Together’s Guide to Social Media Marketing Campaigns

What Is A Social Media Marketing Campaign?

A social media marketing campaign is an organised set of marketing activities on one or many social platforms. The strategy behind these is designed to align with your overall brand goals or specific KPIs for the campaign.

A social media marketing campaign is usually part of an overarching omnichannel strategy. Social media campaigns take many forms and can include:

• Organic posts

• Paid media

• Contests and giveaways

• User-generated content (UGC)

• Influencer and brand partnerships

With 82.8% of the UK population alone using social media, it’s crucial your brand has a strong social presence and runs effective social media campaigns. If you’re looking for more information about an overall social media strategy you can head over to our recent blog.

1. Know Your Target Audience

Knowing your target audience is the key to any marketing activity. By understanding your target audience - who they are, their values, wants and needs, you’ll be able to select the best channels, messages and content that will resonate with them. To learn more about how customers make buying decisions head over to our blog.

2. Research Competitors

By researching your industry and finding your competitors you can see what type of content resonates with your audience. You can use this research to help shape your campaigns, although it is key to make sure you’re not copying and that you’re showcasing your brand's personality.

3. Set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) And Budget

Having a set of KPIs will allow you to stay accountable and also track the success of your campaign. There are a variety of KPIs you could measure from impressions and reach to engagement and conversions. The overall goal of your campaign will help in deciding which KPIs you should be watching. For example, if your goal is to gain sales, then you’ll want to track conversion. Whereas if it's a brand awareness campaign then stats such as reach and views will be more important for you to monitor.

Setting a budget is also important at the start of a campaign. Knowing your budget will allow you to understand what you can do within your campaign and also mean you can prioritise activities that will maximise results. Depending on budget you might want to include influencers or collaborations. Maybe you want to leverage paid social media to reach your goals or if your budget is limited then posting organically may be the best option.

4. Key Campaign Messages

Clear and concise messages are the key to the best social media marketing campaigns. You need a solid message that resonates with your target audience and gives them a clear takeaway and action from the content. For example, Gillette's campaign #thebestamancanbe was in response to the #metoo movement. The campaign aimed to address negative behaviour among men. Whilst some found issues with it, others praised Gillette for taking a firm social stance. The message was clear, on a tough social matter, and highlighted the brand's values. Watch here.

However, the key message to use in your campaign will depend on your brand, values and goal. For example, if your product is a healthy smoothie, your message will want to communicate the health benefits and why your audience should try it. Whereas, a confectionary brand message will be more around the taste and experience of eating the sweet or chocolate and allowing the audience to have a treat. Having that clear understanding of your audience will allow you to craft your message so that it speaks to their values, wants and pain points.

5. Content Creation

Once you have all of the above sorted you’ll want to start making content. By now you should know who your audience is, where to find them and what wording will resonate with them. You should be able to create a plan on how many pieces of content are required, and where you will be posting them. Each platform has preferred sizes, for example, Instagram prefers a 1:1 ratio for images and 9:16 for videos and Reels. It is always best to check the latest individual platform specifications.

Based on your research and findings, it's important to create compelling content whilst paying attention to the look and feel of your images and designs, ensuring they effectively convey your key message. Make sure your content is adapted to fit the formats preferred by each platform's algorithm, aligns with brand guidelines, and maintains consistency across all channels.

6. Go Live

Once you’ve pulled together all of your content and you and the team are happy it's time to put it out into the real world. However, your work is far from done, you need to regularly check in on how your content and message are performing and make tweaks as you go along, we’ll talk more about this in the next section.

How To Run A Successful Social Media Marketing Campaign

1. Use Social Listening

To run a successful social media marketing campaign it’s important to use tools like social listening to see how your brand and campaign are being perceived. Social listening can also be used to gather data and a deeper understanding of your target audience, industry and competitors. Using all that data and insights allows you to make more informed decisions about your marketing campaign and strategy. There are many social media management tools out there that offer social listening such as, Brandwatch and Hootsuite.

2. Track Your Results

Tracking your results is the key to knowing if your campaign is a success. Not only will the results tell you whether your social media marketing campaign is working, it will also help you make tweaks to your current campaign to see if you can generate even better results.

3. Make Tweaks To Your Campaign As You Go

If you’re tracking results and using social listening you may find aspects of your campaign don’t quite hit the mark or there is something else you could try. As long as you look at the numbers, assess what’s working for your audience (and the industry), you can make edits and tweak your campaign to make continual improvements.

Examples Of Successful Social Media Marketing Campaigns To Inspire You

Spotify Wrapped

One brand that nails its social media campaigns every year is Spotify. We all know by now that the end of the year means getting your round-up of favourite music in your own personalised Spotify wrapped. The campaign is very clever, it’s very personal to each and every user and because it uses the audience's data and interests it speaks directly to them which in turn makes them share their ‘Wrapped’ slides to their personal stories and social media. This is an excellent idea because it's a great way to use their audience (organically) to promote their services. Spotify Wrapped has now become an eagerly awaited part of the year for many users.

Dove & Getty Images: #ShowUs

Another great example of a successful social media marketing campaign is Dove & Getty Images: #ShowUs. The campaign aimed to bring together women and non-binary individuals all over the world in the project #ShowUs. The project included a collection of 10,000+ images that show a more inclusive version of beauty and redefine the word on their own terms. The campaign was amazing and truly spoke to their audience of women from all walks of life. Not only did the campaign resonate well with the audience but thousands of beautiful images were produced as well.

Mission Wraps: Wrap Your Way

Finally, a campaign we recently worked on was Mission Wraps: Wrap Your Way. The campaign was to produce multiple videos and images for a variety of channels including YouTube, TikTok and the Meta platforms. The campaign was based on a survey they had earlier carried out on how people use their wraps. The results showed there was a variety of wrapping styles. The campaign explores the top 6 answers from the survey and shows them as characters. The main message of the campaign is that you can use Mission Wraps in any way and with any filling, there is no wrong or right way. The video and images portray this in a fun and relatable way. We used 6 different personalities to symbolise the different styles. The results spoke for themselves as we drove 2.01M impressions within the first week of the campaign, of which 1.18M impressions came from the YouTube video. Watch here. You can also read more about this campaign in our blog.

That brings us to the end of our guide to social media marketing campaigns. We discussed what a social media marketing campaign is, how to plan one and ensure its success, as well as discussing a few examples of social media marketing campaigns that we think are great. If you need any help with any of your social campaigns or your overall social strategy don’t be afraid to contact the team today.