How long should you run a specific marketing campaign

Many companies spend a lot of time and money on a specific marketing campaign; but how long should you run a marketing campaign? First we need to discuss what a marketing campaign is and how to determine the length of a marketing campaign.

What is a Marketing Campaign?
Marketing campaigns are broken into two parts: Strategy - This is planning step where you determine target audience, your message, what marketing tactics you'll use, and how you'll measure results. Execution - This is the action step where you follow through on your plan. Once you have defined your marketing campaign, you need to look at how to plan it.

Planning Your Marketing Campaign
You can't determine what you should say, how you should design your ads, and which publications to advertise in until you commit to working with a particular target audience and define specific campaign goals around that target audience. You must determine your target audience, determine your marketing message, determine your action steps, determine how you will measure results, and how you will execute your marketing campaigns strategy.

Without knowing who your target audience, how can you expect to know how long to run a specific campaign? Take the time to narrow down your potential clients and learn their spending habits. Knowing this information will help you determine how long you can run a marketing campaign.

Does your marketing campaign meet the needs, concerns, and motivations of your target audience? Determining the length of a marketing campaign depends on how you are different from your competitors. Show your customers that you extend your promotions longer than your competitors.

How do you determine the length of a marketing campaign without knowing the action steps you are going to take to reach your target audience? Focus on one step at a time and figure out what works and doesn't work.

Measuring results of your marketing campaign will help keep track of inquires that are related to promotional methods. If you are running two campaigns at the same time, try using two different landing pages or 800 numbers so you know which inquires are coming from which campaign.

It is easy to lose focus on how long you should run a marketing campaign when you are caught up in the planning stages. Executing you marketing campaign properly needs to have a timeline attached for how long the planning stages must go on.
No matter what road you choose and how long you brainstorm your marketing campaign, there is no real answer to determining the length of a marketing campaign. Marketing is a leaning process and there is no way to know for sure whether something will work or not. Allowing time for beta testing is helpful as it will determine what marketing messages are successful.

Understanding your clients and their needs will help you to determine the length of a marketing campaign. You can look at their past spending habits and past marketing efforts. Learning from mistakes is one big part of marketing.

One way to determine the length of a marketing campaign is to know your financial situation. If you are a smaller company with limited resources, chances are you do not have money to keep a promotion going for a long time. Take gas stations for instance, they have one of the hardest marketing campaign strategies, they cannot offer discounts much more than 5 cents due to their dependency on the oil industry. Larger corporations can afford to extend their marketing campaign if they have budgeted for it. Keep in mind how much time and money you have to spend on a