5 Key Lessons From Successful Social Media Campaigns

Successful social media campaigns have the ability to generate an enormous amount of traffic and revenue, but what exactly makes a "successful" strategy?

Discussed here are five key lessons you can take from real, successful social media campaigns (B2C) that took the internet by storm. Don’t forget, even though we’re in B2B lead generation, it’s important to look across all sectors (B2B and B2C) and approaches when studying successful social media marketing approaches.

1. Take An Unconventional Approach The best example of a social media campaign that blossomed due to taking an unconventional approach is the Old Spice campaign of 2010. This male grooming brand released a strange but humorous advert that directly addressed women as opposed to men, and stuck in people’s minds due to the baffling concluding statement: “I’m on a horse”. Not only did this advert shift ordinary focus to a new demographic (women), it also managed to be memorable. Following the campaign, women who might not have ever previously thought about buying Old Spice for their male spouse did so. Taking an unconventional approach really has the ability to make all the difference.

2. Invite The Consumer To Get Involved Lay’s created several social media campaigns inviting consumers to come up with unconventional crisp flavours, with the winner awarded with a place on grocery store shelves. This pulled in an astonishing 3.8 million contributions – clearly demonstrating how regular consumers thrive on the idea of making a real difference to a brand. People like to be involved and believe they can contribute to positive changes in the world. One key take-away from Lay’s successful social media campaign is, don’t be afraid to invite customers to become a part of the brand that they love. Letting your customer know that you value their opinion is vital.

3. Get Personal Coca-Cola’s “Share A Coke” campaign saw every Coke bottle have its logo replaced with popular names of young people in the country. Customers were invited to create their very own coke bottle, by visiting the Coca-Cola website and entering a name they wanted to be printed on the side. This encouraged thousands of people to take photographs of a coke bottle with their name on, and convinced others to purchase bottles that had the name of a friend/family member on the side. Key to the success of this innovative campaign was the way in which Coca-Cola engaged with their customers on a personal level. Allowing customers to make their own personal mark on a world-recognized brand caused a viral sensation.

4. Create Suspense One powerful way to generate buzz about a product is to create a sense of intrigue and suspense surrounding it. The social media campaign for the horror film The Blair Witch Project is a perfect example. The marketers plastered fake newspaper stories and “MISSING” posters of the cast involved across the web, which sparked debate about whether this was indeed a real horror story caught live on camera. The movie pulled in almost thirty million during opening week, and demonstrates the power that ambiguous marketing and creating intrigue can lead to.

5. Make A Deal Another great way to run successful social media campaigns is to create incentives for the customer to become involved. One of the best ways to do this is by making a “deal” with them. A good example is Bing search engine’s relationship with popular Facebook game Farmville. Back in 2010, users were eligible to receive further Farmville currency if they clicked on an advert that lead to Bing’s webpage – and the search engine saw a surge in customer activity as a result. Strike a deal with your customers, and buddy up with other campaigns/products if you feel it could be beneficial in the long run.