There are so many Facebook marketing ideas, tips, secrets and tricks to learn. This is especially when it comes to advertising on Facebook for beginners. There are even more tips for social media in general. One thing I’ve learned is that successful campaigns do take time and effort. It takes real work for them to become successful.
For this article I’ve decided to take a different route. I’m going to write about three different but very successful campaigns full of Facebook marketing ideas. Consider the lessons from each of the campaigns carefully in order to see how they might benefit your product and your audience. As I go through the campaigns, I’ll pose questions to help you think through your own campaigns ideas. Let’s start with Oreos.
Oreo’s 100 posts in 100 days
In 2012, to celebrate its 100th birthday, Oreo marketing got super creative. The company created 100 Posts in 100 Days where they made Oreo art for each individual day. The lesson from this campaign is clear: It pays to be clever and creative. The images were in fact clever, simple and interesting. Most of them utilized a single oreo remade to be relevant to each day such as the Fourth of July, Gay Pride Day, the Birth of Rock and Roll, and Talk like a Pirate Day.
It was a genius way to drive engagement. Their Facebook shares increased by 280% during the campaign with an average of 1,472 shares per post. This campaign clearly shows the effect of relevant and quality content for your audience. It helped improve the image of the company as well.
The results from the campaign were interesting. Believe it or not, the most popular of the images was the panda post. It was created to celebrate the birth of Shin-Shin’s cub. It reached a global engagement of over 4,409,344. The second most popular was the Gay Pride post.
What campaign can you do?
Although 100 unique posts takes time, so does anything that’s worthwhile. If you have the creative means, try a similar take on your own product. You can easily scale down to something that’s more manageable like a weekly post. Perhaps every Tuesday morning you could share a creative and relevant take on the date through your product.
#TravelTipTuesday
eBags created a hashtag for their followers. Now, having a hashtag is key to any campaign. Because the hashtag is tied to a day (Tuesday), it’s quickly becoming a “thing” among travelers. It’s still not quite as popular as #tbt on Instagram, but it’s the same idea. #TravelTipTuesday is simple, which is one of the main reasons it works so well. Anyone can give out travel tips on a Tuesday, further publicizing the hashtag. It’s great because the content is generated by their audience. It helps keep engagement up and it helps keep the content coming every week.
One last reason this works well is because it does target eBag’s audience. eBags makes and sells travel bags, backpacks and luggage. A large part of their audience are those who frequently travel. It only makes sense for them to fuel their audience and community with travel tips. It may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how many campaigns fail because they try to reach outside of their zone of relevance. As long as eBags and its community keeps posting useful tips using #TravelTipTuesday, the hashtag will grow their brand.
What campaign can you do?
No matter how small or large your audience, try to get yourself a hashtag! It will help get your audience talking about themselves. Make sure it’s about something to which people can contribute valuable content. Think of your hashtag as creating something useful for your audience. If you can make it recurring, that’s even better. #tbt happens on Thursdays and #TravelTipTuesday happens on Tuesday. Which day of the week is for your hashtag? This way, your audience can always expect the content on regular basis.
CIL: Paint chip names for men
CIL is a Canadian paint company. It noticed that men don’t really care about decorating their homes. It also noticed that most paint chip names are very feminine. In order to gain more engagement from men, the company created a Facebook app where users could submit new paint chip names. Participants submitted their alternatives which could then be upvoted. The campaign was super successful.
Over a 45-day period, CIL noticed a 10% increase in sales. Over 20,00 people generated over 15,000 new names. On average, a user spends 10 minutes in CIL’s Facebook app. That’s some serious success! I am a woman and names like “Ballerina Slipper” and “Cuddle” seem ridiculous even to me. Some of the names that come out of this campaign include “Bacon,” “Hockey Puck” and “Dark Beer.”
The campaign CIL ran boils down to entertainment. It cam up with a way to take something mundane like paint and make it fun, even funny. Although this wasn’t a competition or a contest, it felt like one because of using up-voting. The campaign got people involved. It moved people to take action, and all because CIL simply asked for some feedback. It also targeted men, which helped the effort. Specifically feminine paint chip names like “Romance” or “Lilac Splendor” were chosen to be renamed. This poked fun at them and made interacting with the campaign so much funner for the users.
What campaign can you do?
CIL’s campaign identified an interesting pattern in their customer base. Do you have an underrepresented group among your audience? What can you do to give them a say or a voice? You’ll need to think about how you can help engage your audience better. Ask for their input into your product.
Conclusion
If you have the time and budget, you’re more than welcome to try to recreate these campaigns for your own audience and product. Since the rest of us don’t have unlimited budgets, we’ll have to make do with smaller campaigns. They can still be successful as long as you can figure out a creative and a smart way to engage your audience. I hope these three great campaigns gave you a lot to think about.
Want to learn more?
- The Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Advertising
- Facebook Ads Tactics That’ll Skyrocket Sales!
- Launch Your First Ads Campaign
- Facebook Marketing Plan Template Fine-Tuned for Maximum Sales
Is there anything else you’d like to know more about and wish was included in this article?