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High-impact marketing campaigns can really move the needle on revenue by helping the organization achieve its marketing goals quickly and cost-effectively. Of course, making that impact can be challenging. Luck always helps. (Who knew that viral blog post or TikTok video was going to be such a big hit with your customers, right?) But in most cases, you’ll likely find a thoughtful, well-executed strategy is at the heart of a high-impact marketing campaign.
In this post, we’ll look at some examples of these campaigns, and explore 20 different high-impact marketing strategies you may want to experiment with to benefit your brand and business.
As you may have gathered by now, high-impact marketing campaigns are campaigns that deliver fast results while boosting the bottom line.
It’s important to understand that high-impact marketing isn’t necessarily high-cost marketing. In fact, a low-cost, high-impact marketing campaign that delivers superior results should be the aim, especially in the current economic environment where marketing teams are looking for ways to stretch their marketing dollars further.
High-impact marketing campaigns can involve various techniques to drive customer engagement and deliver desired outcomes. Here are 10 examples of campaigns you might execute as a marketer:
You create a community-based public relations (PR) program focused on collecting old sneakers to build and renovate children’s playgrounds. The campaign is designed to create a positive image of your company’s shoe brand with your target audience of working mothers. A follow-up survey confirms your efforts have led to high brand awareness and increased sales.
You give some of your “oldie-but-goodie” blog posts a fresh coat of paint and reintroduce them in an email campaign as “Our Customers’ Favorite Reads.” It’s a win-win because you bring traffic back to your site while revitalizing some of your best content. Plus, the new CTAs you added to your posts help increase conversions.
You develop an ad for distribution via a podcast popular with your target customers, and it leads to an increase in product sales and brand awareness.
You create an Instagram marketing campaign that features engaging, high-quality graphics and search engine optimization (SEO)-powered captions that leads to a surge in followers.
You post a series of funny but informative “how to” videos on YouTube that dramatically increases brand awareness among your target audience and brings in new customers.
You boost your lead conversion efforts with a Smart Display campaign that delivers ads in multiple formats across Google Display Network.
You supercharge lead generation by running campaigns using a prospect form on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
You use LinkedIn InMail to deliver personal invitations to customers’ inboxes in a direct mail marketing campaign that elevates brand awareness by driving traffic to a branded webinar.
You use Google Performance Max to deploy an ad campaign across all Google Ads platforms and partner sites including YouTube, Gmail, Maps, Display, and Search.
You have physical stores that you want to boost foot traffic to, so you develop a campaign to advertise your stores’ locations using Facebook’s Store Traffic Objective.
Now that you have a better idea of what a high-impact campaign can be — and, as you can see, it runs the gamut — let’s talk about high-impact marketing strategies. Here are just 20 you might consider experimenting with:
Aiming your high-impact marketing campaign at the right target audience can produce increased sales, generate leads, and raise overall brand awareness. For example, if your goal is to sell more products, you’ll want to target those potential customers who have landed on your product page, loaded goods into their cart (but not purchased them), or clicked on a product ad.
Who the target audience is for a high-impact marketing campaign depends on your specific goals, so make the effort to identify the right audience. You can use tools such as Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, or other social media channels to identify the people most engaged by your content. Some of these tools also provide insight, like demographic information, about your website visitors.
Another high-impact marketing strategy is to encourage existing customers to refer potential new customers to you. Consider setting up a formal referral program where you give customers an incentive, such as a discount or reward, for providing the names of people who might buy your product or sign up for more information.
Here’s an example for inspiration: Fintech firm Revolut is looking to attract teenage customers to its platform through a program known as Revolut <18. If a current user refers a friend who signs up for Revolut, and both users meet eligibility requirements, the current user and their friend would then receive a specified financial reward.
Digital newsletters are a simple but effective tool for maintaining brand awareness, sharing product updates, answering questions from your target audience, or promoting new products.
To achieve the highest impact with this approach, make sure the content is relevant and easy to digest. Also, include links back to pages on your website to help improve search engine results page (SERP) rankings and take customers directly to product pages for better conversion rates.
Partnering with a company that offers compatible products or services and targeting a similar audience can turbocharge your marketing campaign by extending your reach and generating leads and brand awareness while also reducing costs.
An example of this strategy is HubSpot and LinkedIn combining to publish an e-book on LinkedIn best practices. The cost of creating the e-book was shared among the two partners but the e-book is downloadable on HubSpot and LinkedIn, giving HubSpot a vastly expanded potential audience of 900 million and LinkedIn visibility in front of HubSpot’s more than 158,000 customers globally.
Rich content such as video can be more engaging than plain text. In fact, 83% of respondents to a survey by TechSmith said they preferred watching a video to getting instructional content via text or audio.
So why not create a video giving customers instructions on how to use your product effectively? The beauty of this strategy is that you can use the video on your website as well as across social media platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter. That can drive brand awareness by allowing you to reach new audiences and increase visibility for your company and its products.
Advertising during a podcast was offered earlier in this post as an example of a high-impact marketing campaign and with good reason. An estimated 465 million people globally listen to podcasts regularly, and that figure is expected to reach nearly 505 million by the end of 2024. Many people tune in to podcasts while they’re commuting, using streaming services such as Audible and Spotify. And every marketer knows commuting time is an ideal time to grab the consumer’s ear.
So, consider running ads during relevant podcasts, or even sponsoring podcast episodes. Get your company’s executives booked as guests on podcasts your target audience is likely to tune into, so they can engage in brand storytelling. Another idea: Create your own podcast. Top companies finding success with this strategy include Sephora and Shopify.
Many companies rarely take the time to submit themselves for local or national business awards, thinking it might be a waste of time and resources. But they should think again. Visibility in business awards, whether you win or not, is free advertising and can be a huge boost to brand awareness. And, if you win, you’ll likely be profiled in the event’s website or publication and recognized in-person at the event as well.
Here’s a low-cost, high-impact marketing strategy if ever we saw one. Use your PR resources to garner positive interviews on local TV or radio or in a newspaper or business journal. (Or on podcasts — don’t forget that!) It’s basically a free, third-party endorsement of your company and creates instant visibility for your brand.
You might pitch an interview around a current event or topical news angle. For example: Tax advisers might pitch local TV prior to tax season to show their knowledge of tax law changes or new deductions. You could also use the topic of an upcoming educational workshop or event sponsored by your company as the hook for an interview.
Nine in 10 Americans between the ages of 18-49 buy items online using a smartphone, according to Pew Research. But given the choice, 57% of U.S. adults prefer in-person shopping and 46% of all Google searches have local intent. All the more reason, then, to make your marketing campaign optimized for mobile. This has high-impact benefits for many businesses, but especially for local franchisees who typically rely on a hyper-local target audience.
A local business or franchise can use Google Business Profiles, for example, to rank higher in local searches. This gives the customer all the relevant information they need right on their smartphone to find your business and even call immediately using a click-to-call button. (And because they’re calling you, you can use call tracking software like Invoca to help you track the call to conversion, provide shopper insights to help you improve the buyer experience at your location, and attribute any sale to the appropriate marketing channel so you can fine-tune your campaign.)
SEO can deliver a high impact if implemented strategically. Every one of your digital assets — your blog, website, and social media pages — will perform better and deliver more leads if they rank in the top results on SERPs. This means constantly updating your content and making sure you have relevant keywords. Organic search can deliver new audiences for your product and enhance the company’s bottom-line results by making marketing more effective.
Blogs can help build brand awareness if the content is compelling and kept fresh. Ideally, your customers will find your content so interesting or useful that they’ll want to share it with others on social media or by email. (Make it easy for them to do that with one lick by including a “share” button at the end of posts.) Blogs can also keep customers coming back to your website regularly, providing you with more opportunities to guide them further along the sales funnel.
Workshops can help foster brand loyalty while promoting add-on sales. You could arrange a workshop aimed at customers who have purchased a particular product so they can learn how to get the most value out of that product. Classes offered at local Apple stores that help customers take better photographs or create music on their iPhones or iPads is an example of this approach.
The workshop strategy described above can also be part of a larger high-impact strategy: building an online community. Apple, for example, offers it classes online and complements that experience with Apple Support Community, a forum where customers can help each other with questions about products and connect.
Paid search campaigns put your display ads right at the top of SERPs, providing above-the-fold visibility for your brand or product. That’s why paid search is effective for driving sales quickly. If you advertise using services like Google Ads or Microsoft Ads, your campaign kicks in when a user performs a search query related to your chosen keywords and an auction commences between you and other advertisers to see which ad will display.
The nice thing about paid search is that you only end up paying for the ad if a user clicks on it. This pay-per-click (PPC) model can make your ad campaigns more cost-effective.
This high-impact marketing strategy goes straight to the heart of the issue for marketers: efficiently converting leads to sales. Instead of expecting customers to go through a series of clicks — from a social post or an online ad to a website or landing page — to make a purchase, why not just let them do it with one click?
Shoppable social content saves your target audience time and hassle by allowing them to purchase directly from the platform where your content appears. Consumers can buy from a video on TikTok, YouTube, or Instagram, or an ad on Facebook Shop or Pinterest.
Here’s an interesting example of this approach: U.K.-based retailer Marks & Spencer provides shoppable content on their “Inspire Me” blog right on their website.
Your employees can be your best brand advocates. Consider asking them to relay their positive experiences of the company to their social media audiences and friends. Or make it easy for them to be a brand advocate by creating custom content that they can share with their networks online.
Creating a positive customer experience can lift some marketing campaigns into high-impact territory. It requires being highly responsive to customer feedback, either by quickly making changes to show you’re listening or by reaching out and thanking customers who take the time to provide feedback. If the feedback is positive, you might also expand this strategy and ask the customer to provide a testimonial.
Offer your customers rewards for sharing their experience with your brand on social media and other platforms. This shows your target audience that your brand offers a positive customer experience, and it keeps existing customers engaged with your brand.
Infographics let you provide information about your brand, or a topic important to your company and its customers, in a visually compelling way. You can educate customers about a product or service, share facts and figures and create a story around data, alert customers to key trends, and much more. Just be sure to keep these graphics simple, fun, and easy to share. (See this post for tips on using infographics successfully in your marketing strategy.)
Influencers can give your marketing campaigns a high-impact boost if they have a large audience and can be tempted to promote your products or brands. Influencers are trusted by their followers, so they have sway, and their endorsement can carry more punch than an ad. Influencers can help you increase sales, build greater brand awareness and credibility, and increase customer loyalty.
Marketers that use of low-cost, high-impact marketing strategies can help their companies emerge stronger from a challenging economy by spending smarter. Invoca’s call tracking software and conversation intelligence can help you understand how your marketing campaigns are contributing to phone leads — as well as the experience those phone leads have. In turn, you can reduce your cost per acquisition (CPA), optimize your marketing budget, improve the customer experience, and turn more leads into conversions.
Watch this short video below to see how it works:
Invoca has helped leading companies, including Rogers Communications, University Hospitals, and AutoNation, increase revenue by providing a complete view of each customer’s path to purchase. The conversation insights Invoca gathers from callers also empower marketing teams to optimize their digital campaigns and personalize all digital touchpoints cost-effectively.
To learn more about how Invoca’s award-winning call tracking and analytics solution can help you create low-cost, high-impact marketing campaigns, request your personalized demo today.
Want to learn more about how leading brands defend their marketing spend with Invoca? Check out these resources:
Download our Ultimate Guide to Reducing Wasted Marketing Spend to learn how you can lower your CPA while improving marketing campaign performance.
