8 Successful Social Media Campaigns You Can Learn From (Plus Tools)
Social media is a gold mine for business opportunities, and thus brands of all kinds try to come up with unique and creative marketing campaigns to help extend their brand reach. This list of eight inspirational social media campaigns can help you improve your marketing schemes and build your brand.
Whether we like it or not, social media is a big part of our lives. It is a digital city where people from around the world are citizens. We use it for communication, for entertainment, and because of its global reach and easy accessibility, used as a business hub.
Naturally, social media is a gold mine for every single business out there. At the turn of this year, there are close to 4 billion users on social media, with the average user jumping from seven different social media platforms.
If you have any sort of business sense, you would be drooling at the thought of enhancing your brand through something as habitual as social media. However, you may overlook how hard it is to get a reasonable following on social media.
Social media requires constant planning and elaborate strategies that are supposed to be implemented with consistency and close market research. Naturally, everything on social media is a gamble because the digital public’s perception can go from a bright sunny day to complete monsoons in just a few tweets or controversial Instagram stories.
To combat this, you need a properly laid-out social media campaign to get your business rolling.
What Is A Social Media Campaign?
A social media campaign is an attempt to increase business prospects through means of social media. They are usually planned strategically and are audience-specific, and have goals that they should achieve.
There are many creative ways that you can start a social media campaign. However, if you are at a loss or just a start-up in the industry, we are here to help you with that by providing eight inspirational social media campaigns that have gone on to be successful across different social media channels.
So, get your team and your notes ready, and let us dive into it.
8 Successful Social Media Campaigns You Can Learn From
1. Zoom’s Background Contest
One of the ways you can make your social media campaigns work is through engagement. Wait, scratch that. Engagement is the only thing that can make your social media campaign work. But how can you break the norm of your business and drive more customer engagement quickly? Zoom’s virtual background contest back in 2020 is a prime example of that.
Back in 2020, online meetings, classes, and seminars were being held widely through Zoom, a video conference tool. With the growing popularity of zoom, with now over 3.3 trillion minutes in annual meeting minutes, they aimed to increase brand awareness by organizing a competition.
Users were tasked to upload a video or photo of their background, and three lucky winners were given branded and personalized rewards.
Key Takeaway: Competitions are an excellent way to get your customers rallied up. If there is one thing that people enjoy, it is the opportunity to have some fun while stuck in the mundane, and being able to create something exciting out of normal video meetings is a great way to engage with your community as well as expand your reach in the process.
2. Apple’s #ShotOniPhone
Apple showed the world a stroke of marketing genius with the #ShotOniPhone campaign.
The idea was simple. Apple encouraged its customers to take pictures using their iPhones and post them on social media. With this simple act of encouragement, 16 million posts have been made. That is a lot of engagement considering that apple barely paid a penny for this campaign, and it worked because Apple experienced a 90% brand retention rate.
Key Takeaway: User-generated content is self-sufficient, cost-effective, and builds a sense of community. User-generated content is employing your customers to do free marketing. They have no problem with it either because it showcases the quality of the product, as well as gain a sense of enjoyment from the campaign. It is a method that hits on all cylinders, and Apple showcased how to do it perfectly.
3. Oreo’s Oreoscope
Keeping up with trends on social media is part of its essence. People will subconsciously do it because the buzz is always where the trend is at, so you as a business should only do right in following trends as well. Oreo exemplified this with their Oreoscope, which emulated people’s obsession with the horoscope.
Oreoscope was something that analyzed the customers that took part in it and gave them personality analysis as well as an Oreo product which they can, cough, connect with. It was a good example of reading your customer’s current trends elsewhere and trying to reflect them on your campaign so they will easily be swayed into trying it out.
Key Takeaway: Keep up with trends. Keeping up with the trends will also make you trending. It is a simple concept, but hey, people on social media are satisfied with a little fun. They will also take notice that your business is keeping an eye on them, so customers will surely appreciate the fact that you went your way to play into their little activities. Moreover, this also shows that personalization is always a great way to reel people in because if there is one thing that people like it is trying to gain a little insight about themselves. So, why not do it with an Oreo?
4. Dove’s #PassTheCrown
Dove has been an exemplar of social marketing schemes for as long as we could remember. Their methods of reaching out to customers, both current and new ones, have been somewhat unrivaled. This is still reflected in one of their most recent campaign ventures, the #PassTheCrown movement.
When Dove discovered that more and more women were feeling insecure about the state of their natural hair, they took upon the idea to team up with Color of Change, the National Urban League, and Western Centre to create a social media trend that encourages customers to share their hair care stories.
Key Takeaway: Inclusivity and encouragement can build loyalty from customers. Because Dove is a personal care and hygiene brand, encouraging their customer population to be more confident with their body image was the right call to increase their morale and if a customer sees that a brand cares for more than just usual business, it provides them with a reason to come back and spread the word on the way.
5. Zalando’s Styleday Friday
The pandemic changed all our lives. We were stuck in our homes, unable to go to school, our office, or even just outside our house. Besides the health risks this imposes, it also means that we can not flaunt our fashion fits for quite a while. What a greek tragedy this would be for those who get a kick out of fashioning a good t-shirt. European fashion brand Zalando came in to save the day during that dark era in fashion history by providing #StyleDayFriday.
Zalando encouraged followers and customers to dress up in their homes and post it on social media, with changing themes every week. Customers, employees, and big influencers were all in on the campaign, and it was a fun way to keep your clothes worn during that period.
Key Takeaway: Give your audience something to look forward to. An event is always something that people can get excited about, especially when it involves their well-being. Zalando did more than just encourage. But they built a strong sense of community, and it was, in some ways, therapy for their customers, so it was a great way to keep in touch with customers during hard times.
6. Casper’s Sleep Channel
Casper is a mattress company that knew exactly when to strike and how to do it. You would not hear a lot of marketing campaigns that include audio content, but an exception would be for Casper because they released a playlist that was supposed to enhance sleep.
It was naturally marketed on the usual platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. However, Casper also spread the word on Spotify, which can be considered a social media platform as well.
Key Takeaway: Be creative and find your niche. Customers appreciate unique campaigns, something that they have not seen before. Casper knew that barging into the crowded competition would not be worth the bother and induce little result, so by creating something unique and in-theme with their brand. They were able to build a unique brand voice and something that truly sets them apart.
7. Coors Light’s Giveaway
Everyone needs a can of beer sometimes. If you are a brewing and beer company, it is up to you to observe when your market needs it more than ever.
Back in 2020, when the pandemic was just starting, something to uplift people’s spirits was more needed than ever. So, Coors Light proclaimed on social media that all of America needed a beer with #CouldUseABeer.
The hashtag was complete dynamite, with anyone who used the hashtag being offered a free six-can of their very own beer. With just that, over 500,000 beers were given out.
Key Takeaway: Understanding your market is crucial to your brand voice. As a brand, it is your responsibility to constantly look out for your market for the one instance that they need your product more than often. This builds a sense of empathy and humanity that customers can appreciate deeply. So, giveaways are not always a bad thing, and a little pat on the shoulder is something that can only be a win-win.
8. Weetabix’s Tomfoolery
Weetabix took a risk back in 2021 by attempting to troll its followers on Twitter. They had announced a partnership with Heinz Beans and posted a photo with both of their signature dishes made together.
Not only did this confuse followers, but they were totally in on it. Regardless of the truth behind the situation, they were talking about it and even tried the combination out. People’s curiosity is just bound to get the better of them eventually, so a social media campaign that tries to get the curiosity out of them is a genius move when done right.
Key Takeaway: Goofiness pays off. On the surface, fabricating partnerships with other businesses sounds like a bad idea. Well, it is, but if you are aware of your brand perception and that the internet lives off humor, a careful mixture of all components can lead to enticing results. What is important here is that you recognize the fun and know how to be fun, without overdoing it. After all, there is little that gets more people talking than a little stupidity.
Tools To Improve Your Social Media Campaigns
If you want a successful campaign, you will need the tools that will assist you in your everyday work. A team of dedicated professionals is not enough, and in the fast-paced world of social media, you will need all the automation power you can have.
Pixelixe
If you want your social media campaign to succeed, you are going to need top-notch graphics and visuals. When we talk visuals and graphics, there is no place better than Pixelixe. Pixelixe offers everything you can wish for in a graphic automation tool – an image editor, built-in templates, endless icons, collaboration, and a design set builder, which was made to save you the burden of resizing your graphics for different platforms.
Moreover, Pixelixe is a great tool to have if you want to upscale productivity, and there is no department that it can possibly lack. Pixelixe is promised to improve your social media campaigns.
Text Blaze
You are going to be rushed for time when dealing with social media in general. The amount of stress you can be in when in a campaign to gain more reach can have a toll on you and your business. Text Blaze is an easy solution for this. Text Blaze allows you to save sentences, paragraphs, or even whole emails and input a shortcut for it.
As easy as that, writing a whole email can be done in just a second. Replying to generic customer inquiries can be quicker, and contacting new partners is easier. It is simple, but it can do a lot for your campaign.
Removal.AI
When in a social media campaign, there comes the time that you have to remove logos, backgrounds, or subjects when you need to create innovative graphics. This is a process that takes quite an amount of time, and it might hold your campaign back. Save yourself the trouble by testing out Removal.ai, which is the perfect tool for removing backgrounds with precision and speed.
Post Planner
A social media campaign is pointless if you are not keeping up with your posts. Missing out on a single post can mean everything about your campaign’s success, so taking that risk might be a little too reckless. No need to worry because Post Planner will make sure that problem never comes to pass.
Post Planner queues your posts hours, days, weeks, or even months into the future. It provides automated posting, optimized posts, post analytics, and even offers post ideas. Post Planner can be your best friend for your campaign, so testing it out is highly encouraged.
DrawKit
DrawKit is one of the most important tools that you can have, and the main reason why is something called vector Images. For your social media campaigns, you may be needed to explore different social media platforms, and you will find that each of them has designated dimensions for its posts. Not only this, even your own visuals can adjust depending on the nature of your project. Vector Images are your solution for this problem because these types of images have no loss of quality no matter how much you resize them.
The thing about DrawKit is that it has an endless amount of vector images. For your business to remain consistent across the board visually, you will have to tap into DrawKit’s amazing library if you want to take your graphics to the next level.
DesignStripe
DesignStripe specializes in providing the best graphics and templates to niche-specific users, as well as granting them the power to edit and create to their desires. It has an impressive collection of hand-drawn templates which can suit everything from gardeners to astronauts. It can come in useful if you are planning to connect with a specific market.
Your Turn…
Social media is constantly growing, and it only takes a bit of creativity and energy to make yourself stand out amongst the hefty competition. What is important in a campaign is that you study your audience closely and the daily activities partake in, as well as real-time world events that could serve as your opportunity to connect with your market. If you are a marketer on social media, it is not a stretch to say that your social media campaign is the most essential thing that you can work on, so we highly encourage you to take these examples to heart and learn from them.
Author’s Bio:
Shelly Solis is one of the women behind SaaSLaunchr.com. She is a resource speaker and writer. Currently, she is collaborating with different brands through expert services like SaaS SEO and SaaS guest posting services. She hopes she can travel to the beach this year.