What Does a Campaign Manager Do?

Two big buzzwords in marketing today are “campaigns” and “campaigns management.” But, like the term “Public Relations” if you ask ten people what a marketing campaign means to them, you’re likely to get many different answers, with similar shades of in-between.

I’ve seen so-called “Campaign Managers” present entire campaigns focused solely on email. That’s it. Just email. And I’ve put together presentations for campaigns covering everything from email, to webinars, to roadshows, to targeted social media and paid ads. But that’s not the majority of my job.

The reality is that, most of what marketers do every day has nothing to do with a campaign. Take someone in content marketing. Their day-to-day involves developing strategies and tactics to promote content targeting different parts of the funnel. They also may be responsible for executing some of the tactics in the plan.

Sure, sometimes that content is for a campaign. Maybe the organization is launching a new product and they’re developing some thought-leadership to publish in advance of the release. Or maybe they’re working on lead-generation, so the content marketer is putting together a big, anchor piece of content.

But what about the other 80 percent of a marketer’s day? The part where they’re just engaging on social media, talking to industry analysts, writing blogs to fill spots on the calendar, sitting in strategy meetings to help meet various organizational and company goals, working through design changes with their agency on an infographic, or just helping put together the booth for the company’s user conference?

Are those campaigns? If they are, then everything we do everyday is a campaign. Which takes us back to the original question, “What makes a campaign, a campaign?”

Is a campaign only something that has a project built around it in Asana? And if so, then in what world is any one person responsible for that campaign? Because in my world, it takes no fewer than five people to pull off a simple campaign:

  1. Usually someone from product marketing or a subject matter expert (SME)
  2. A global marketer and/or a regional marketer who keeps things moving and on track
  3. A writer
  4. Someone from the design team or creative agency
  5. SEO specialist
  6. Someone representing each of the campaign’s tactical channels:
    • Social media
    • Demand-gen
    • Customer success
    • PR/Agency
    • HR (if there’s an internal communications component)
  7. Someone who is in charge of pulling analytics from these channels or from the CMS and CRM if the company has them.

Unless you’re in a very small shop where only a couple of people do everything–and I’ve worked in those environments–for a very simple campaign, we already need a minimum of 4-6 people. Now, if I were to ask each of those people if they have experience managing campaigns based on their involvement in this one, which ones should truthfully answer “yes?” Any of them? None of them? And yet, pick any five marketing or communications-titled job listings today and you’ll find “campaigns management” as a requirement.

So then, what makes a “campaigns manager?” Is it more of a project manager, and if so, is a project manager the skillset you need overseeing your marketing and/or communications department?

Too often we marketers focus on the wrong things. We get caught up in the shiny object and forget that most of the work we do is heads-down, keep-the-business-moving-forward work that too often goes unremarked and unappreciated. But we love it, else we wouldn’t keep doing it day in and day out.

But, the next time you’re evaluating someone’s background, look beyond the buzzwords and try to understand the big picture of the person’s experience. Anyone can copy-and-paste someone else’s written email into Eloqua and hit “send.” But that doesn’t a Campaigns Manager make and it certainly doesn’t give the person the chops to run your Marcom organization.

About Chris Souther

Before working in Marketing Communications, Chris Souther was trained in the Air Force as a telecoms and security technician. He spent the next ten years developing his engineering chops before pivoting into Marketing and Communications. Today, Chris has 15 years of software and SaaS marketing in the cybersecurity, banking and finance, FinTech, and application development spaces.

Chris Souther's avatar

By Chris Souther

Chris joined the Air Force out of high school. After four years of supporting communications for the Department of Defense, the White House, and stations around the world, he left the military and moved to Atlanta. For the next six years, Chris continued working in the telecom field, eventually traveling around the country teaching companies like MCI, Nortel Networks, and Cabletron, how to do what he did. When the dot.com crash happened, upon recommendation from his wife, Chris re-enrolled in school and earned his B.S. in Communications (PR & Marketing). Since then, he was worked in network security, healthcare, banking and finance (and FinTech), general high tech (AI/ML, Cloud, IoT), and most recently, application development fields. Now, with more than 15 years of both Marketing and Communications under his belt, he helps organizations grow their business through the proper application of marketing, communications, and content. And he blogs on the side. It keeps him sane.