How to Declutter Your Digital Marketing Campaigns [Contributed Blog]

November 15, 2019 - 9 minutes read - Business Management, Contributed Posts, Digital Advertising

Most digital marketing campaigns are relatively complex. They utilize instruments like social media and content marketing to reach different audience segments. Despite having a common set of goals, the tactics used in a digital marketing campaign may require different approaches.

The campaign gets even more complex when you start considering the individual tasks that need to be completed for the campaign to work, and even more, tasks to complete for the campaign to succeed. A 3-month digital marketing promotion for a new product could involve hundreds of tasks.

It is easy to see how a digital marketing campaign can feel cluttered. After all, the tasks associated with the campaign affect each other in more ways than one. It is scary to think about how a single failed task could lead to the failure of the entire campaign. Maintaining a clear view is a must.

That’s when decluttering comes in handy. Rather than letting your digital marketing campaign appear cluttered and complex, you should be more proactive in simplifying the workflows and making the campaign more manageable.

These next few tips and tricks will help you declutter right away.

Keep Objectives Clear

There is no doubt that having clear campaign objectives is crucial. Everyone involved in the campaign must be familiar with the objectives you are trying to achieve. Clear objectives do more than guide the campaign in the right direction; they help with alignment and strategy as well.

Of course, clear campaign objectives are only the beginning. You have to also make sure that every individual task is attached to a clear, measurable set of goals. This way, team members always know how to complete each task properly.

Incorporate Kanban Tools

Kanban tools are very popular among marketers. The Kanban approach transforms complex digital marketing tasks into cards that can be followed visually. Thanks to tools like Kanbanize, you can have a custom digital Kanban board for your marketing campaigns.

Kanbanize lets you attach details to cards. It also supports swim lanes as well as multiple workflows so that tasks related to social media marketing can be managed separately from content marketing tasks while remaining on the same board. Kanbanize gives you a visual bird’s-eye view of the campaign all the time.

Simplify Workflows

Don’t overcomplicate things you need to do to have a successful digital marketing campaign. Most successful marketing campaigns are streamlined and simplified anyway. There are plenty of opportunities to streamline your marketing workflows and refine your processes.

Data analytics, for instance, can be a lot simpler with the help of a unified analytics tool. Even when you use multiple tools to track results of different marketing activities, there are services – data visualization tools – that can help you combine insights from multiple sources seamlessly.

Divide Tasks Effectively

Another key to decluttering your digital marketing campaign is dividing tasks into suitable chunks. Kanbanize, the project management tool we mentioned earlier, has a handy feature that does this brilliantly: subtasks.

Instead of having a lot of cards on the Kanban board, you can utilize subtasks to divide bigger tasks into actionable items. In a content marketing activity, writing, proofreading, finding images, and posting can be the subtasks. Even better, you can assign subtasks to different team members.

Be Ready to Make Changes

A continuous evaluation must always be a part of your digital marketing campaign, mainly because it brings one invaluable benefit: you can refine the campaign as you go along. Don’t be afraid to make changes if they are for the better.

When there are tasks that are no longer relevant, you can set them aside to the On-Hold part of your Kanban board. The rest of the campaign, as well as the new tasks added to the board, can continue as they are, but the dropped tasks will not make the board – and the campaign – appear cluttered.

Timing Is Everything

A secret to keeping your digital marketing campaign organized is timing. With every task you create, make sure you set a start date and an end date. Use a consistent way to set the dates too; for example, you can use the posting date as the end date for your content-related tasks.

There is a hidden benefit to being disciplined about setting dates: you get a functional Gantt chart. Using Kanbanize, your tasks can be converted into a Gantt chart or a calendar. Both tools help you track the timing of marketing activities in great detail.

Separate Marketing Instruments

Any marketing expert will tell you that you cannot utilize digital marketing instruments separately. They affect each other in different ways and must be used in unison in order to produce the greatest impact. When it comes to managing activities for individual instruments, however, separation is gold.

Separating content creation for LinkedIn and Instagram will let you treat the two tasks as separate. The separation alone will remind you that both platforms need to be treated differently, which means you will end up with content that is optimized for its intended platform.

Set Guidelines

A brand guideline isn’t the only guideline you should use when planning and executing digital marketing campaigns. You can actually produce guidelines for content, marketing activities, and even ad targeting. The purpose of creating guidelines is to introduce consistency to your workflows.

Consistency is the keyword here. When you can maintain consistency across a digital marketing campaign – or multiple campaigns – you will find the tasks associated with the campaign to be easier to manage. A complex campaign turns into a cycle that everyone can follow seamlessly.

Automate!

Last but certainly not least, learn to automate certain parts of the digital marketing campaign to further declutter it. When you eliminate repetitive tasks such as collecting metrics from social media pages or sending thank-you emails to engaged customers, you are actually simplifying the campaign.

Automation is far more reachable than ever. There are tools like IFTTT, Active Campaign, and Zapier that can be used to automate tasks, even when they span across multiple tools and platforms. The more tasks you automate, the simpler your campaign will be too.

We have covered a lot of tips and tricks that will help you declutter even the most complex digital marketing campaign. All there is left to do now is for you to implement these tips and start simplifying your own campaigns for the better.

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Tags: digital marketing, digital marketing agency, digital marketing campaign, Marketing Campaign, Online Marketing Campaigns