Over the years, I’ve come up with some basic thoughts on implementing a marketing campaign. Following are just some basic steps to take to keep you moving in the right direction.

1. Outline your plan. Keep it simple. Start with an excel spreadsheet to outline what your goals are in terms of dollar amount or number of individual sales. Then work backwards to decide on the number of contacts you will need to generate that amount of sales.

2. Lay out your budget. Understanding your budget limitations will help you adjust where you will focus your marketing.

3. Set a time frame on how long the marketing campaign will take. Look at past campaigns. Don’t drag your campaign out. Keep it fresh and focused.

4. Decide how broad based your marketing will be. Understand who your audience is and how best to contact them. Knowing who your sales base is will allow you to focus and be more strategic in your marketing.

5. Breakdown how you will use different marketing medium to meet goals. Traditional marketing is more expensive than social media marketing but it may be needed to reach your audience. Set individual sales or contact goals for each type of marketing platform you will use. Look at prior campaigns to see what has worked and where you expect to bring in sales.

6. Stay on track and keep process of marketing materials for each marketing media platform going out on a consistent basis. Your results may not necessarily take shape immediately but stick with your plan.

7. Review and revise as necessary. If you’ve done the planning phase correctly, revisions should be minor.

8. After campaign is done put together a debrief meeting with your project team. Write down notes about what worked and what could have been improved. Save information in folder for use when another similar campaign is needed.