If you’re looking for creative marketing campaign ideas and are designed to help you meet a business and social media goal, you’re in the right place – and we promise that influencers are not involved!
A successful social media campaign needs a clear goal, and a strategy to meet that goal, behind it. You should also have a set time frame of which you want to achieve your goal and generate results, as well as a way of measuring and tracking the impact and success of your social media marketing campaign.
Social media marketing campaigns to generate engagement
By offering an exciting incentive or something that will cause a stir, you’re going to increase engagement, conversation, interaction, reactions, and activity. And more engagement equates to more exposure online to grow your following (high engagement is how businesses make it onto Instagram’s explore pages)
- A hashtag-centred campaign – invite your audience to use a hashtag that represents your brand – think of a catchy pun or play on words if you can – and share their USG to give them free marketing, exposure, or money to spend with/products from your company. USG is a great way of generating social proof and builds your online community. You need to have either a worthy incentive or a great relationship with your customers to succeed at doing this because people need a reason to use your hashtag and share your brand.
- A social media marketing campaign focused on tagged products – whilst offering an incentive, ask your audience to tag products from your business and demonstrate how they have styled or used them innovatively. This is another strategic way of marketing your products through USG, increasing your engagement, building your reputation online, and encouraging social proof for your business.
Social media marketing campaigns to build connection
By starting and encouraging conversations that an audience want to get involved in, you’re strengthening relationships, building a connection with social media users, and creating a community around your brand – three key marketing strategies which are going to strengthen your business, generate customer retention and loyalty, and grow your audience online.
- A campaign that encourages ideas – ask your audience to submit their ideas on something related to your company, and the creator of your company’s favourite idea could be invited to assist in executing the idea. I recently saw a luxury pet accessories company launch a new leather collar and lead on their social media feed, and they invited users to submit their ideas for the name of the product. The winner received the collar and lead that they had named. Your audience will love being involved in a process like this.
- Drive storytelling with an experience-led campaign – invite your audience to share a personal story or experience, and then share the best ones online – people love telling stories and having their experiences shared, this builds connection and community around your business. For example, a book shop could invite their audience to share their favourite childhood book, with the most favoured one winning a limited-edition copy.
- A show and tell campaign – do you remember how much you enjoyed classroom show and tells as a schoolchild? Ask your followers to share how-to’s, tips, or tutorials to build relationships with your online audience. As an example, a decorating centre could ask customers to share their DIY decorating hacks online. People love feeling helpful and needed!
- A nostalgia evoking campaign – everyone loves nostalgia, so if you’re a long-running company you could ask your followers to share their oldest memories of you or something related to your niche – for example, a record shop could invite their audience to share the first vinyl they ever bought. A concert venue could ask their audience to share their most memorable music concert with the incentive of winning event tickets.
Social media campaigns to increase awareness and reach
A strong social media marketing campaign will expand your online reach and drive brand awareness.
- A nomination-led campaign – by asking your followers to nominate a friend or family member who deserves to win a prize or simply be acknowledged for something e.g. helping others during Covid-19, you’re going to expand your online reach and encourage new followers. It’s also a fresher take on the standard giveaways that are run on social media, and it has a much more altruistic purpose.
- Create a paid-for advertising campaign – a paid, social media advertising campaign focused on promoting your products and services to a targeted audience, who do not follow you or have not been exposed to your business before, will place your business in front of new eyeballs. Defined social targeting is a strategic way of minimising wastage and reaching your ideal customers.
- An emotion-led content campaign – if your content evokes an emotion within people, they’re more likely to share it with their audience. Batch create a series of emotion-led content with the purpose of motivating, inspiring, educating, humouring your audience. For example, an adult learning college could create a 7-day campaign executing content with 7 inspiring reasons to go to college or statistics on career pivots to generate awareness and responses. Create something memorable or be reactive in order to increase your shareability. For example, graphic design companies that reworked the England football team badge ahead of the final Euros games received quite a lot of shares and grabbed a lot of attention – it pays to be reactive!
- Collaborate with other companies – partnering with creators and companies over an allocated duration of time is a sure-fire way to expand your reach online as you will be exposed to their audience. Collaborations are exciting and inventive, and they bring customers something different and of a limited edition to the table, meaning that they also generate engagement on social media.
Social media campaigns to drive leads
By using CTAs in a social media campaign, you are telling your potential customers and social media audience what it is exactly that you want them to do, which generates business prospects that you can nurture down the conversion funnel.
- A newsletter campaign – instead of simply asking your followers to sign up to your newsletter (they probably won’t), tell them what they will benefit from and get on a frequent basis if they join your mailing list! Explain the benefits, not the features, and create exclusivity around your newsletter – meaning that your newsletter offers benefits that they can’t receive in other ways.
- A no-obligation quote campaign – create a (QUICK!) form that online users can fill in with a value exchange – you receive their email, they receive a no-obligation quote from you and your business. A Facebook lead ads campaign is a fantastic method of doing this. Ensure that this is time-sensitive in order to drive response.
- A downloadable resources campaign – free resources with time limits on them are a great way to generate leads and bring in return business, and you get to acquire contact information from business prospects.
And if you’re now planning a social media campaign after reading through these ideas – we do hope they sparked something within you! – you can read about everything you need to consider when planning a social media marketing campaign.
