About this template
Most marketing campaigns are too ambitious for the timeline they have. A 12-week campaign has roughly 8 weeks of usable work time once you subtract approvals, holidays, and the unavoidable scope creep. This template targets an integrated campaign — paid, email, content, social — for a single product or initiative. The phases reflect the cadence agencies and in-house teams actually run, with realistic approval cycles.
How a 12-week campaign breaks down
Strategy and brief
Define campaign goal in one sentence (drive 5,000 trial signups, generate 300 leads, etc.). Identify target audience, single key message, and channel mix. Write the creative brief. Stakeholder review and approval before any creative work begins — chasing approvals after creative is built is the most expensive mistake.
- Define campaign goal (1 sentence)
- Identify target audience and ICP
- Single key message
- Channel mix (paid, email, content, social)
- Creative brief
- Stakeholder approval
Creative production
Concepts, drafts, revisions, final. Plan for 2–3 rounds of revision per asset. Production handles: campaign visual identity, ad creative across formats, email templates, landing page, blog content, video assets, social cuts.
- Concept development
- Campaign visual identity
- Ad creative (all formats)
- Email templates
- Landing page
- Blog content
- Video assets
- Social cuts
Setup and pre-flight
Configure ad accounts, tracking, UTMs, conversion pixels. Set up email sequences in the ESP. Build landing page and A/B variants. Test every link, every form, every conversion event. The week before launch is for catching the things that would have been embarrassing to ship broken.
- Ad accounts configured
- UTM and tracking
- Conversion pixels
- Email sequences in ESP
- Landing page live (dev)
- Test all links and forms
Launch and ramp
Soft launch first 48 hours to catch issues. Email Day 1, social Day 1, paid campaigns ramped at 20–40% of total budget for the first week to allow optimization data to accumulate. Daily standup for first week to catch problems fast.
- Soft launch (first 48 hours)
- Email day 1
- Social day 1
- Paid at 30% budget (week 1)
- Daily standup (week 1)
- Full budget by day 7
Optimize
A/B test creative, audiences, copy. Shift budget to top-performing channels. Refresh top-performing creative — even the best ads fatigue within 2–4 weeks. Send a re-engagement email to people who clicked but did not convert.
- A/B test ad creative
- A/B test landing page
- Audience and copy tests
- Budget shift to top channels
- Creative refresh
- Re-engagement email
Wind down and report
Last week of paid spend. Final email push. Pull all the data into one report: spend, impressions, clicks, conversions, CAC, revenue impact by channel. Write the campaign retrospective — what worked, what to repeat, what to kill.
- Final paid push
- Final email push
- Pull campaign data
- Build report deck
- Campaign retrospective
Tips from campaigns that hit
- Get stakeholder approval in week 2. Reworking creative after week 8 is dramatically more expensive than approving earlier.
- Plan for 2–3 revision rounds per asset. Single-round creative is a fiction.
- Start paid spend at 30% of total budget. The first week is for optimization data, not max spend.
- Refresh top-performing creative every 2–4 weeks. Even the best ads fatigue.
- Pull the report within 5 business days of campaign end. Two weeks later, the team has moved on and details fade.
Frequently asked questions
How long should an integrated campaign run?
6–12 weeks for most campaigns. Less than 6 and there is not enough optimization data; more than 12 and creative fatigues.
What is the most-skipped step?
Pre-launch testing of links, forms, and conversion events. The cost of a broken UTM on launch day is usually 50–100% of week 1 budget.
How much budget should be in paid?
Highly campaign-specific. Brand campaigns: 50–70% paid. Performance: 70–90% paid. Content-led: 20–40% paid.