Social media campaigns are the rocket fuel for your marketing efforts. They are a concentrated burst of energy that pays off by giving your brand’s reputation, awareness, or sales a huge boost.
Need some ideas for your next campaign on social media? Let’s look at some of the best examples of social media campaigns from the past few years.
What Is a Social Media Campaign?
A social media campaign is a planned marketing effort that uses social media to increase customer knowledge, interest, and loyalty to a company, brand, product, or service. Campaigns on social media are planned out, aimed at a specific group of people, and have clear results.
Social media marketing can be done on many different sites, like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok. Most businesses use more than one platform for their social media marketing.
Read more: How Social Media Advertising Can Help Your Business
To get ideas for your social media strategy, all you have to do is look at what other successful brands do. Here are some great examples of social media marketing, along with some lessons you can learn from them.
ShotOniPhone by Apple
About the campaign: Apple wanted to show how easy it was to take great pictures with an iPhone. Users were asked to post photos to Instagram and use the hashtag to spread the word about them.
The cameras on iPhones are well-known. This is a key to their success. Apple had to step up its game when competitors started focusing on making better cameras. So, like a few of the other campaigns in this piece, they turned to customer-generated content. On Instagram, everyone uses the hashtag #ShotOniPhone.
Lesson: Show what kind of results your solution can bring about. Even better if you can use the product to do it. To really take things to the next level, you should use user-generated content to make your point.
Wix: Take the Ice Away
About this project: Wix users were invited to enter a Super Bowl contest in which they could win up to $50,000. How does it work? They would pick a winner after a football fell out of a frozen block of ice.
Wix was successful because it used the new Facebook Live video feature to its advantage. They could help break up the ice, but only if people commented on the video, which would make people more interested. The video will show up higher in people’s newsfeeds if more people took part in making it.
Live videos don’t have to be complicated to be fun to watch. Wix put a football in an ice block and let it freeze. Then he melted it. Still, it got a lot of attention because people were interested to find out if they had won.
I’m Lovin’ It Super Bowl Ad for McDonald’s
McDonald’s wanted to make a big splash in the Super Bowl commercial area with this campaign. They wanted to run a positive campaign, so they worked together instead of against each other.
The key to success is that companies often get bigger every year because Super Bowl ads are all about standing out from the crowd. They got more people to see their content by tweeting about their competitors and getting into the tweet threads of their audience.
Work with your team to come up with new ways to reach the people who follow your competitors.
InstaGaston from Disney
About this campaign: Disney invited its followers to see Beauty and the Beast at its premiere. They can give Gaston’s Instagram account to Luke Evans, who played Gaston.
The chances of a fan going to a movie’s premiere in person are slim to none. So, Disney gave them a special look at the movie through the eyes of one of the actors to make them feel like they were part of it. Fans can’t get to that content anywhere else, so it can help build a following and get people talking.
Using social media promotions, you can make people feel like they’re a part of an event or conference that they wouldn’t be able to attend or experience otherwise.
Charmin: App for Sit or Squat
About this project: Charmin went above and beyond for its customers with this social media campaign to promote the release of their new Sit or Squat app. As you travel, you may want to check the toilets around you to see if they are clean (sit) or not (squat).
The key to their success was that they took on a problem that their customers have all the time (dirty toilets) and made it fun and interesting for them to solve.
Lesson: You don’t need a cool app to make a campaign like Charmin’s. Their marketing was based on solving a problem that many of their users had. Make content that people can interact with and that helps them solve a problem.
Honda: Pintermission
About this project: Honda was about to release a new CR-V and wanted to find a creative way to promote it. They found 5 people who had tens of thousands of followers on Pinterest and told them to get off the site and do the things they had pinned.
These Pinterest users had to stop using the site for 24 hours. Honda would give them $500 to try anything they put on their boards during that time. The influencers would keep track of their trip by pinning photos, videos, and other content to a separate board for Honda’s #Pintermission campaign.
The campaign worked because Honda took the time to look at what their target audience was posting on Pinterest about their hopes and dreams. They worked with influencers to make content that showed their target audience how they could reach their goals while driving the new Honda CR-V.
Lesson: Consider your audience’s goals. What do you want the people who follow you on Pinterest to get or do? (Make sure this is relevant to what you are selling). Find people with a lot of influence who can show your audience how your product can help them reach their goals.
Nintendo: The Launch of the Nintendo Switch
About this campaign: Nintendo was letting people know that its long-awaited Nintendo Switch system was coming out. With the new system, users can switch from a handheld video game to a console for the TV.
The key to success was that Nintendo put out a product that people all over the world wanted. They were able to handle many accounts and make sure the campaign’s message was the same all over the world.
Whether you’re a big global company or a small local one, it’s important for your campaign to have a consistent message and look. Always read through each post and make sure the message is on track. Even if you are working on a global cross-channel campaign, if you do this right, you can always send the same message.
Kotex: Women’s Day is Inspiring
About this project: Kotex chose 50 women who deserved it to get personalized gifts. How did they know what they really wanted? They looked at what was on Pinterest.
The key to success is that Kotex wants to do a good deed while promoting its brand on Pinterest. Kotex tried to find out what their target market likes and what they like. Then they did something different and unexpected, which made them want to share their gifts on the internet.
Find something different for your audience to do to copy Kotex’s idea. This could be a contest with prizes or a random drawing of people who like your brand on social media to win stuff from your company.
Deadpool: Campaign for the Digital DVD Release
About this project: The sassy superhero Deadpool was getting ready to put the movie on DVD and Blu-ray. The ad was on multiple platforms and had a custom Snapchat filter.
Deadpool is bold, smart, snarky, and (depending on your point of view) annoying. His character is known for breaking the fourth wall, which is why a campaign to sell DVDs was made around this.
There were a lot of rude posts on several channels, including Deadpool. Deadpool could stand out on different social media by putting his own personality into the voice and tone of the campaign.
Lesson: Define your campaign’s voice and tone. Figure out what kind of message you want to send, and make sure it comes through in everything you write and do with your audience. This includes replies from fans and posts made on the spot.
Anthropology: Put Out the Call
About this campaign: Anthropologie ran an ad on Instagram to get people to enter a contest to become a model for the company. Users had to post pictures of themselves wearing Anthropologie clothes with the hashtag #AnthroOpenCall.
The competition and the size of the prize are what make this campaign successful. Anthropologie gave its target customers a chance that they would never have again. They got more people to know about their brand by asking their followers to post photos of themselves on social media wearing Anthropologie products. This brought the company to the attention of new customers.
Make a contest for your audience with a prize they really want and an easy way to enter. Your audience should have to give you information that promotes your product or brand in order to join.
Tweet Bra
About this project: The Tweet Bra was made to remind women to do self-exams once a month. The campaign would send women gentle reminders through Twitter every time the bra was taken off.
Getting the word out about breast cancer is important for women’s health. Many hospitals tell women to check their tissues once a month for changes. It was a friendly reminder to them while they were doing something they did every day. They do this by sending alerts through anything on a regular basis. The alerts aren’t annoying or intrusive.
Tweet Bra used Twitter, which a lot of women use every day, to remind women to finish their tests. Not only that, but bringing up a bra that tweets will get anyone’s attention.
Lesson: You don’t need to make a bra that tweets to have a successful social media campaign. Use a push notification app to get your followers’ attention when you post on social media.
Season 2 of Stranger Things
About this campaign: When Stranger Things 2 came out, Netflix and Eggo worked together to spread the word about the show. Eleven (a character on the show) loves Eggo. Eggo went all out for the launch, which was on Halloween. They retweeted people who sent them frozen waffle boxes, along with hints about the show and recipes for many different waffle combinations.
Eggo used the popularity of Stranger Things to their advantage by starting a campaign that got people interested and encouraged Stranger Things fans to eat more Eggos.
Use everything that the people you want to reach like to help fuel your social media campaign.
Last Words
Campaigns on social media are a great way to get the word out about your business, get your target audience involved, and eventually boost sales. Remember that building relationships is the point of social media marketing.
Have you thought about all of the above examples of social media campaigns? Use these to come up with more original ideas for your brand. On dropship-empire Blog, you can learn more about business ideas.