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Social Media is forever changing and most social media marketers are too lazy or busy to notice these changes and end up wasting time and money without any results. Despite the past shifts and traditional media uncertainty too social media success, social media campaigns are still delivering great result as an ideal strategy to bolster conversion rates. However, today, the market is getting more crowded creating some barriers that each social media marketers has to outwit to find success.
One of the major challenges faced by social media marketers of today is the noise on cluttered social media channels. The number and kinds of brands or businesses carrying out serious big dollar backed campaigns on social media is high and increasing. With this statistics in mind social media marketers are always having to think innovatively and invest a lot time to stand apart from their competitors.In 2016 some brilliant social media campaigns have been created; let’s skim through some of the awesomeness of these social media campaigns adopted by brands and businesses across the globe.
Domino’s Twitter Strategy
Dominos set a benchmark for increasing conversion rates digitally via their Twitter #EasyOrder campaign. The convenience factor that they offered the customers played a crucial role in the success of this campaign. As a matter of fact, the brand allowed customers to order pizza simply by tweeting the emoji of a pizza or by using the hashtag #EasyOrder with their Twitter handle. Isn’t that digitally innovative? Not convinced yet? A big plus was that the Dominos handle enjoyed limelight from free traditional news mediums such as; big shots like USA Today, Forbes and Good Morning America, which further added to the publicity and reach. The strategy even earned them a Titanium Grand Prix at Cannes. As per their statistics, more than half of the conversions currently procured by Dominos are over the digital channels. How good is that for a marketing dynamic shift?
PWC’s #BallotBriefcase Snapchat campaign
B2B marketing and Snapchat were not a thing, then there was this brilliant #BallotBriefcase campaign from PricewaterhouseCoopers that created a wave of astonishment. The PWC relied on the power of story telling to boost its Twitter social impressions by 136x in what seemed to be almost overnight. To celebrate its 82nd year of involvement in the Academy Awards ceremony, PWC crafted an intriguing story to be presented via Snapchat. The story portrayed the journey of the Oscar ballot briefcase through different countries with a thrilling climax that shows the briefcase reaching the live awards ceremony on time. What was more impressive is that, PWC was also able to capitalise the concept of influencer marketing by including a celebrity like Neil Patrick Harris in the campaign. The result? against all the odds, PWC won the Shorty award for their innovative means of using social media in the B2B category.
Delta’s Twitter campaign
Delta Airlines has been following an exquisite Twitter campaign for several years and its continuing the great work. The social media marketing minds responsible for handling Delta’s Twitter profile turned it into a live and vibrant customer support desk, apart from using the platform to just promote the brand. All the airlines have to deal with angry customers at some point or the other, mainly for flight cancellations. A reply tweet to one of the angry passengers from Delta portrays how Delta goes beyond the concept of social media marketing to win hearts.
Passenger: “@DeltaAssist 715am LGAORD flight canceled, app won’t book me on anything till Sat, 3hr wait for a phone rep. What’s going on?”
Reply from Delta: “If I can assist you in rebooking to another flight, pls follow and DM me your confirmation #. Thx. ^JH”. Please bare in mind whenever you can post like this on social media it draws attention to your brand…often to your benefit.
Make-A-wish foundation & Disney joining hands for a cause
The Make-A-Wish Foundation and Disney took over the social media platforms: Twitter, Instagram and Facebook with a #ShareYourEars campaign. The simple campaign hosted for a good cause required the audiences to share pictures of them wearing Mickey Mouse ears on Twitter and Instagram. The Walt Disney Parks and Resorts agreed to donate $5 for each of the pictures posted for this campaign and the campaign was able to unlock a million dollars in a jiffy. The social media marketers responsible for this campaign adopted an interesting strategy of posting the social media entries to their website, which boosted engagement and awareness. The result? The #ShareYourEars campaign turned out to be a trending topic on Facebook and Disney ended up donating $2 millions to Make-A-Wish Foundation.
The innovative “Blind pr-order” campaign from Taco Bell
Taco Bell kick started the year 2016 with an innovative and intriguing social media campaign. According to this campaign, the Taco Bell announced opening of booking for a mystery menu item. The customers had the option to book this undisclosed menu item online and pick it up on the same day from their local shop. Taco Bell adopted a vibrant cross-social media promotion strategy to limelight this move. As a matter of fact, they went on air with this news via Super Bowl TV ads apart from banging on Twitter and Snapchat.
WWF Earth Hour 2016 Campaign
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) partnered with TINT and the Exterion Media to carry out an SOOH or Social out of home activation to fall under its Earth Hour 2016 campaign. As a part of the movement, WWF was successful in displaying all their social media content on the LCD screens across the London Underground with the tag #EarthHourUK. One of their Tweets is shown below:
Get involved by Tweeting #EarthHourUK
How are you going to celebrate the #earth during #EarthHour #EarthHour2016 #EarthHourUK?
The #RazorBurn campaign from Dollar Shave Club
The Dollar Shave Club earned the Shorty Award 2016 for the Retail & Ecommerce category with their #RazorBurn campaign. The cross channel social media campaign launched by the Dollar Shave Club earned the spotlight for its humor or troll aimed at other razor companies who claimed that their products are of such peak quality that customers could use them for a month. The #RazorBurn campaign targeted such claims by posting pictures of old and worn-out razors with captions like “Your old razor’s so scary that it has nighmares about itself”. The end result? The brand mentions increased by a whopping 24%, the followers by 6% and the Twitter engagement by 31%.
The Superbowl Esurance campaign
With its #EsuranceSweepstakes campaign, Esurance was able to earn the name as one of the most mentioned brands across social media during the Super Bowl Sunday. The brand was noted for adhering to compelling and innovative social media campaigns in addition to running several pre and post game ads. This tweet title from Esurance during Super Bowl Sunday says it all “Wipe the wing sauce off your hands & RT now because you could win $250K!“. The brand also promised $1 million to 17 lucky customers who retweeted their social media posts. $1 million for a retweet? Who wouldn’t do that right? Well, if it’s legitimate of course. What they did next proved the legitimacy of the whole thing, Esurance facetimed the lucky winners and posted the video of their reactions on their social media platforms with captions like “He won $50K & now you have the chance to win 5x that! RT for your chance to score $250K!” to skyrocket the engagement rates.
Mr. Burberry Snapchat campaign
Burberry was noted as the first luxury brand that launched a Snapchat discovery channel ad. The Burberry tailored the video campaign for one its new fragrances: Mr. Burberry. Burberry also foresaw the opportunity of influencer marketing and got the promotional video directed by Steve McQueen. The result? The video enjoyed more than 300,000 views on YouTube.
The #LowesFixInSix campaign
How about the idea of procuring innovative home care tips in a matter of only 6 seconds? Any day, right? This is just what the Lowes did. Lowes created some beautiful animation six second videos to cater home improvement tips. The Lowes was able to capture attention of myriads of customers with these innovative video clips to bolster engagement and conversion rates.
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Deadpool’s social media campaign
Well, this was hard to miss, especially if you have a thing for motion pictures. What 20th Century Fox did with Deadpool promotion was outstanding. 20th Century Fox went full on with the movie promotion both online and offline. The first tweet about the Deadpool movie was launched nearly an year before the movie release date and since then the respective Twitter handle started gleaning myriads of followers. The Twitter handle gleaned more than 50,000 retweets and likes apart from an amazing 450,000 followers.
GE’s #6SecondScienceFair
GE has always been renowned as a social media savvy, over the years, they have been vibrant on almost all the social media platforms, conducting experiments with different social media strategies and finding success with most of them. One of the noted among these experiments was GE’s #6SecondScienceFair campaign over Vine and Tumblr. GE launched this campaign to bolster people’s interest in science in addition to portraying its competence as an innovator. The fact that GE was able and willing to communicate some innovative insights based on science within a short time frame of six seconds turned out to be pivotal in the success of this campaign. As a result, the #6SecondScienceFair turned out to be a huge success in terms of engagement and conversion rates. Even though the campaign was kick-started way before 2016, GE still runs in successfully; find some of the pertinent videos here: http://6secondscience.tumblr.com/
#GreatStarts campaign by Kellogg’s
With the #GreatStart campaign, Kellogg’s set an example of how to utilize big events for enriching social media presence and bolstering reach and engagement. Kellogg’s targeted the mother-of-al- events “Olympics” to spread awareness among the customers about the importance of getting a great start to the morning. Kellogg’s rolled out a series of videos which portrayed some of the intriguing bad morning starts from popular movies like home alone, Jones’ Diary etc. The brand also took it to the next level by signing up Louis Smith, Rebecca Adlington and Steve Redgrave as influencers for the campaign.
#WorthSaying campaign by L’Oreal Paris
L’Oreal kick-started 2016, with an amazing social media #WorthSaying campaign. The social media marketers at L’Oreal did an excellent job with this campaign as there were able to align the campaign with the brand’s slogan i.e. “Because You’re Worth It”. The campaign was crafted to encourage women to talk about what they feel is important. The real turnaround was that L’Oreal was successful in including some of the celebrities into the campaign by sponsoring an awards show. The top achievement for this campaign for L’Oreal was the incorporation of Jennifer Lopez, who is one among the top 20 followed individual ever on Twitter. The end result? People ended up tweeting about #WorthSaying even after the award ceremony, which gave L’Oreal bonus reach and engagement.
DIV Panty Contest by Victoria’s Secret
Victoria Secret is renowned for its presence and philanthropy on social media. Lately, the name of this brand has been circulating a lot more with respect to Snapchat giveaways. On February 2016, Victoria’s Secret announced their new social media campaign a DIY Panty Contest. The brand encouraged the followers to customize the Valentines Day themed panty kits on offer, with stickers and other works. The followers requested to customize three sets of panties and doodle on their favorite pair. The customers were then expected to snap the picture of their work and share on Snapchat with the hashtag #DIYPantyContest to win the kits.
Butterfinger’s Bolder than Bold campaign
The Bolder than Bold campaign from Butterfinger turned out to be a huge hit on social media. The fact that Butterfinger was able to craft several compelling teaser along with some GIFs and Videos, which blended in well with all the social platforms media posting etiquettes did the trick for them. The action packed video featured a stuntman punching away piranha bots and eating Butterfinger while flying through the air. The teaser and the respective media enjoyed myriads of shares and likes across different social media platforms in a short notice.
Essence Sponsoring Justin Bieber’s Believe Tour
Now, this was way in 2012, but its worth mentioning considering how effectively Essence pulled it off. Essence set aside a dedicated team for the famous singer’s Believe tour and was smart enough to launch social media events to with respect to each show. They also foresaw the importance of user-generated content and never missed a chance to procure one. The campaign turned out to be compelling both online and offline, with Essence giving away promotional products at each shows. The successfulness of the campaign is evident from the resultant statistics: 263 million brand impressions, 82,615 brand expressions in addition to a 35% increase in on-site registration via social alone.
Buffer’s social media campaign
These guys started tremendously and are still carrying out a magnificent job. When it comes to social media engagement and conversion, Buffer is one of the key players, which has been setting the standards for several years. The way they handle their social media profiles and the utmost care that they give to each of their customer concerns or queries says it all. With Buffer, it is all about giveaways, mostly in the form of amazing content, but they also rely and promote user-generated content, which seems to be the main aspect that skyrockets the number of shares and likes that they procure with each post. Buffer has been defining social media innovation for so long with events, content, videos and other promotional materials.
Local businesses in Australia with excellent social media campaigns
Black Milk Clothing
Black Milk Clothing is one of the local businesses that hail from Brisbane and which heavily relies on social media for conversions. As a matter of fact, it is speculated that Black Milk Clothing only relies on social media campaigns and no marketing for its business growth. Their approach to social media has been slightly different when compared to most of their competitors, Black Milk Clothing has been successful in building an authentic social community to share brand and fashion related stories, thereby augmenting brand loyalty, engagement, conversion rates as well as user generated content. The statistics 600,000 plus profile likes on Facebook says it all. The brand has successfully kept this community up and running with different strategies, the community even encourages design ideas from their loyal fans and carries out polls to get an idea on what design types that the women would like to see with their future work.
Messina
Messina is one of the local businesses from Sydney that has been doing a great job on social media sites, especially Instagram. This gelato chain is currently doing all kinds of wonders on Instagram with their different types of recipes. With more than 100,000 followers on Instagram alone, Messina is all set to reach great heights, especially with their original flavors and ideas, which are candidly portrayed through the social media channels. With all the efforts, Messina has been able to set such standards that currently, dining at this gelato is regarded as a status symbol and people are more than happy to share a picture of them having a good time, which in turn sky rockets the reach and the conversion rates.
Palm Beach Collection
Palm Beach Collection confined to NSQ is regarded as one of the masters of social media optimization, especially on Instagram. The eco-friendly candles and fragrances selling portal is renowned for scented deluxe candles, gift packs, cloche quince fragrance, lemon and grass fragrance etc. All the Palm Beach Collection products are aligned towards a contemporary style and the respective social media marketers capitalized on this Unique Selling Point to build a strong fan base on social media platforms. So far, the brand has been doing a great job on Instagram by engaging with more than 20,000 followers and showcasing different home fragrances collection on an active basis on social media platforms.
Thankyou Thankyou was innovation incepted by Daniel Flynn to alleviate the water crisis across the globe. Daniel Flynn started the social media campaign all by himself by creating a profile on Facebook and also by sharing video on YouTube that announced the brands move of scheduling a meeting with the 7Eleven convenience store and requested support for enlisting the product with all the respective stores in Australia. The brand was able to turn this post viral by procuring several shares and encouraging comments. Since then, video marketing via social platforms has been one of the main social media strategies adopted y Thankyou for sticking to a pretty high engagement rate. With around 233,900 likes on Facebook alone, the brand has been evidently successful with their social media campaigns.
Thinking innovative is the key to earning attention, which in turn increases the probability of engagement and conversion. You can always adopt any of these strategies and better them for great results or come up with a new kickass social media strategy to turn some heads. Bear in mind that it’s the selfless deeds that brings in engagement and conversions on most of the occasions. If you skim through the above list, most of these brands gives their customers or followers something to take away in the form of recognition, acknowledgement, products or services, but the end result is always worth it. This is one of the reasons why it is highly recommended to earmark some fund for your social media campaign so that you can start reaping the benefits in a short notice.
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