of 4 – 6 weeks prior to campaign teasers
• Campaign teasers using social media and/ or email – 2 weeks before launching campaign
• Launch campaign – 4 weeks prior if you are lining up with specific date (i.e. Valentines Day)
• First Email – 4 weeks prior
• Distribute flyers to partner organisations – 4 weeks prior
• Social Media Campaign – 4 weeks prior (start with 3 posts first week, gradually increasing to 3 times daily posts over the 4 weeks, using different imaginary and messages you created)
• Video Campaign – 2 - 3 weeks prior (you may choose to prepare one official video ad and then follow up with Live Social Media posts)
• Second Email – 2 weeks prior
• Third Email – 1 week prior
• Make sure you follow up with an invitation to purchase package / vouchers 2 – 3 days prior and a final one the night before
• One the day of ‘event’ campaign you can do a “never too late” social media post or email or offer to extend your campaign
• Continually monitor progress and adjust your campaign as needed

In many cases, a campaign needs to be placed in front of a client, existing or new, several times before they take action.  Keep this in mind with all campaigns but mostly when dealing with new clients.  In marketing we refer to touchpoints and it refers to the interactions your potential clients have with your offering.  It takes a minimum of 20 touchpoints before a new client to your organisation will take action.  For existing clients, it might be that marketing campaigns are missed or not seen in the first or even second instance.  Therefore multiple touchpoint opportunities need to be made for your clients.

The final action for anyone running a marketing campaign for their business is to assess your results against the goals you set at the beginning.  Always remember to measure beyond your goals because you may have achieved something unexpected.  Use all your insights to refine future campaigns for better outcomes. 

If you want to learn more about starting a new marketing campaign for your business please do not hesitate to reach out.  

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