Great ideas for advertising and marketing campaigns
When it comes to getting the word out about a particular product or service, it can be difficult to craft appealing and engaging messages. Especially when a business has to juggle so many other tasks at the same time. Therefore, it is unsurprisingly that plenty of businesses that fall into the trap of ad-hoc marketing usually stitch together some random promotions without any end goal, strategy, or defined KPIs. This is one of the main reasons why companies – ranging from startups all the way to major conglomerates – outsource advertising and marketing work to an advertising agency or an international advertising company.
For those who have no idea where to start, we’ve listed a few marketing and advertising campaign ideas you can start with below.
What is an advertising and marketing campaign?
But first, we have to ask the big question – just what are advertising and marketing campaigns? An advertising campaign is essentially a specific strategy where a series of advertisements focus on the same message to meet a specific business goal. Marketing campaigns are similar, in that they are a strategic and organized effort to promote a specific business goal using a variety of content (such as videos, blog posts, photos, etc), channels, and media (which can include social media, print advertising, television, radio, email, and more).
Simply put, an advertising campaign might be a smaller facet of a larger marketing campaign strategy. Aside from running ads, a business may also consider sending out email newsletters, using paid search, and writing blog content to meet its goals.
These goals, while typically featuring the number of sales made, can also include increasing brand awareness, launching a new product or service, improving customer loyalty, boosting engagement, as well as promoting a certain product or service. Most goals tend to follow the SMART format, meaning they have to be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely.
Here, we’ve listed a few examples of marketing and advertising campaign ideas that may help to spark some inspiration if you truly have no idea where to start.
Great Examples of campaigns
The more creative a campaign is, the more likely it will resonate with your audience and be memorable, even after years have passed and the customer has already made a purchase. Campaigns are also a great way to strengthen your brand image and voice through amazing storytelling. Here are just a few ideas below:
Hold contests
One way to definitely get your audience’s attention is to hold contests, especially user-generated ones. This is because most people love to compete, as well as interact with their favorite brands. Some ways this can be done include running a contest on social media platforms like Instagram. As most social media sites have a low barrier to entry, anyone can essentially join – meaning the contest can reach as wide an audience as possible. For example, Starbucks launched a White Cup Contest in 2014 to showcase people designing and drawing on their white cups. This contest ended up generating around 4,000 entries in 3 weeks, with the winner’s design being printed on the exact same white cups Starbucks uses.
Giveaways
Similar to contests, giveaways, essentially function in almost the same way, except there might not necessarily be any winning condition. Rather, the ‘winners’ are chosen from the luck of the draw. Some ideas include sharing a video via social media, which is a fantastic and cost-effective way to spread the word about your brand, product or service. However, it is important to remember that there must be some incentives to get people to participate – statistics show that a prize worth $1,000 and above may be able to generate close to 5.8 engagements for every 100 followers. If the incentives are too small, it may turn people off from participating in the giveaway.
User-generated content
Getting people to participate in your marketing campaign is a surefire way to increase engagement and get your brand out there cost-effectively. Unlike other campaigns, because most of the promotion is done organically, it carries additional weight since promotion comes from an actual audience member. It has the added benefit of making a brand seem more authentic and real. For example, Coca-Cola’s ‘Share a Coke’ campaign involved them printing common names onto their bottles to encourage people to share a coke with their loved ones. This resulted in a vast majority of people shooting thousands of photos of the bottles and posting them on social media, in addition to an 11% increase in sales of bottles with personalized packaging.
Recently, Spotify has also jumped on the UGC bandwagon, by annually compiling personalized playlists of music users have listened to the most. This was done by keeping track of user data. As the playlists were unique, it made it easy for users to share them on social media, with many people making it into a game so they could compare results with their friends. This marketing campaign also tapped into the fear of missing out (FOMO) effect – so people were more likely to participate in or promote the campaign to gain some kind of validation.
Partner with influencers
Another popular method of promoting products or services in addition to raising brand awareness would be to collaborate with influencers. This is because if done correctly, these influencers can help bring in new clients in addition to strengthening a business’s brand authority. It is not necessary to choose an influencer with a large number of followers – using micro-influencers in your marketing or advertising campaign can be just as helpful, if not more so. The most important factor should be that your influencer fits your brand, and is seen as relevant and trustworthy to your audience.
For example, plenty of well-known educational YouTube channels such as Kurzgesagt, CGP Grey, Minutephysics, and MinuteEarth, tend to also promote educational platforms and courses such as Skillshare. Whereas a famous beauty YouTuber would be better off sponsoring high-end beauty products from brands such as Sephora. If a company has enough advertising or marketing budget, it can also sponsor celebrities to use and promote its products and services. For instance, Reese Witherspoon previously partnered with a skincare brand called Biossance to push its Vitamin C Rose Oil. As she is so successful, audiences look to her as an authority and are more likely to trust her skincare hacks.
Ludovic Gauthier
