Recently, we helped a client revamp their graduate program pages for a targeted marketing campaign. They had already laid the foundation by updating their written content and sought our expertise to improve the layout and imagery, with the goal of making their landing page more appealing and student-focused.
Strategizing your marketing campaign
Creating an effective landing page
When planning a marketing campaign, a landing page is often a great place to start. A landing page is created with a specific goal in mind. They are designed to guide the visitor to take a specific action, whether it’s to encourage sign-ups, applications, or event attendance. They are a great tool when strategizing a marketing campaign because they give visitors a place to land on your website. It’s often the only page visitors will see during the campaign, so it must provide all the necessary information to achieve the campaign’s objective.
Our team focused on several key areas to optimize the pages:
- Hero images: We added eye-catching hero images to engage visitors immediately.
- Feature sets: Each graduate major was highlighted with its own feature set to provide clear, concise information.
- Accordions: To manage detailed content efficiently, we incorporated accordions, which allowed users to expand and collapse information as needed.
- Image grids: We introduced image grids to visually break up the content and make the page more dynamic.
- Calls to action: At the bottom of each page, we included strong calls to action, guiding visitors to apply or request more information.
Strategizing, building, and updating pages is the first step for many marketing campaigns, but a successful campaign takes much more than just creating the right content. It's also important to consider how you will get the content in front of the right audience!
Selecting the right channels for your campaign
Once your landing page is ready, it’s time to determine how to drive traffic to it. Choosing the right channels is essential to reach your target audience effectively. Some common digital marketing channels include:
- Social media posts
- Targeted emails
- Paid ads on Google
- Guest blog posts
- Display and banner ads
- Email signatures
Tailor your messaging for each channel and ensure each includes a link to your landing page. This will help ensure the audience engages with your content.
Tracking and analyzing campaign performance
It's important to evaluate the success of your campaigns across different channels. You can do this by adding special text to your URL called UTM parameters. UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module, an early web analytics program that became a standard for marketing campaigns. The parameters help you identify where your traffic is coming from and how well different channels perform.
UTM parameters
There are five optional parameters to track your campaign: source, medium, name, term, and content.
- Source: where you are sending your content (Facebook, Google, other website name)
- Medium: what type of content you're using (paid ad, email, blog post)
- Name: the specific campaign or promotion (graduate studies july 2024)
- Term: specify search terms or keywords you are targeting (statistics degree, international degree, statistics phd)
- Content: often used for A/B testing, identify what type of content they clicked (banner ad, text link, etc.)
Standard URL:
https:/ /yourwebsite.com
URL using UTM parameters:
https:/ /yourwebsite.com?utm_parameter=custom-campaign-detail&utm_parameter=custom-campaign-detail2
Create an individual link for each promotion in your campaign strategy.
For example, let's say our client is tracking clicks from a monthly email newsletter and a link added to the email signature of all team members. I am using the free UTM generator at https://utmbuilder.com/, but you can use any you find.
- Newsletter link: Name the campaign "july24", use "web-team-newsletter" as the source, and "email" as the medium. The generated URL might look like this: https:/ /yourwebsite.com?utm_source=web-team-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=july24.
- Email signature link: Name the campaign "july24", add "email-signature" as the source, and "email" as the medium. The URL would be "https:/ /yourwebsite.com?utm_source=email-signature&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=july24."
Use each link with its corresponding campaign post.
Matomo analytics
Once your campaign has run, you can analyze your results in the Matomo dashboard to see whether the newsletter link or the email signature link brought in more traffic. Log in to your matomo account with your netID. Set the date parameter at the top to include the time your campaign ran. Click Acquisition > Campaigns in the sidebar menu to view your campaign results by channel. Learn more about accessing your Matomo dashboard.
Optimizing your landing pages and strategically tracking your marketing efforts with UTM parameters helps you gain insights into what is best for your audience. This allows you to refine your strategies and improve the effectiveness of your campaigns. Going forward, you'll have a better idea about which channels work well for your target audience.