What is a marketing campaign?

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? 

Raise your hand if that sentence conjured the familiar little crunch of Mr. Owl biting into a sucker. Fifty years later, the spot still airs every Halloween. That's not luck. That's a marketing campaign that worked. 

But unlike Mr. Owl, who took three licks and one bite to get to the (wrong) answer, a marketing campaign strategy needs to follow a workflow, turning an idea into a repeatable process with clear steps, responsibilities, and outcomes. 

This guide will show you how to create a marketing campaign and use workflows that take you from the first lick to that satisfying crunch.  

Table of contents:

• What is a marketing campaign?

• How to plan and run a marketing campaign

• Common marketing campaign types and when to use them

• Tools and automation for campaign management

• Automate your marketing campaigns with Zapier

What is a marketing campaign?

A marketing campaign is a planned series of marketing activities that work together to achieve a specific objective, such as increasing brand awareness, generating leads, or driving sales. It usually has a clear goal, a defined target audience, a key message or theme, and a set time frame.

Unlike an isolated ad or post lobbed onto the internet like a message in a bottle, a marketing campaign strategy binds multiple touchpoints across channels to deliver a unified message that drives measurable results.

In a bit, I'll break down common campaign types (email, social, paid ads, events, and more). In real life, most campaigns are a mix—the point is that everything ladders up to the same goal, story, and measurement plan.

How to plan and run a marketing campaign

Campaign success is the Tootsie Roll center of the Tootsie Pop, though it's different for everyone. It could be signups, conversions, ROI, customer growth, or number of licks. The marketing campaign workflow is the process that gets you there.

Follow these steps to learn how to run a successful marketing campaign. It's as easy as one… two… three…

(and four and five, in this case).

Step 1: Define your goal and scope

Start by deciding what success looks like, and be specific. "Increase brand awareness" sounds nice, but "Get 500 demo signups from IT teams by the end of Q4" gives your team something measurable to chase.

Set your metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) early to see if your campaign is working or just making noise. Here are some key KPIs to consider and what they tell you:

• Sales revenue measures the campaign's direct impact on growth. It shows whether your efforts are bringing in revenue or just attention.

• Customer retention shows whether your message builds loyalty beyond the first conversion. It helps confirm that your campaigns attract the right people, not just more people.

• Return on investment (ROI) clarifies how efficiently your ad spend delivers results. It proves whether the creative ideas and channels you chose are worth repeating.

• Cost per lead (CPL) tells you how much you pay to attract interest. It helps balance budget and quality so you can focus on leads that are both affordable and valuable.

• Marketing qualified leads (MQLs) signal the quality of your targeting. A higher number of MQLs means your messaging and audience alignment are working together effectively.

• Cost per acquisition (CPA) reveals how much it costs to gain a paying customer. It ties creative success directly to business performance.

• Brand lift measures changes in brand awareness or perception tied to your campaign. It shows whether people remember you, trust you, and see your brand differently after the message lands.

Mr. Owl didn't set any KPIs (so much for being wise).

Step 2: Know your audience and message

Who is this campaign for and why should they care? A good marketing campaign design starts with customer data to find patterns in industry, company size, pain points, or behavior. Then you can shape your message to connect their needs with your solution. If you already have an ideal customer persona (ICP), this part's a bit easier.

Your value proposition should make that connection obvious. It should speak directly to how your product makes their work easier, faster, or more effective. Use it across every channel so the story lands the same way every time.

Step 3: Choose your channels and assets

You don't need to be everywhere. You just need to meet your audience where they are and where they're actually paying attention. Pick the mix that fits your goal. These are just a few examples to start with:

• Email marketing for nurturing leads

• Paid social for reach and engagement

• Content marketing for education and SEO visibility

• Events and webinars for building personal connections

• Search and display ads for targeted conversions

Build reusable assets like landing page templates, ad variations, and automated emails. Track what performs best, like click-through rates or engagement time, and double down on those formats or channels. Once you've found the flavor your audience loves, standardize it so every new campaign starts from a stronger baseline. That's how your marketing campaign scales in both impact and efficiency over time.

Step 4: Automate execution across tools

This is where campaigns often lose momentum. As your tech stack grows, coordination gets harder. Data lives in different apps, and teams might work in different dashboards, which can lead to missed updates or crucial information being overlooked. 

Automation closes those gaps. It keeps your data moving and teams informed, triggering next steps and ensuring every action happens on time. 

Here's an example of how automation can handle the steps behind the scenes during a marketing campaign:

• When a lead fills out your Facebook ad form, it's sent straight to your CRM.

• The sales team gets a Slack alert instantly.

• If no one follows up within a day, the contact joins a nurture sequence automatically.

No manual exports. No messages asking if anyone followed up on the lead. Just clear handoffs and reliable progress.

Zapier connects the marketing tools that power your workflow. It automatically moves lead data from ads into your CRM, pushes campaign updates to project boards, and sends performance metrics to analytics dashboards. The result is a marketing campaign that performs predictably from kickoff to wrap-up, giving your team more time to focus on what drives results. Take a look at these marketing campaign automation templates to get you started, or get started with this template for unified lead tracking across channels.

Step 5: Track metrics and iterate

Once the campaign is live, don't sit back and just watch the numbers. Track and measure metrics with intent, digging deep to uncover what they mean and how you can improve.

Shift budget allocations to the ads and audiences that convert. Adjust content and offers to lift response rates and shorten the time to first action. Run A/B tests on content, timing, or channels to see what drives the best results. Keep the winners, retire the rest.

Be sure to document what worked and why, so your next marketing campaign plan starts with proven inputs. This turns reporting into action. You spend less, convert more, and move faster on the next run.

When your workflow includes consistent measurement, your campaigns become easier to refine and repeat. That's how marketing campaigns move from one-off projects to repeatable systems. And unlike Mr. Owl, you'll have the data to prove you reached the center the right way (without making children sad).

Common marketing campaign types and when to use them

As with everything in marketing (and business and life), what you choose depends on your audience, your goals, and the outcome you want.

Here are some of the most common types of marketing campaigns and when to use them.

Each campaign type has its own payoff, but they work best together. For example, you might run paid ads to attract leads, email to nurture them, and events to close the deal. The workflow that connects them is what makes the effort consistent and measurable. And at the core of all these campaign types is content: the message, offer, or story that gives people a reason to pay attention and take action.

Tools and automation for campaign management

Running a campaign without automation is like trying to eat a Tootsie Pop in one bite. Technically, it's possible, but it's messy and challenging (don't actually try that). Here are the tools you should be using for your campaigns.

Automate your marketing campaigns with Zapier

From cherry to chocolate, every marketing campaign flavor has the same mission: to reach that delicious chewy center. Workflow automation is how you get there.

With Zapier's AI workflow orchestration, your campaigns learn and adapt. Zapier connects thousands of apps and hundreds of AI tools so every part of your stack works in sync. Qualify leads, summarize reports, enrich data, and choose the next action automatically so you spend less time managing and more time creating.

How many clicks does it take to reach the goals of your next marketing campaign? Without Zapier orchestrating your workflow, the world may never know.

Related reading:

• The best campaign management software tools

• SEO strategies: A guide to people-first ranking in the age of AI

• The best marketing podcasts

• 12 essential marketing automation examples