How to create a marketing campaign in 2026
Building a marketing campaign means there is a focused period of time where you promote and sell your offer. During this time, you intentionally move your audience through the customer journey.
As a solo or small business owner creating a campaign can feel overwhelming because there are a lot of moving pieces. If a campaign isn’t planned well, you may run out of steam before you reach your goals.
As someone who has written hundreds of sales emails, planned dozens of campaigns, and helped clients sell out services and group programs, the best way to run a campaign is to run through the following process.
What are the phases of a marketing campaign?
Planning a campaign isn’t easy - whether you are doing a live launch or creating something evergreen to run in the background, there are essential pieces you need for a successful campaign. When it comes to a marketing campaign, there are four main phases you go through:
Planning: This is where you do all your necessary research, determine your position and messaging for the campaign, and plan the series of events that will happen.
Prelaunch: The purpose of prelaunch is to nurture and prepare your audience for your offer and help the right people self-select. You spend this time talking about the problems they experience, why they are facing those problems, and what their desired transformation is.
Prelaunch usually ends with a conversion event where you interact with people and provide value. This conversion event can look like a live webinar, challenge, private podcast, or something else. Be creative and plan to your strengths!Launch: This is when you actively promote your offer. Everything you talked about in the prelaunch gets wrapped up in a bow during the launch. You already established what the desired transformation is in prelaunch, so now you show how your offer helps them get those outcomes. During launch, you want to lean into your authority by showing off client results and case studies. Finally, you want to build urgency and talk about why now is the right time to invest in your offer.
As you work through your marketing plan during launch, make sure to also engage in your sales process. This is the time to actively have conversations with potential clients, invite them in, and answer any lingering questions.Post Launch: During post-launch, take a minute to breathe and celebrate the hard work of putting a campaign together. When you’ve had some space from the launch, reflect on what went well and what could be improved for a future launch. At this point, your focus turns to serving the clients who are now working with you.
Why go through the phases of a marketing campaign?
Why not just jump right in and talk about your offer all the time? The truth is people need time to build trust and determine whether the offer is the right fit for them. Many people need to see an offer multiple times before being ready to invest. Prelaunch helps build that foundation before they are ready to jump in. The average customer goes through a few different phases:
Problem aware: They know they have a problem and are cognizant of the symptoms of the problem. During prelaunch, you acknowledge this by validating their experience and giving them some perspective on why they are feeling that way.
Solution aware: At this point, the customer understands they have a problem and are figuring out that they can actually do something about this problem. Here’s where you show them the gap: what’s missing and why they haven’t been able to solve the problem yet. This is also about showing them that their desired transformation is possible.
Product aware: This is where the customer understands there are products out there to help them solve their problem. They haven’t decided on what type of product or service might be the right fit for them. When you’re launching, you’re actively speaking to this customer by positioning your product as the right choice for them.
Decision aware: This is the final stage where the customer is ready to make a decision about whether or not to invest in your product or service. This is where you may run into questions around pricing, timing or urgency. At this point you want to lean into why now is the right time to join your offer (instead of waiting around for next time).
What do I actually do during a campaign?
As you may have noticed, I didn’t spend any time talking about email marketing, social media, or podcasting. The truth is, where your campaign takes place is going to be entirely dependent on your business and where you communicate with people.
You can take all these phases of a marketing campaign and apply them to any marketing channel. If you’re running a multi-channel campaign, you’ll think about how to integrate these phases across multiple domains.
For example, your campaign might look like a mix of social media, a live event, and podcasting. It could also look like ads, a challenge, and an email sequence. For a service-based business, it could be a weekly email with individual reach-outs to potential customers. Think about what makes sense for your business, your strengths, and how you actually connect with people.
Every campaign is information
Every marketing campaign is an experiment that gives you information about your business. You don’t have to create a campaign that looks like someone else’s. Try something out and see how it works. Then take the lessons you learned from it and run it again, improving it every time.
Get support with running your campaign in Copy Classroom
Inside Copy Classroom, get support with running your campaign with weekly live group consulting and resources to help you plan every stage. Plus, get a professional copywriter’s eyes on your sales pages and emails to help them bring more of the right-fit clients inside.
