Categories
What does a marketing campaign manager do? It’s a loaded question that is not easily answered with a line or two.
There are many responsibilities, tasks and skills that fall under the title of marketing campaign manager.
If you had to summarize it, you could say that they are responsible for the planning and execution of marketing campaigns to meet the goals and needs of the business and marketing department.
However, several steps and tasks go into planning and executing marketing campaigns.
This article will break down every skill and responsibility that falls in the marketing campaign manager’s wheelhouse.
Before we explain each skill required, let’s first look at the complete list of talents and responsibilities you need as a marketing campaign manager.
Most companies are driven by growth and revenue. So, if you are a marketer that is adept at driving revenue through marketing campaigns, then you’re sure to thrive in your career.
In one study, nearly 4 out of every 5 CEOs felt that marketing is not focused enough on revenue and growth and that marketers are frequently out of touch with financial objectives.
Marketers who can align their campaigns with generating more revenue will surely stand out and gain more favor from upper management.
While revenue may be the end goal, there are plenty of other objectives and smaller goals along the way — building brand awareness, generating leads, nurturing those leads, etc.
No matter the objective, you need to produce reviewable results. This gives managers and other stakeholders the ability to gauge your performance and see the impact you have on the business.
Without these specific, measurable results, it’s difficult to know who is on the hook when performance dips. Conversely, when performance increases, management may not know who to praise and reward.
Marketers need to get in the habit of setting weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly milestones that will help assess performance. And thee performance can easily be checked through specially designed PPC Reports.
Marketing is driven by goals, while strategies and tactics help you achieve said goals.
Understanding the differences between these three will make you better at marketing and communicating your strategies and plans with others.
Here is a simple way to remember the three.
Goals are the objectives and milestones that are set to guide your efforts. Goals can be set by you and the rest of the marketing team, the client, management or another invested party. Goals should be specific and measurable.
Strategies are the overall plans that you have for achieving the goal.
Tactics are the specific activities that make up each strategy.
In other words, your goals are your destination. Strategies are the pathway to reach that goal; tactics are the steps and actions you take along that path.
Knowledge is power. No knowledge is more powerful to marketers than knowing about their customers and markets.
When you have this intel, attracting new customers to your business is a breeze. You know what customers want, when and how they want it, their attitudes and preferences, etc.
Knowing the customer intent most important and that you can achieve by having excellent keyword research. PPCexpo Keyword Planner is an excellent tool to find the keywords for your campaigns.
Knowing the market itself allows you to price competitively and counter your competitors’ strategies and products. This will help your marketing strategies stand out and garner attention.
However, acquiring this knowledge requires time and a deep dedication to engaging customers in conversations and listening to their responses.
You want to acquire both quantitative and qualitative data on customers to fully understand their wants, needs, pain points, etc.
The customer experience has become one of the best competitive differentiators for businesses. It’s no longer just about offering great products and services, but also an overall fantastic experience.
Everything your business does comes together to form the customer experience. Social media content, loyalty programs, special offers and discounts, charity work or social programs, the packaging of your products — it all contributes to this experience.
Essentially, it’s everything that someone experiences by being your customer, across all channels and touchpoints.
A memorable experience draws people back again and again, thereby increasing the lifetime value of your customers.
Marketers need to be skilled at developing and managing these experiences.
Storytelling may not seem like something in a marketer’s wheelhouse, but it’s a valuable asset in designing campaigns and remarkable customer experiences.
With so many channels and content available, it’s harder than ever to grab the customer’s attention. Amazing storytelling abilities allow you to develop compelling campaigns that keep customers returning again and again.
It’s about engaging with customers on an emotional level and making them invest with their wallets and their feelings.
Storytelling ability is also an asset when presenting marketing results to others. Cryptic numbers and datasheets are hard to interact with and understand.
If you can tell the story behind the data, you’ll be an effective communicator in your organization and quickly gain trust and credibility.
Marketing campaigns create a mountain of data. Failing to use this information is like ignoring the compass while at sea.
Novice marketers sometimes make the mistake of relying too much on their instincts and “gut feelings.”
These types of assumptions will not always work. You need to conduct tests and rely on tangible data to inform your decisions.
Good marketers know this and they continuously test and adjust their strategies, including campaigns, ad copy, pricing models, ad target and much more.
For instance, simple A/B tests can help you compare two similar variations of ad copy. By changing just one or two words, you can test what sort of language, offers, CTAs, designs, etc., resonate most with audiences.
Marketing a generation ago was a wildly different ballgame. Even ten years ago, there were plenty of “best practices” that are no longer relevant today.
Changes to marketing happen for a variety of reasons.
To stay on top of these changes, you need to pay attention to marketing journals, websites and other resources.
Your education as a marketer is never over. If you take even a few minutes each week to absorb new information about the latest trends in marketing, you’ll always stay in the know.
Marketers have access to more data than ever before. This data can be used to learn about the customer, the market and how to improve your campaigns and strategies.
Data has become a valuable commodity for marketers. However, the data itself is not valuable, without the insights it contains.
Extracting these insights from the raw data is not easy. It requires great analytical skills. Businesses are increasingly looking for marketers with data science expertise that can efficiently use data-born insights to improve decision-making.
These skills include a background in statistics, deep knowledge of excel and the ability to apply and use analytics tools.
The ultimate goal of companies is to adopt a data-driven marketing approach. This is why data science is such a vital skill.
Data-driven marketing offers several advantages.
Essentially, the data-driven approach is about knowing how and when to apply data to your strategies. You want to match the evidence in your data with your marketing team’s know-how, expertise and intuition.
Despite the increased reliance on data to improve marketing efforts, creativity and out-of-the-box thinking are still crucial skills in the field.
Customers want new, exciting and fresh experiences that they haven’t seen elsewhere. This requires marketers to always look for that next big idea that will skyrocket their campaign performance.
Successful marketers should have an eye for design, aesthetic sensibility and the creativity to develop engaging new concepts.
This includes:
Automation is quickly becoming a necessity in modern marketing. With so many tasks and responsibilities falling on the shoulders of marketers, finding ways to reduce this burden is crucial.
AI and machine learning tools are perfect instruments for handling the tedious, time-consuming parts of the marketing process. Marketers need to be skilled at choosing which AI solutions to apply to produce the best results.
In one report, 87% of online businesses stated that AI and machine learning are vital to their success. This highlights the significance and urgency for marketers with an understanding of AI implementation.
One of the best applications of AI technology is in data management and analysis. Again, marketers have mountains of data, but few insights.
Data is exceptionally complex and often difficult to analyze, even for a trained data scientist. This makes it hard for marketers to transform raw numbers into actionable insights efficiently.
There is a tool, PPC Signal is an AI and Machine Learning based tool which has the power to handle multiple campaigns data and highlight the best and worst possible scenarios happening in the campaigns.
AI and machine learning alleviate this pressure by applying sophisticated algorithms to make smart decisions with little or no human intervention. AI can analyze that mountain of data in an instant and bring insights to the surface.
AI-based automation is also being used in ad bid adjustments, creating responsive campaigns, testing marketing copy and more.
AI and machine learning are examples of some of the latest technologies to impact the marketing space heavily, but they aren’t alone.
There are always new technologies changing how marketers operate. Remember, there was a time when the Internet itself was a “new technology” that needed to be learned, understood and mastered.
As a marketer, you need to have general technology skills to respond to new pieces of tech impacting the field.
This means knowing how to use each new technology, as well as identifying the tech that actually matters. After all, not every “next big thing” is as significant as first thought.
There are two ways to look at scheduling skills as a marketer.
First, you need to manage your own schedule. This is something every business professional needs to master. It’s about planning out your tasks and daily workload to ensure that everything is done on time.
Marketing is very deadline-driven. If you start falling behind, the performance of your strategies may suffer.
The other part of marketing scheduling is the planning and date-setting of your campaigns, product launches, etc.
Timing is everything. You need to know when your audiences are active and plan accordingly to maximize the reach of your strategies.
You don’t want to spend ad dollars or waste time marketing when your customers aren’t active!
Copywriting is one of the most crucial skills that a marketer can have. So much of marketing is founded on the written word:
No matter what strategy you’re implementing, you need a written copy.
Writing skills also enable you to communicate more efficiently internally with stakeholders, managers, clients, etc.
No matter what tools you implement or automation solutions you utilize to reduce your workload, marketing remains a stressful endeavor.
Not only are there demanding deadlines to worry about, but unexpected shifts or anomalies in performance can turn your strategies upside down without warning.
There are just so many moving parts in campaign management! It’s like trying to wrangle a daycare full of sugar-laden tykes — by yourself.
A good marketer knows how to handle this stress without panicking. They need to be resilient, organized and adaptable, while simultaneously juggling multiple tasks and implementing quick problem solving to get out of stressful times.
One of the most significant causes of stress for marketers is time. You have many tasks to do, but only so much time to get them done.
At times, marketing feels like a juggling tight-rope walk. You can’t waver and you can’t let the balls drop, no matter how many projects or campaigns you’re responsible for managing.
Marketers with excellent time management can perform this juggling act with ease. This reduces stress and ensures that all deadlines are met.
You should be familiar working with schedules, content calendar, outlines and other tools that will keep you on-task and motivated to meet each deadline.
You cannot deny the importance of search engine optimization. A good manager should understand well the ongoing approaches in modern SEO techniques and must have idea about the updates happening in search engine with respect to SEO.
Marketing is about cultivating meaningful relationships with customers. This is a crucial cornerstone of a successful customer experience.
Thanks to social media and other online channels, brands and customers can interact with each other and have quality exchanges of ideas, concerns, questions and more.
These interactions create lasting impressions that will keep customers coming back for more. It allows the customer to feel a part of your brand’s circle and not just another sales number.
Marketers need to actively engage with audiences, respond to their complaints and write meaningful replies, no matter what channel or space.
Marketers don’t always think about their ability to negotiate, yet it is very valuable.
You’re often going to find yourself negotiating with clients, managers, team members and other individuals about budgets, timelines, goals, creatives and so much more.
What does a marketing campaign manager do when the client wants to set an impossible timeline for a campaign or has a “great idea” for a new marketing strategy?
Negotiation as a marketer means knowing when to stand your ground against the demands of stakeholders and when to give in.
You don’t want to be bullied into unrealistic expectations or bad strategies that negatively impact your credibility, as well as the performance of the campaigns you produce.
Instead, you want to assert your knowledge and expertise as a marketer to guide clients and managers towards the correct thinking.
It won’t always be easy, but that’s why negotiation skills come in handy.
The lines between marketing and advertising have always been slightly muddled, but they’ve become more so in the Digital Age. Now, digital marketers are also expected to handle digital advertising campaigns.
Digital advertising holds many benefits that empower your marketing performance. Advertising helps you reach prospects, target your ideal audience, produce website traffic, increase conversions and much more.
In the hands of the right marketer, digital ad campaigns can be a serious revenue producer.
Google Ads — one of the most popular ad platforms — reports that most advertisers earn an average of $2 on every $1 spent. A well-optimized ad campaign can double or even triple this figure.
If you can seamlessly fold advertising into the existing marketing strategies of your company or client, that’s a big win.
As a digital marketer it is very important to interpret data and making strategies efficiently. Knowing the hidden opportunities in the data by analytical thinking, you can take the company to the next level. You need to make a practice of data analysis on different angles. How campaigns worked in the past, what is happening now and what could be done in future these all angles of thinking will put value in the strategy making. If you just look at the different combinations made in PPC data, you cannot do analysis manually. You must be astute and smart enough to expand the analysis to different dimensions which can open different doors to move forward.
Negotiating and communicating with others will also come in handy when it comes to networking. This is not just your LinkedIn profile networking, but also establishing meaningful connections with other brands and individuals in the market.
Influencer marketing is a huge marketing trend for several reasons. Social media stars have become some of the most influential people on digital channels.
They have thousands to millions of followers each that absorb their content daily and trust them closely. Getting an influential social media icon to mention your products can expand your reach by huge volumes.
Networking skills also come to play when developing partnerships with other brands. These connections can create exciting and effective cross-brand collaborations, events and other occurrences.
If you’re working for a marketing agency or a freelance marketer, networking skills will be crucial to your success. The more connections you can make, the more potential clients you can acquire.
Apart from writing skill, it is very important to have gentle and polite communication skill so that all team members and stake holders can understand the attitude and message to be conveyed by the manager. Sometimes feedback comes from customer regarding advertisement, issue facing in blogs, bad landing page experiences to communicate to developers to change, all required and effective communication. Always have empathy, listen carefully and have positive body language and which don’t make others to feel fear to talk and communicate with you.
One of the best indicators for measuring marketing success is return-on-investment (ROI). This is how much money you’re putting in versus how much revenue you’re generating as a result.
With ROI, you can tell the specific impact of your marketing efforts. This allows you to assign dollar values to things like:
You can apply ROI as the end value to assess your efforts. Getting all of your various marketing metrics down to one number can be a huge relief to you. Plus, it’s a great way to present results to managers and clients.
All 25 of the above skills come together to answer the titled question, “What does a marketing campaign manager do?”
Any professional that can bring all of these skills, assets and traits to the table is guaranteed to be a successful marketer.
If we had to summarize these skills or choose the absolute most essential tools for marketers, it would be:
These are the five pillars of successful marketing. You need to have that raw marketing talent and knowledge. Next, you have to communicate with customers and others.
Creativity and data proficiency help steer your efforts in the right direction to create fresh, engaging campaigns.
Finally, time management and efficiency ensure you have the resources available to do all of the above.
That’s the life of a marketing campaign manager!
How much did you enjoy this article?
We will help your ad reach the right person, at the right time
Actionable insights discovered for you. Now you can do more in less time.
PPCexpo Keyword Planner will help you align your keywords with the customers’ intent.
Frequent audits will help you optimize your PPC campaign for success.
Visualizations give you the ability to instantly grasp the insights hidden in your numbers.
Experience the new revolution in reporting … click your way to insights, don’t scroll.
Calculate the number of combinations in your PPC campaign. It may surprise you.
Related articles
A landing page is a web page designed to drive specific actions. Learn the essentials of creating high-converting landing pages in our guide.
ROAS calculation can help you evaluate every PPC campaign's performance so that you know which of your campaigns are converting the best.
Discover the marketing lifecycle stages and how they shape customer relationships. You’ll understand their role in driving customer engagement and retention.
