Social Media Advertising Campaigns: Definition, Examples,...

Posted: October 17, 2020 | Last updated: January 19, 2024

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Gone are the days of grainy, black-and-white television ads. Today, we celebrate the innovation of advertising campaigns done through social media. This modern advertising campaign has long proved to have better results and a much wider reach as opposed to the traditional.

Now, why do a social media campaign? Here are some ideas and concepts you have to understand why a social media campaign is necessary and how it could give you an edge.

Social media advertising campaigns have been around for quite some time. There are distinct advantages that social media channels have over conventional ads. These involve strategy and their outcomes can be measured. They essentially influence encourage social media followers to act in a specific manner.

What is Social Media Campaign?

Social media campaigns refer to a marketing team’s coordinated efforts to assist brands or businesses in achieving their goals through varied social media platforms. Campaigns are different from the usual daily social media efforts because of their expanded targeting, measurability, and focus.

Social media campaigns intend to augment relevant information and opinions regarding a particular product, service, or overall brand. Social media campaign managers are keen on the needs of the times, so they would know how to advertise their brands.

What Makes A Social Media Campaign Successful?

campaigns successful — With so many brands competing for consumers’ attention, you need to stand out to be successful and effective.

To state the obvious, social media campaigns are successful because a considerable percentage of all the people worldwide spend more time on social media than on traditional TV and radio. Most modern and “techy” people know that what can be seen and heard on television and radio can now be found on the internet.

The different social media sites, such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and LinkedIn, have such massive followings that marketers could easily tap through social media campaigns. Once marketers can do so successfully, the digital reach of their company could skyrocket.

To succeed in social media campaigns, marketers should not just post general messages, but they must communicate with their audience or followers. This implies that the company ought to respond to their followers’ comments and messages. Social media marketing deems to be a great avenue to get personal to loyal customers while being on the lookout for potential customers.

Social Media Campaign Examples

What is an example of a campaign? And what are the best social media campaigns? There are different social media campaigns ideas for different audiences on different platforms. You can find some of these and other social media campaign templates scattered all over the internet.

The following are some proven and tested types of social media campaigns examples by expert marketing strategists.

Influencer outreach programs

This type of social media marketing campaign is one of the most popular and widely used. This marketing campaign aims to identify influencers on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, and other platforms that your customers follow. The wider the following, the greater the influence.

Influencers publish content, build fan bases, and accept relationships with brands. Moreover, this type of campaign seeks to give influencers incentives to publish their clients’ brands and products.

Incentives could be through a tour around the company’s labs and giving them products they could personally use and advertise on their social media accounts. Others would provide them with monetary or non-monetary prizes to run contests or giveaways through their channels.

However, influencers’ compensations depend on the company and their agreement. Some choose to refuse any form of monetary compensation, while some are pleased with it. But typical influencers would accept gifts and sample products that they could use and market.

UGC games

Since time immemorial, contests and games have been a useful marketing campaign tact. However, contests that are built around UGC or user-generated content are the current craze! UGC contests are popular, fun, and engaging. UGC contests are structured on participants who could contribute something in exchange for rewards.

We’re all naturally wired to love a good game with tremendous rewards. Hence, this marketing campaign is a great way to drive traffic on a brand’s web page.

One example of a successful UGC contest was run by Applebee’s in 2014. The brand challenged its customers to take photos of themselves munching on their meals or a snap of the meals only. Applebee’s then published the best shot on their Instagram feed with the #fantographer hashtag, and the winning photos were cross-promoted on Twitter and Facebook with ads and posts. At the end of the campaign, the brand’s engagement increased to 25% and gained numerous tweets with the #fantographer tag in the timelines of 78 million Twitter users.

Podcasting

If you don’t know yet, a podcast is an audio file that’s digital and made available through syndication technologies on the web, such as the RSS. Podcasts can be utilized by brands in sharing relevant information with their audiences. Currently, samples of podcasts can be heard on Spotify and other audio applications and websites.

It’s important to note that podcasts don’t comprise the entire marketing campaign, but they go well with the other campaign parts and types.

Brand utilities

This type of social media campaign’s main premise is building trust with the customers by providing them with utility applications that yield real-time value. Should the utility serve its purpose, users would utilize the application and see the brand as more favorable.

The application doesn’t have to be a social network widget. It doesn’t always have to take the form of an application. One famous example is the Nike+ solution. The Nike+ solution is an online community that helps its users improve their running via audio coaching, record their running distance, and so much more.

Weekly-themed content

weekly content — Hashtags are more fun when you personalize and associate them with trendy tags like days of the week.

Most brands use the #ThrowbackThursday or #FlydayFriday hashtags to stand out among trending content, although most importantly, it’s utilized to carry out consistency in their posting schedules. The simplest way to promote your brand through a social media campaign is by creating weekly-themed content.

Most influencers and brands do this to classify the distribution process of their content. One popular example is the #WhiteboardFriday series of MOZ. Every Friday, a MOZ member explains a certain strategy, content, tactic, or update relative to SEO and other subtopics on a whiteboard.

To hop on the wagon, marketing specialists need to identify their target audience. They have to know what their audiences prefer. From this, marketers could then address their preferences through a weekly podcast, video, or blog article.

Social media hype

This campaign idea is all over the internet today. Most, if not all, of the different industries, utilize social media hyping before the product launch.

Successful pre-launching campaigns push people to talk about the brands. This increases the crowd’s anticipation and excitement and ensures that the products would most likely fly off the shelves. Creating mystery or hype around the products would keep the audience guessing and conceiving different possibilities, paving the way for increased publicity before the launch.

Customer feature

We all want testimonials and proof before splurging on a certain product, right? This is one of the timeless marketing campaigns that continue to be successful in driving people towards the products being advertised.

Social proof is a persuasion technique utilized by marketers. It’s placed strategically across social media platforms in the form of reviews, testimonials, and ratings to convince buyers. Social media continues to be a powerful platform for brands to share the stories of their customers.

Social Media Campaign: Strategies

The primary ingredient in doing a social media marketing campaign is a well-planned strategy. Without a good social media campaign strategy, it would all be for nothing. Carrying out a successful campaign would be challenging without establishing specific goals and strategies.

Whether a marketer wants to improve the brand through social media marketing or to enhance a social media marketer, developing a marketing strategy is useful and beneficial.

Define your goal

‘Why?’ is the first question to answer. And the answer to this question is relative to your campaign’s goals. Are you on social media to promote the brand, incite traffic to the web page, gain more customers, or all of the above? Whatever the answer is, it sure would define your overall motive and goal.

Marketing Funnel 1 — **Source**: denimlabs.com

Brands are more likely to have more than one goal, and that’s perfectly fine. However, it would be more useful for brands with more than one goal to develop a team where different people within the group could address different goals. The adage, “two hands are better than one,” also holds some truth in social media marketing.

Identify your target audience

After addressing the “why,” the next question to answer is “who.” Who is your target audience? Understanding the kind of target audience that the company aims at would help address the what, when, and where of the content.

For example, if a fashion brand knows its target audience loves pastel-colored fashion pieces, they could flood their social media profiles with such content. Not knowing your target audience would lead to irrelevant content.

Identify your theme

This part is where a good understanding of the target audience could be of immense help. Once you have an in-depth knowledge of your target audience, coming up with a theme for your campaign won’t be a problem.

In identifying the perfect theme, you should seek to answer two important questions: what goals and challenges do they have, and how can I help solve them?

Choose a platform

What social media platform do you want to maximize for your brand? Being present on ALL social media platforms won’t be necessary. But, it would be best to utilize the big three—Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Most people today have profiles on all three platforms, and the said platforms often pop up on top of Google’s search results once people look for your brand.

Knowing where to post is as good as knowing what to post. However, it would always pay to consider your target audience and the platform where they’re most active.

Know when to post

The final but still essential part of your social media campaign strategy is knowing the perfect time to post your content. It might be tempting to post your content the moment you finish conceptualizing. But that would hardly be effective.

So, take a step back and, once again, contemplate on your target audience. What time of the day do they visit their social media accounts? What day of the week do they spend more time scrolling through their accounts? There isn’t a universal time to post. So, don’t get overexcited; focus on your audience’s general behavior to know the precise time of posting.

The Takeaway

Social media advertising campaigns require commitment, passion, and proper planning. A successful campaign won’t happen overnight. If your campaign doesn’t pay off on the first try, don’t fret. Look for the perfect marketing type that would suit your brand and work on devising an effective strategy.

Read our ultimate guide on “Growing Your Business with Influencer Marketing” and start getting big gains through effective strategies and excellent marketing skills.