Video Marketing:
Your Campaign Starter Guide

Have you ever adjusted rabbit ears on a television set to get a better signal? How about reading an article printed in a physical newspaper? Or, my personal favorite, using the phone book to look up a phone number?

If you’re 30+ you probably have memories of doing at least one of those. Thankfully, they’re exactly that, memories. During the last two or three decades, technology has advanced and changed how we interact with the world around us.

However, people still need to find that phone number to order a pizza, entertain themselves after a long day with some Netflix, or gain access to a certain article that everyone is sharing around the office.

These new technological advancements have also impacted the way marketers can reach their ideal buyers. This ability to target our ideal buyers through various techniques plays a critical role when planning any video marketing advertising campaign.

Storytime

Let’s create a fictional character to aid us during our campaign goal creation and to keep things entertaining!

Our character, let’s name him Steven, is the Marketing Director for NoBo Hikes. NoBo Hikes is a hiking supply brand headquartered in Portland, Maine. Steven is responsible for overseeing the marketing of four brick and mortar locations in Maine and New Hampshire. Steven is also in charge of all digital and non-digital marketing assets including the NoBo Hikes eCommerce website.

It’s late in December and Steven is meeting with the NoBo Hikes owner to discuss next year’s marketing plan. During the meeting, Steven is tasked by the owner to run an ad on TV during their upcoming busy season. The owner hopes to encourage more sales for NoBo Hikes during the spring and summer months online and in stores.

Steven’s initial thought is to contact his local news stations for ad creation, and distribution, to help encourage sales. Easy? Yes. Effective? Not so much.

There are at least two problems with this scenario. First, Steven is not leveraging the full capabilities of the advancement in marketing techniques we mentioned above. Secondly, he has not defined a SMART goal to help measure campaign effectiveness.

Defining a SMART Goal

If you’re unfamiliar with SMART goals, a SMART goal is simply an acronym that stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.

S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Attainable
R – Relevant
T – Time-Bound

First, Steven needs to brainstorm his SMART goal and then put pen to paper. Secondly, he will return with his SMART goal and present it to the company owner for approval upon completion. This process will allow Steven to plan the entire campaign around the business and brand objectives. He will feel much more comfortable knowing that both he and the owner are on the same page.

With last year’s sales figures in hand, Steven sits down with a nice cup of java to get started. A few hours later, viola, he has defined his SMART goal into the easily digestible statement below.

“NoBo Hikes will increase hiking gear sales revenue, through in-store and online purchases, by 10% (8% growth seen prior year with no campaign) via an advertising campaign targeting outdoor enthusiasts during Q2 and Q3.”

He has also broken down his statement into the acronym to ensure he has all the appropriate pieces in place.

Specific – increase camping & hiking sales revenue through in-store and online purchases
Measurable – by 10%
Attainable – 8% growth seen prior year with no campaign
Relevant – via an advertising campaign targeting outdoor enthusiasts
Time-Bound – during Q2 and Q3

Now that Steven has established his SMART goal, it is time for him to calculate his budget.

We all know what budgets are and why they exist. Some of us are unable to set our budgets, while others have complete reign on how much to spend and on what. Either way, it’s part of the campaign discussion, no matter which bucket you might fall in.

The CMO Survey

An industry standard for information on all things marketing is the CMO Survey. If you’re unfamiliar with the CMO Survey, they assemble bi-annual reports from data gathered via surveys. One of those surveys covers current marketing budgets as a percent of firm revenue and is how we will help Steven calculate his campaign budget.

Let’s pick back up with our Marketing Director Steven and the NoBo Hikes brand to see how he is progressing.

Steven is familiar with the CMO Survey and has turned to their most recent report as he feels they provide credible data for calculating budgets. As Steven is the Marketing Director for NoBo Hikes, he falls into a gray area as he has some budgeting power but still needs to get approval from the NoBo Hikes company owner.

Steven’s first step is to dig into his financial’s from the previous year. He discovers that last year the company grossed $10 million in revenue from stores and online sales combined. He will use that as his baseline to build the budget.

His next step is to investigate the industry data from the CMO Survey to get the percentage that he will multiply against last year’s revenue. He uses the below data found in the most recent February 2020 survey and determines that NoBo Hikes falls into the B2C ( Business to Consumer ) Product category at 11.9%.

Marketing budget as a percent of firm revenues

• B2B Product: 9.0%
• B2B Services: 7.9%
• B2C Product: 11.9%
• B2C Services: 4.8%

View the most recent results from The CMO Survey here.

Steven decides to round up to 12% and now takes his 10,000,000 in revenue from the prior year and multiplies it by .12 (don’t forget to put the decimal ahead of the percentage you arrive on), and so his equation will look like this:

10,000,000 * .12 = 1,200,000

Steven has now arrived at his full-year marketing budget!

Allocating the Budget

Now comes the fun part—slicing that budget up like a loaf of bread. He decides to start by determining how much he will spend on digital initiatives.

Steven does some additional research and discovers another helpful benchmark from the CMO Survey. It reports that by 2024 digital marketing will demand around 54% of total marketing budgets. This number also aligns with his previous years’ digital budget that landed at 48%.

With both of those pieces of information in mind, Steven decides to utilize 50% of his budget on digital marketing and advertising, with the remaining budget being allotted to non-digital items such as in-store promotional items and marketing salaries.

1,200,000 * .50 = 600,000

Now that Steven has allocated his digital marketing budget for the new year, he will break it into four-quarters to ensure that he has enough for each quarter. He is going to apply 15% to the first and fourth quarters and 35% to the second and third quarters, as he wants the majority of the advertising budget to target NoBo Hikes’ busiest months.

This means he needs to do some more math to break down what he will have for each quarter. He arrives at the following quarterly breakdown:

• 1st quarter = $90,000
• 2nd quarter = $210,000
• 3rd quarter = $210,000
• 4th quarter = $90,000

Steven now adds his Q2 and Q3 budgets together for a total of $410,000. Heck yeah!

Rainy Day Fund

Now that Steven has his total Q2 and Q3 budget, his first move is to allocate a small portion of that budget for unexpected costs. Steven believes in having a “rainy day fund” line item in his budget for unforeseen expenses; he has been on enough hikes to know you should plan for the unexpected.

Thus, Steven decides that he wants to allocate 10% of his total campaign into this “rainy day fund” line item. The remaining 90% will be his first line of defense for all internal and external expenses. More importantly, he will now have peace-of-mind that he can be agile with his budgeting during NoBo Hikes’ busiest months.

It is important to note that there is no hard and fast rule when it comes to building unexpected costs into your budget. We do recommend that you take this methodology into consideration when planning your video marketing campaign, as we believe some wiggle room is better than no wiggle room.

With his rainy day fund established, Steven takes his total campaign budget of 410,000 and multiplies it against 90%.

410,000 * .90 = 369,000

Steven now subtracts his 90% figure ($369,000) from his total campaign budget ($410,000).

410,000 – 369,000 = 41,000

Woo hoo! Steven has landed on an adjusted campaign budget of $369,000, with a remaining $41,000 for any unforeseen items.

The adjusted campaign budget ($369,000) will cover things like:

• External agency consulting
• Advertising expenses
• Creative development
• Production costs
• Campaign analysis
• Miscellaneous expenses related to the campaign

Hiring an Agency

Now that Steven has arrived at his campaign budget, he can begin to think through the most effective ways to deliver his campaign via creative strategy and ad placement. However, Steven has never managed a campaign of this magnitude before and feels that he could greatly benefit from hiring an agency to help him navigate this uncharted territory.

Additionally, since Steven is the only full-time marketer at NoBo Hikes, he will need help from a full-team of experts to provide high-quality campaign assets to support his goal.

Steven takes a few weeks to interview several marketing agencies and decides to go with Big Sky Marketing, an agency based out of Montana that specializes in outdoor brands. Big Sky also has a great portfolio of case studies highlighting their best campaigns with brands similar to his. Steven schedules his first kickoff call with Big Sky to get the ball rolling. Woot, woot!

During the campaign kickoff call, Steven is introduced to Marcus, his Account Manager, who is pumped when he learns that Steven has already established a SMART goal. As a reminder, I have highlighted the campaign SMART goal below.

Campaign SMART Goal
“NoBo Hikes will increase hiking gear sales revenue, through in-store and online purchases, by 10% (8% growth seen prior year with no campaign) via an advertising campaign targeting outdoor enthusiasts during Q2 and Q3.”

Defining Buyer Personas

Marcus suggests that a great first step for building their strategy is to define two buyer personas to start. He explains to Steven that these buyer personas will help them shape their messaging and creative efforts.

After a few days of discussion and research, Steven and Marcus decide on First Time Frank and Upgrade Ulysses as their two target buyer personas. First Time Frank represents people who have never been hiking or are very new to it, and Upgrade Ulysses represents those who are looking to upgrade their gear or need to replace worn-out items.

With these two personas in mind, Marcus and Steven begin discussing ad placement so they know exactly what platforms they will need to create for. They determine that they will launch video ads on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Steven wants to prioritize targeting Facebook and Instagram, so they decide to utilize 60% of their video ad spend towards those two platforms and the remaining 40% for YouTube.

Playbooks

With the ad placement decided for the video ads, Marcus introduces Steven to a few “playbooks” that will help them establish how many ads they will need to produce for each persona, script lengths, and align them with Steven’s SMART goal. Marcus recommends that they go with the Bigshot.

Video Marketing Playbook: The Bigshot

The Bigshot is an approach Marcus learned during his Google Ads training and one that he has successfully implemented for other clients. The Bigshot starts off with a TrueView ad. A TrueView ad is thirty-seconds or more in length and can be thought of as a traditional big spend Superbowl ad. Once a viewer has seen the TrueView ad, the Bigshot approach shifts to remarketing.

With remarketing, Marcus plans to target those who have viewed the TrueView ad, along with a few other conditions, with six individual bumper ads to reinforce the brand and simultaneously focus on a single product, all the while extending the duration of their video marketing campaign.

Steven loves the idea of the Bigshot and is even more confident in this approach when presented with the following statistic.

With the Bigshot locked in as their video strategy, Marcus and Steven plan to produce one TrueView ad and six bumper ads for each persona. Each bumper ad will be filmed in one scenario, as they only have six-seconds to deliver their message and will be hyper-focused on an individual product and its function/benefit.

In total, they will need to produce fourteen scripts and three exports per script (16:9, 4:5, 9:16) as they will need to ensure proper framing for display on mobile devices.

With the personas, ad platforms, playbook, and framing decided, Marcus and Steven get to work developing their message for each persona’s TrueView ad and subsequent bumper ads.

First Time Frank Persona Message

The TrueView ad for First Time Frank will deliver a message targeted toward hikers who will experience emotional gratification upon completing their first big hike and will appeal to casual day-hikers. The bumper ads will highlight products that a new hiker is more likely to purchase at this point in their customer journey, such as hiking boots and socks, weather-appropriate clothing, headlamps, day pack, compass, etc.

Upgrade Ulysses Persona Message

The TrueView ad for Upgrade Ulysses will deliver a message targeted towards hikers who enjoy the feeling of seclusion and need top-of-the-line gear to give them peace-of-mind during long overnight hikes in the backcountry. Bumper ads for Upgrade Ulysses will feature products that are further along in the customer journey for an avid hiker, such as a lightweight cookstove, larger overnight packs, tents, and sleeping gear.

With a rough outline of who and how they will target, Steven and Marcus begin diving deeper into the creative brainstorming process.

Align the Creatives with the Goal

As Marcus and his team begin brainstorming creative concepts to present to Steven and the NoBo Hikes brand, they keep Steven’s SMART goal at the forefront of the conversation, as that will be their guide during the entire process. Again, I have highlighted that below for reference.

Campaign SMART Goal
“NoBo Hikes will increase hiking gear sales revenue, through in-store and online purchases, by 10% (8% growth seen prior year with no campaign) via an advertising campaign targeting outdoor enthusiasts during Q2 and Q3.”

By aligning your SMART goal with your creatives early on in the process, you will ultimately end up with a much more cohesive campaign. Additionally, you might even end up with more revenue. For example, Steven needs to increase his revenue, and, therefore, he needs the consumer to take action—in this case, make a purchase online or in-store. In general, we recommend utilizing at least one of the three options below to better align your goal with your creatives.

Campaign Goal Objectives:

• Build Awareness
• Increase Consideration
• Take Action

Now that we have determined that Steven needs his campaign creatives to align with his action-oriented goal, it is time to decide on what exactly those ads will look, feel, and sound like.

Concepting the Message

Enter concepting. Concepting is a great place to put out a lot of ideas with minimal work. This step is where the ad will come to life and develop its core message. Marcus presents Steven with several concepts that his team has put together. These are not meant to be perfect; they are very rough outlines as to what the message could be.

With a little back and forth, they land on two concepts that Steven believes will be most effective. These concepts rely heavily on emotional storytelling, which is one of Big Sky’s strengths as an agency. The First Time Frank persona will hit on family emotions, whereas the Upgrade Ulysses will focus on the emotional connection between a woman and her K-9 hiking partner.

First Time Frank Message Concept

To recap, the First Time Frank persona will target its message on those new to hiking or those who have never been. In order to deliver that message, Marcus and his team will utilize storytelling, as he knows it can be the most effective way to reach a potential consumer.

This persona focuses on the story of a young man who is going through the belongings of his grandparents in their garage; clearly, they have passed away. He discovers an old hiking pack on a shelf covered in dust. Upon opening the pack he and his girlfriend discover a polaroid camera, several old photos of his grandparents, and a list of hikes completed by his grandmother and grandfather.

The polaroid pictures show a young version of his grandparents at the peak of several hikes; they appear to be very happy in the photos. Discovering this old hiking pack and the list of many hikes the grandparents completed, encourages the young couple to follow the list of hikes together to honor their memory.

The ad then shows the young couple traveling to the mountain and ascending to the top with the old hiking pack. Once at the top they find themselves struck by the beauty of the landscape around them. The ad then starts to pick up speed and shows the couple going on another hike, followed by another, and it flashes many hikes – one shot will show the old pack being hung up on the wall to retire it and making it a part of their home decor.

Finally, the couple finds themselves at the trailhead at the last hike on the list, meaningful looks are exchanged. They reach the peak, with the camera tight on the young couple embracing. A few tears from the young man are seen. However, when the young couple begins to separate, the young man kneels down on one knee and proposes to the young woman. Tears from her are shown.

The ad fades down to black and then cuts to a close up of the old hiking pack, now with a few select photos of the grandparents, the polaroid, and the list hanging on the wall. The shot is pulling back slowly to reveal a living room—with a spiritual tone music bed—you hear footsteps running. A little toddler flashes through the scene, followed by a puppy. The ad ends with a tagline. NoBo Hikes – thru-life.

Upgrade Ulysses Message Concept

With the message for the First Time Frank persona developed and approved by Steven, Marcus and his team start developing the next message for Upgrade Ulysses. For reference, the message will target those who are avid hikers seeking seclusion in the backcountry and will also utilize the power of storytelling.

This persona focuses on the story of a young woman waking up and starting her day. She’s making her coffee; sleepily she looks at her pup and says, “not yet.” She is working from her home office, clearly in a video meeting. The dog walks into her office and she whispers, “Almost done,” pets him on the head, and he slinks out of the office.

She’s packing up the car in her yard. The dog is staring at her from the door; she excitedly says “let’s go”; his ears perk up and he runs to her car. He jumps into her car, and when she closes the hatch the scene cuts to her and dog hiking in the mountains. The scene cuts to a closeup of the dog looking back at her. She’s taking a big drink of water and says, with a smile and a sweaty looking face, “Almost there.”

Cut to a campsite scene with a tent set up; the campfire is burning with a cookstove on it, and the pup is at her side—you can hear crickets and nature sounds in the background. She takes a deep breath, with the camera tight on her inhaling with her eyes closed. She exhales a big breath, and opens her eyes looking down at her K9 companion, and says, “We made it buddy.”

Cut to the final shot of the dog with his tail wagging and her petting him on the head as they stand overlooking a great valley with a beautiful sunset. The ad ends with a tagline. NoBo Hikes – thru-life.

With the concepts approved, Steven and Marcus can move forward with the actual production process. At this point, we will pause our story with Steven so we can discuss the best practices that we recommend for turning your concepts into a reality.

Pre-Production

The pre-production process is the place to start. In this stage you will be working through scripting, storyboarding and shot lists, location scouting, crew/roles, casting, and wardrobe. Steven has hired an agency to assist in this process, so he has been able to keep his focus at a higher level. He will not need to bother with planning each of these steps and trying to coordinate with all the people involved. However, we will briefly touch on each one to give you a basic understanding. For a more in-depth read, you can visit our video production best practices post here.

Scripting

Scripting is simply a way to further elaborate on the concepts that were approved in your brainstorming sessions. This will include things like dialogue, character nuances, and anything else that helps tell your story.

Storyboarding/Shot Lists

Storyboarding is a production team’s map to success. It keeps everyone on the same page as to what the end product should look like. A shot list is an efficient tactic to make sure that your production is getting the shots it needs in the most efficient way.

Location

Location can be one of the most budget-friendly, or unfriendly, aspects of a production. While certain ads will require real-world scenes, and thus a significant amount of work from the crew, others will require a studio. Studios can be expensive but can also save a ton of time as they are built specifically for production with lighting, rigging, and more.

Crew/Roles

We’ve all seen the credits for a major motion film, and we all know that ending credits can scroll for a long time. That’s because a lot of people were involved in making the film a viable product. It has been said that all productions are only as good as the crews. So, ensure you hire a professional crew that has good synergy; even small ones can produce award-winning pieces if they work well together.

Casting

Casting is where most people go cheap and sacrifice the quality of the final product. Think about it this way, you wouldn’t hire your buddy to work on your marketing emails simply because you cook burgers with them on the weekends, would you? If you answered “yes” to that question, we kindly ask you to go scroll through your Insta feed. Seriously though, hire professionals and you will get professionals.

Wardrobe

Wardrobe can be so easy to overlook if you’re haphazardly throwing together a production. The wardrobe can deepen a character’s personality without them uttering a word. Take Tombstone, for example, if the characters in Tombstone were wearing jeans and t-shirts, it would jar you out of the world the artists are trying to create. That may be an extreme example, but it highlights the need for it to be on your radar when planning a production.

Production

Blocking

Blocking is a term for planning out the details of how an actor/actors move through a scene relative to the camera. This technique can also incorporate lighting and prop movement. Ultimately, it’s a great way to test out how the scene will flow for all talent and crew involved.

Lighting

Lighting is the most important part of any production. It can be the difference between ending up with a professional production or an amateur production. There are several techniques that can be used, depending on the desired outcome. You can research these techniques online. However, your best bet is to hire a lighting professional who has experience with manipulating light and has a demo reel to prove it.

Audio

Hearing is probably the most important human sense after sight. When it comes to a production, the audio track will represent more than a character line. Natural background noise, sound effects, character dialogue, and music scores all need to be carefully captured. It is said that you should be able to simply listen to your production and be able to understand the story or message.

Wrap

Wrapping a production is where you cross your t’s and dot your i’s. You want to be sure that everything on the shot list has been captured and that your audio has been recorded. Once everything is double-checked, you will thank your crew and talent and dismiss them. Oh, and don’t forget to give yourself a pat on the back.

Post Production

Capture and Sync

Capturing and syncing your footage sounds pretty straightforward. However, if this process isn’t fully understood, there can be serious consequences. We have heard of entire scenes not being captured or being deleted because someone was not fully paying attention.

Editing

Editing is where the magic happens. It is where everything comes together to create the original concept. It can also be where the most friction can come from, as multiple people can be involved. Directors, producers, and editors are all potential sources for varying opinions. These opinions can make a production great or hold back its potential.

Color

Color correction is one of the last steps in the post-production process and is critical to ensure a fully polished product. Most amateur productions will either skip this step or simply have the editor give it a once over. Color, at the end of the day, can further immerse a viewer and should not be overlooked; if you don’t believe us watch an Academy Award-winning film; we would be willing to bet it was colored.

Mixing Audio

Mixing audio is similar to color grading in that it can often be considered less important. The opposite could not be more true. This is the moment that all of the captured audio will come together to create one harmonious experience for the viewer. A well-mixed audio bed will be subtle, so much so that the sounds heard by the viewer are exactly what is meant to be heard—nothing more and nothing less.

Finishing The Product

With all of these steps completed, the production is ready to be exported and reviewed for technical issues or issues with exporting. We all know computers can be problematic at times, and exporting video is no exception. The exports should be viewed with careful eyes and ears.

Now that we have covered the creative process and production best practices, we will pick up again with Steven and the NoBo Hikes brand.

Over the past several weeks, Steven has been busy prepping for the campaign, and Marcus has been overseeing the creative and production process while keeping Steven involved in big picture discussions.

Steven has been happy with his decision to hire an agency to help him with his campaign. He has been occupied with the normal operations that come along with preparing for their busy season, and he has a new baby girl at home who likes to keep him on his toes.

Bonus Campaigns: Search, Display, & Image

Like Steven’s little girl, Marcus decides to keep Steven on his toes and suggests that they launch additional campaign types such as Search Ads, Display Ads, and Image ads on various platforms alongside the Video ads to help bolster the campaign. These added campaign types would have been very difficult and time consuming for Steven without the help from Marcus’s team. A few of the tactics that they implemented are:

• Geofencing and targeting people in well-known hiking destinations within the US, such as the National Parks, for brand exposure.
• Utilizing the NoBo Hikes’ customer list to target their current customers.
• Remarketing display ads and video ads to website visitors.

Since we are focusing on the video approach in this guide, we will go in-depth as to how the ads were built utilizing the Facebook and Instagram ad platform, along with the Google Ads platform. If you’re looking for additional information on traditional campaign types like we mentioned above, we recommend these resources:

Resource #1 → HubSpot’s Ultimate Guide to PPC
Resource #2 → ACQUISIO Display Ads Complete Guide

Google Ads & Facebook Business Manager

The first step to building out the ads is to ensure that you have the correct social accounts and YouTube account for the business that will be represented by the campaign. In this case, Marcus will need Steven to provide him with the NoBo Hikes Facebook page URL, Instagram handle, and YouTube URL.

With social accounts verified by Steven, Marcus knows that he has the correct profiles for each platform. Marcus now needs access to the Facebook Business Manager account and Google Ads for NoBo Hikes.

Steven already has a Google Ads account for NoBo Hikes and can easily add Big Sky as a manager account. However, he has not created a Facebook Business Manager account, as he usually runs his Facebook ads directly from the NoBo Hikes Facebook page. This is not the ideal scenario, but it can be easily remedied.

Facebook Business Manager

Marcus explains that having a Facebook Business Manager account is critical for his brand because it provides Steven with a more business-friendly tool for managing the Facebook page, ads, vendors, billing, and much more for NoBo Hikes. As Marcus is not an internal employee at NoBo Hikes, he will be added as a partner to the NoBo Hikes Business Manager account. The only users on the Facebook Business Manager account should be employees of NoBo Hikes.

Now that Steven has created the Facebook Business Manager account for NoBo hikes, connected both the Instagram account and Facebook page, set up the billing payment, and added Big Sky Marketing as a partner, Marcus can begin to build out the video marketing campaign for Facebook, Instagram, and Google Ads.

Marcus and Steven decided early in the campaign process that they would leverage the Bigshot methodology as their approach. The Bigshot is comprised of a TrueView ad, which is an ad that is a minimum of thirty-seconds, and several bumpers, which are ads no longer than six-seconds.

Marcus plans to start by utilizing the TrueView ads first. It is important to remember that Steven’s TrueView ads are meant to evoke an emotional response and are not meant to focus on a product.

Lookalike and Similar Audiences

Marcus starts by thinking through the two platforms he will use to promote the ads, Facebook Business Manager and Google Ads. He decides that he will utilize Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences and Google’s Similar Audiences to target people who fall into the First Time Frank or Upgrade Ulysses personas. In order to accomplish this, Marcus requests two customer lists from Steven: one containing customers who have made only one purchase and another that contains customers who have made three purchases or more.

By separating customers who have made only one purchase from those who have made three or more purchases, Marcus will be able to deliver a message that resonates more accurately with each persona.

Starting with the First Time Frank persona, Marcus imports his customer list containing customers who only made one purchase and creates his first lookalike/similar audience from those contacts. This approach will serve people who look similar to customers in that list based on Facebook’s and Google’s respective algorithms.

Marcus will use the same approach for Upgrade Ulysses, utilizing Facebook’s Lookalike Audience tool and Google’s Similar Audience tool. As we mentioned, the list he will build this audience from will only include customers who have made three separate purchases or more. Additionally, Marcus intends to take advantage of Facebook’s Lookalike Audience LTV column. This column will provide an LTV for each customer and place a greater emphasis on ad delivery for those customers with the highest LTV.

With these audiences in place, Marcus is able to start delivering the TrueView ads to each persona with a targeted message that aligns closely with the viewer’s lifestyle. Steven is pumped! Next up, remarketing with bumper ads.

Remarketing with Bumper Ads

Now that Marcus has built out the audiences for the TrueView ads, he can shift gears to remarketing with bumper ads. His plan is to utilize a few different sources to leverage remarketing for each persona.

For First Time Frank he will target anyone who has met one or more of the following criteria:

• Watched 50% or more of the TrueView ad
• Visited any of the following website product pages for Men or Women (these products pages correlate to the products featured in the bumper ads)
  • Hiking boots (light hikers)
  • Packs up to 35 liters
  • Hiking socks
  • Rain gear
  • Compass
  • Headlamp

Upgrade Ulysses will take the same approach by targeting anyone who has met one or more of the following criteria:

• Watched 50% or more of the TrueView ad
• Visited any of the following website product pages for Men or Women (these products pages correlate to the products featured in the bumper ads)
  • Packs larger than 35 liters
  • Tent
  • Sleeping pad
  • Sleeping bag
  • Cookstove
  • Water-treatment supplies

With these audiences built out, Marcus takes the final step by creating the ads in both Facebook and Google. Specifically for Facebook, he ensures that each ad has the appropriate export matched with the ad placement. For example, Instagram Stories and Facebook Stories prefer ads in the 9×16 format.

The 9×16 format is ideal because most people hold their phones vertically instead of horizontally when scrolling through social platforms. This is not something Marcus has to worry about within Google Ads as their platform only utilizes traditional 16×9 framing.

Conversion Tracking & Insights

In order for Steven and Marcus to analyze and adjust their digital marketing efforts, once the campaign launches, they will need to be able to track all purchases derived from their ads. Marcus will utilize Google Tag Manager to create the appropriate tags and sync them with Google Ads to ensure conversion tracking.

For Facebook and Instagram, Marcus will be utilizing the Facebook pixel. Both the Google Tag Manager and Facebook Pixel will require setup work and code to be installed on the NoBo Hikes website.

The important part of this will be the conversion value. For each sale on the website, a value must be applied to the conversion. Luckily for Steven and Marcus, they are able to pull the value of each sale from their website and apply it to each conversion.

Additionally, Steven has connected his e-commerce platform with his CRM software to gain visibility on what pieces of the campaign, including paid efforts and organic efforts, are bringing the highest return on investment (ROI).

Now that he has a value placed on each conversion and the data being sent to his CRM, Steven can see where his customers are coming from, the ad they clicked, and the products purchased all on one screen. He can even create reports with different revenue attribution models if he so desires.

While these insights are extremely valuable for Steven, the SMART goal is still the most important key performance indicator (KPI). Measuring the success of the campaign will come once the campaign ends and NoBo Hikes is able to evaluate their entire year, as the SMART goal is based around total revenue generation.

Thankfully, Steven will be able to track their progress by comparing this year’s sales with last year’s sales on a weekly basis and adjust as needed.

As a recap, Steven and Marcus have created a SMART goal, calculated their budget, determined their ad strategy, brainstormed and published scripts, produced the advertisements, built out the ads in their respective platforms, set up conversion tracking, and connected the necessary systems to integrate with each other.

Steven has also prepped a few additional items in-house such as email marketing, organic social posts, and website updates. With Q2 only a few weeks away, Marcus and Steven have all their ducks in a row and are excited to launch!