4 Steps to Building More Effective Marketing CampaignsTips and tools for setting up your next big marketing push for success.

The competition for customer attention is fiercer than ever. With the average person seeing several thousand ads per month, it has become increasingly difficult to get your message across. Even if you've worked hard to refine your strategy, you may still find you're missing the mark andmaking mistakes you can't afford to make.

Whether you feel your marketing efforts have gone stale or you still have full confidence, it can never hurt to step back and think of ways you can improve.

Here are four useful tips to help you energize your next marketing campaign.

1. Align your goals.

If you've been in business more than a couple of years, it's probably been a while since you've taken a serious look at your business plan and mission statement. Even if you think you make it part of everything you do, you may have drifted away from it in your marketing.

Set time aside to review your company's goals and make sure they match the marketing campaigns you're planning. Does your messaging convey your culture? Are your efforts helping you reach your customer acquisition goals?

Like a business plan, an annual marketing plan can put your goals in writing, helping you stay on track. In addition to individual campaign strategies, this once-a-year process will help you see the bigger picture.

2. Clean your marketing lists.

Each day, businesses send emails to the wrong person. It's no surprise, since around 30 percent of your email list goes bad every year, due to people changing jobs, switching to another provider or simply abandoning their email address. In print marketing, your communication could just be passed onto the new employee, but your emails are likely going into a dead mailbox, or someone who isn't the correct target for your efforts.

By wasting your time contacting the wrong person, you're missing the opportunity to get your message to someone who can act on it.

Email list cleaning solutions have become so popular, your business can lose its competitive edge by not using one. A tool likeZeroBouncecanvalidate the informationon your mailing list, while also helping you find new customers who fit your demographic. Marketers who use email lists validated by ZeroBounce report an accuracy rate of 98 percent.

A good email verifier like ZeroBounce also can identify which people on your list have marked your messages as Spam so you can stop including them on your future marketing campaigns. On average, more than 20 percent of email recipients report email as Spam—even if they know it isn't.

3. Go big.

If you feel like you've tried everything but still aren't improving on previous results, the time to take a chance is now. You've likely watched in awe as corporations launched large-scale campaigns filled with eye-catching visuals. But you can emulate their efforts in your own brand messaging.

Invest in professional-quality graphics and deploy them across the appropriate channels. Consider a bold move like a substantial discount, a contest, or free samples to the first customers who share your posts.

4. Measure and refine.

It's no secret that data analytics play an important role in business today. Many brands are now tracking their marketing efforts and, most importantly, using the information they gather to inform their activities. Every marketing campaign is an opportunity to learn more about what works and what doesn't.

In addition to your social media and blog posts, make sure you're following how customers interact with your website and make purchases from your online store, if applicable. Then note those changes and find a way to adjust your behaviors to improve your results. Data analytics tools can help manage this process and help ensure you're incorporating metrics that matter.

Marketing approaches can go stale over time, but with an occasional review, you can find new approaches and tools that keep customers interested and keep you ahead of the competition. One overlooked, but crucial step is having your list cleaned by a reliable email verification service.ZeroBouncecan do this affordably and you can try out their software by validating the first 100 email addresses for free.