The best way to learn about campaigning correctly is to look into previous successful campaigns that made a difference and were able to get the attention they were looking for. Whether it is driving traffic to the website or looking for sales of a product or service, campaigns that are structured strategically can have a lasting effect on its users. Let us look at some of the most notable campaigns which have a lesson that we can learn and probably use on our business accounts too.
Campaign 1: #SFBatKid
This Twitter focused campaign was devised by Clever Girls Collective. It was focused around a five-year old boy who is battling cancer and who had the wish of being Batman. The Greater Bay Area Make-A-Wish Foundation took to creating a campaign around the boy’s wish by practically turning San Francisco into Gotham City. Thousands of supporters made their way to the streets of San Francisco to cheer the small boy as he defeated batman’s enemies with the help of a grown-up batman. Approximately 20,000 people came to see Miles get the key to the city from the city’s Mayor.
While all this is amazing, for a brand, the more interesting details are that in less than two weeks, the campaign was able to generate 600,000 tweets and created 1.7 billion Twitter impressions. The emotional appeal to this campaign led to 1,000 hits per second on the Make A Wish Foundation website which caused the site to crash.
Lesson: Add an emotional appeal to your brand which makes people connect to the campaign on a personal level. It also garners more attention from users and potential customers when your campaign has an emotional touch to it.
Campaign 2: #AirWager
To keep things interesting on Twitter, this campaign took things to a new level. The staff members of Australian Airline Qantas and Air New Zealand wagered over a Rugby World Cup Game. The wager was prompted by lots of Twitter conversation regarding which team would win. According to the wager, the team that lost would wear the winning team’s shirts on the flights. The campaign got a lot of attention from users and Twitter turned into a digital battlefield with airline teams posting digitally modified images of their rivals wearing shirts in their team’s colors.
When Qantas lost the wager, they dressed themselves in the black jerseys of the winning team. While it may have been humiliating for the staff of Qantas Airline, it got 1,200 retweets which meant that Qantas got an advantage over its competitor when it came to publicity.
Lesson: Even humiliation can be used for your brand’s benefit if you knew how to turn it into success. You can also collaborate with other brands to come up with interesting ideas that may benefit both the companies. It is not always necessary to choose a competitor for your campaign but if you do not have another brand to collaborate with, then keep things spiced up by spurring engagement through your tweets.
Campaign 3: #letsdolunch
Domino’s UK took an initiative to promote group momentum by using tweets for getting some attention. Dominos decided that for every 100 tweets it got under the hashtag #letsdolunch, it will reduce the price of pepperoni pizza by one pence. With 85,000 tweets within a two hour window, pizza lovers were able to bring down the price for the pizza from £15.99 to £7.74 for that day. Dominos was able to reach out to a huge number of people and was able to get all the attention it hoped for by using this campaign.
Lesson: For a campaign that lasted less than two hours, Dominos was able to get a lot of action. It focused on uniting the customers and promoting the brand at the same time. This is in addition to the sales Dominos would have made from all the tweeters who would have queued up to make the most of the discount.
These three campaigns have a very different group of users and used creative methods to engage with their customers. While one used an emotional platform to garner attention, another joined hands with competitors to get more visibility from users. On the other hand, Dominos chose to increase its sales not just through a simple sales campaign. Instead it created a Twitter focused campaign to get attention from the Twitter users who could in turn spread the word. All these campaigns undoubtedly led to increased user engagement and a wider reach.
When it comes to reaching out to your audience through your marketing efforts then innovation plays an important role. These three campaigns show the effects of innovation and how it can drive leads and conversions. The same applies to your business too. Twitter provides a great platform for brands but using this platform adequately is entirely dependent on the brand.
If you devise a campaign that lacks the lustre required to get your users to visit your website and enhance your visibility or increase your conversion, then you may have wasted money no matter how less or how big your budget was. A strategically planned campaign will reflect your efforts and bear better fruit than one that was devised half-heartedly.