How To Get Started Setting Up and Executing an Awareness Campaign

What you’ll learn

This playbook provides a step-by-step process for planning, building, and optimizing an Awareness/Top of Funnel campaign using Demandbase. By the end of this playbook, you will be able to:

• Build dynamic audiences to reach the right accounts with the right message.
• Optimize your campaigns to drive engagement, warm up buying committees, and lift accounts to later stages in the buyer’s journey.
• Use Demandbase tools to track performance, measure impact, and refine strategy.

Why is this important?

Awareness campaigns focus on warming up target accounts that show early interest but have limited or no engagement with your site or brand. The aim is to:

• Establish your company as a trusted resource.
• Drive informed engagement without gated content.
• Improve performance for downstream activities such as lead generation.

Awareness campaigns are critical because they create a strong foundation for engaging in-market accounts and fuel later-stage pipeline efforts. Spend sufficient resources here to maximize efficiency across the entire customer lifecycle.

What you need to get started

Before you proceed, ensure you have the following ready to smoothly execute your awareness campaign:

• Demandbase Setup Requirements:
  • Onsite tagging for at least 30 days.
  • Demandbase Out-of-the-Box (OOTB) Engagement Minutes setup.
  • Demandbase OOTB Journey Stage definitions in place.
  • Intent Keyword Sets configured.

• Foundational Campaign Elements:
  • A defined Target Account List (TAL) mapped to your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).
  • Campaign landing pages built and ready to use.
  • High-quality creative assets (e.g., banners, infographics).
  • Booked media placements (confirmed ad plan with publishers).

• Budgeting Tools:
  • Spend per account estimate ($35 – $50/account).
  • Awareness Campaign Budget Calculator.

Step-by-step playbook

Part 1: Building the audience

Step 1: Build the Campaign Audience

Carefully crafted audiences ensure your ads reach the right decision-makers at your target accounts, based on their actual buying behavior and intent signals.

Instructions:

1. Database Setup:
   • Click on the Database icon and click on ‘Create New’.
   • Set the List Type to ‘Dynamic’ and the Visibility to ‘Public’.
   • Use the Advanced Selector to manually refine account criteria.
2. Segment ICP accounts into an audience using Advanced Selectors:
   • Member of List: Use the Member of List selector to segment by another list in the database. In this case, the solution-specific ICP for the solution the campaign is promoting.
   • Journey Stage: Use the Journey Stage selector to segment by accounts that are in the “Aware” journey stage. The Out-of-the-Box definition of Aware is accounts showing high levels of intent in the last 30 days.
   • Intent and Activity: In addition to segmenting by high intent in general, use the “Accounts with Any Activity” selector to also segment by accounts showing high intent for the specific solution the campaign is promoting. This is an optimization that will be used on the campaign level as well.

Pro Tip: Use existing account activity as a threshold to dynamically include or exclude accounts from the campaign.

Step 2. How to build a Known Person List to use in your Awareness Campaign

Creating a Known Person List allows you to prioritize engaging individuals within the target accounts that are already on your radar, ensuring your campaign reaches those who are familiar with or aligned with your goals.

Instructions:

1. Go to the Database tab within the Demandbase platform.
2. Navigate to the Person Lists.
3. Click on ‘Create New’ to start building the list.
4. Choose these list options: Select List Type = Dynamic and Visibility = Public.
5. Choose the Advanced selector option to populate the person list:
   • Use the Member of List Selector to filter accounts from the target account list created for the campaign.

Refine the list by including:

• Contacts associated with the accounts in the campaign’s TAL.
• Job levels or functions that match decision-makers or influencers (this optimization ensures personas matched to campaign goals are prioritized).

6. Apply Continuous Updates:

• Because the list is dynamic, it will automatically include new known persons when they are added to linked accounts—allowing for real-time targeting adjustments.

Pro Tip: If your campaign leverages Intent Keywords, align this Known Person List with individuals exhibiting intent behavior for further precision targeting.

Step 3. Determine budget

Allocating an appropriate budget ensures your campaign can sustain enough impressions to engage target accounts effectively, while lowering risks of over-spending.

Instructions:

1. Access the Demandbase Budget Calculator or download the media planning template.
2. Follow either method:
   • Budget-to-Accounts Approach:
     • Start with a set budget amount.
     • Calculate the number of accounts your budget can support over the campaign flight.
     • Accounts-to-Budget Approach:
       • Provide the number of target accounts.
       • Adjust campaign scope (e.g., narrowing intent signals) if costs exceed the budget.
3. Use this formula for estimating total campaign spend:
   • Spend per Account x Number of Target Accounts x # of Months in Campaign Flight.
4. Opt for higher ranges when targeting enterprises, which require more impressions. Use lower ranges for SMB-focused campaigns.

Pro Tip: Consider holding out some accounts as a control group to measure campaign lift on downstream metrics later.

Step 4. Determining messaging and content

Your content needs to be relevant and approachable for top-of-funnel prospects who are exploring solutions but not yet ready to commit.

Instructions:

1. Creative Design Guidelines:
   • Use non-gated, educational content that informs rather than sells.
   • Formats to prioritize include blog posts, infographics, and lightly branded webpages.
   • Avoid any “ask” content (e.g., form submissions), as this stage is about nurturing relationships.
2. Landing Page Development:
   • Ensure ads direct users to a dedicated landing page relevant to their pain points and aligned with ad messaging.
   • Optimize pages for clarity, fast load times, and a seamless user experience.

Pro Tip: Using at least five standard display ad sizes ensures maximum reach across publisher platforms.

Part 2: Building and launching your campaign in Advertising Dashboard

Step 1. Define campaign outcomes and goals

Clear goals shape your campaign strategy, inform optimization tactics, and guide reporting. For Awareness campaigns, common outcomes are:

• Driving increased website engagement.
• Growing intent and awareness among ICP accounts that show no engagement yet.

Instructions:

1. Click on the Advertising icon and go to ‘New Campaign’.
2. Choose the primary campaign outcome. For accounts not yet engaging with your site but showing signs of being in-market, select “Drive website engagement.”
3. Select an optimization metric:
   • Visits (recommended): Optimizes for website visits via ad clicks or organic site searches.
   • Clicks: Optimizes for ad engagement.
   • Reach: Maximizes the number of impressions your ads receive.

Pro Tip: Use “Visits” for Awareness campaigns to measure and drive website activity from target accounts.

Step 2. Set campaign details and launch configuration

Precision in campaign setup avoids wasted impressions and ensures ads serve the right audiences.

Instructions:

1. Name your campaign in a way that describes key filters, e.g., “Aware | Intent Accounts | Q4 Ad Plan”.
2. Choose campaign format
   1. This aligns with the type of creative. For example, if you are using banners, static or animated, you’ll choose Display. If it’s a video for a CTV campaign, then you’ll choose accordingly, and so on.
3. Define start and end dates
   1. Note that during the campaign, you can change the end date in the event. For example, if you want to add budget and extend the campaign.
   2. Selecting an ad plan is simply choosing from a drop-down of available ad plan amounts in your instance.
4. Allocate the final campaign budget
   1. Remember to set a budget that allows for adequate spend per account to ensure benchmarks are met across all ad metrics.

Step 3. Location

Now you can choose the location where the ads will be delivered to the accounts targeted in the campaign.

Instructions:

1. Geotargeting type: First, you choose the type of geotargeting from the drop-down, which has four options
   1. Global
   2. Region
   3. Country
   4. State
2. Select a region/country/state: From there, you choose from an additional drop-down list of options based on geotargeting type
3. Map View: The map view also confirms visually the chosen delivery locations.

Step 4. Strategy

Instructions:

1. Account selection
   • Select the account list you built. Once you’ve launched the campaign, you can’t change your selection, but if the list is dynamic per our recommendation, you can make changes to the list itself if needed and that will dynamically update within the campaign.
2. Intent selection
   1. The intent keyword set will be used to optimize the campaign by prioritizing showing ads to the people in the account who are the source of the intent signals (known or unknown). If you used an intent keyword set to build your audience, use the same set here on the campaign level.
   2. While you can’t change the set selected once the campaign is launched, you can change the set itself in settings that will update within the campaign.
3. Buying groups
   • Similarly to intent optimization, adding buying groups to the campaign will prioritize showing ads to those people.
   • Note that adding buying groups to your strategy with this step is optional, unlike choosing an account list or an intent keyword set, which are required in order to launch the campaign.
4. People-Based Optimizations (Optional)
   • Contacts you already know: This is a list of known people in the accounts you are targeting in the campaign and will prioritize showing them ads.
   • Job level/function: This step allows you to choose which seniorities & functions that should be prioritized when serving impressions.

Pro Tip: Use Dynamic Lists to ensure ongoing additions or exclusions during the campaign flight as account engagement levels evolve.

Step 5. Creatives

Instructions:

1. Select Ad Group
   1. You will have the ability to choose the ads/banners to be used in the campaign from previously uploaded creative. Be sure to use very clear naming conventions for the different ad groups.
   2. We recommend using at least five (5) of the accepted seven (7) sizes of display banners to optimize for reach.
2. Select Targeting Type: You have three options for each ad group you select:
   1. Standard targets users who haven’t visited the website. Use high-level creative messaging with this type.
   2. User Retargeting targets users who have visited the website. Creative can be slightly more detailed accordingly.
   3. All targets will target both users who have and have not visited the website. This is a good default targeting type to use in any campaign.

Step 6. Track performance and make campaign adjustments

Consistent optimization ensures your campaign stays cost-effective and impactful throughout its lifecycle.

Instructions:

1. Access the Advertising Dashboard to monitor performance:
   • Accounts Reached, Visited, Clicked.
   • Lifted accounts post-launch (e.g., increased site visits).
   • Ad creative and publisher performance.
2. Monitor real-time behaviors in ABX Insights:
   • Visited high-value pages.
   • Types/levels of intent from accounts.
3. Adjust creatives, target lists, or delivery strategies as insights emerge:
   • Refresh dynamic audience criteria weekly.
   • Identify accounts ready for Journey stage progression and warm handoffs to Engagement campaigns.

Pro Tip: Use these insights to inform Sales Enablement and feed accounts into secondary campaigns like lead gen.

The results

This playbook is for B2B marketers, demand generation managers, and account-based marketing (ABM) professionals who are responsible for launching brand awareness and top-of-funnel campaigns. It’s also suitable for marketing operations (MOPs) professionals tasked with data prep and campaign tracking.

By executing this Awareness/Top of Funnel campaign, you should expect the following outcomes:

1. Accounts Reached:
   • Track the number of target accounts served ads.
   • Identify how many new accounts (previously dormant) became engaged post-campaign.
2. Engagement Metrics:
   • Measure uplift in account activity levels.
   • Monitor website visits, content interactions, and engagement with landing pages.
3. Creative and Publisher Performance:
   • Assess ad click-through rates, impressions, and conversion rates by ad type and publisher.
   • Optimize low-performing creatives or placements.
4. Journey Stage Progression:
   • Quantify how many accounts moved further along the Journey Stages (e.g., from “Aware” to “Engaged”).
   • Highlight accounts ready for follow-up Engagement campaigns.
5. Campaign Influence on Pipeline:
   • Measure opportunities generated, additional pipeline created, and overall revenue impact of accounts warming up through awareness efforts.

Use these insights to refine your campaign, reallocate budget, and inform Sales and Marketing teams on pipeline-readiness and next steps. This feedback loop ensures that every campaign continuously adds value and improves outcomes.