It’s been estimated that around 4.5 billion people use the internet throughout the world today. With around 3.8 billion people who use it for social media purposes, making it the best and the most obvious choice to run a marketing campaign on, right?
With so many social platforms to choose from like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok there are more than enough options to suit your brand’s unique message and your target audience. Today these platforms have made it easier to put together a social campaign by offering hyper-targeted advertising tools, which help you to show your content to those who are the most interested as well as save you money on your marketing budget.
But having access to these great tools is unfortunately not enough. In order to stand out from the crowd, you need to get creative with your social campaign if you want a fighting chance, since so many other brands are competing for attention in the same space.
So what can you do? Before we give you the tools and inspiration you need to create the ultimate social media campaign, let’s first take a look at some of the basics.
What is a social media campaign?
A social media campaign involves using digital platforms along with content to promote a brand’s marketing goals and it can be run on any social media platform of your choice. It is not to be confused, however, with Google ads for example, because these ads make use of search engines as opposed to social networks. There is a distinct difference.
Social media campaigns can make use of multiple social media platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok and Snapchat as part of a coordinated marketing effort. But they also differ from your usual social content, because they typically run over a set period of time and are always carefully designed with the purpose of fulfiling a specific goal.
They can be organic or paid and are typically more focused on meaningful metrics as opposed to day to day content.
Why do I need to run a social media campaign?
Social media campaigns are very useful for fulfilling many different business goals. Some focus on brand awareness and growing your audience, which involves getting your brand discovered either by the masses or a specific target audience, while others aim to create or solidify brand sentiments which involves how your fans perceive and understand your brand’s core values. Are you caring, knowledgeable, trustworthy, likeable or innovative, etc? Other goals for social media campaigns can include increased conversions or making sales, encouraging engagement and creating loyalty.
How do I create the ultimate social media campaign?
Here is where we get down to business. Follow these steps below to see some results.
1. Identify your goal
It’s important to know and define what you hope to achieve with your campaign from the get-go in order to create a clear picture in your mind. For example, is your goal to achieve greater brand awareness, more sales or engagement, or to simply engage your existing audience? Once your goals are clear, ensure that your campaign message is intentional and calibrated to the right audience in order for it to be effective.
2. Choose your social channels
Next, decide which social channels to use when running your campaign. To make the choice easier, look at where your ideal audience can be found and if the platform makes the most sense for your goals. For example, if your goals include your brand getting noticed by a younger audience, then you might want to choose TikTok to run your campaign on. Maybe you want to make more sales? In that case, Pinterest or Instagram Shopping would be better since audiences are more likely to listen to brands selling their products on these platforms. You can also choose to run your campaign across multiple channels, to reach a wider audience.
Something to keep in mind is that different social media platforms each have their own advertising functionality and some are not as sophisticated as others. For example, while Facebook and Instagram have advanced targeting options, other platforms like TikTok and Snapchat do not.
3. Plan your social campaign
Now that you have figured out your goals and your preferred platform, its time to brainstorm and plan how its all going to unfold. You should begin with an overarching idea that will make your social campaign stand out from the rest. This could be coming up with creative ways to encourage your fans to share UGC (User Generated Content) or working with hand-picked influencers to position your brand in a certain light.
Then, map out what your campaign will look like and identify what kind of assets you will need to pull it off. Other things to consider include, budget, written and visual content, pre-launch and finally launch.
4. Create written content
All great social media campaigns have a catchy title and tagline or slogan. The key is to get into people’s heads and stay there. You will need attention-grabbing post captions, video descriptions along with relevant hashtags (don’t be afraid to create your own campaign hashtag that fans can use) to go with your collateral.
5. Design and create visual campaign assets
This step is by far the most important. Your visual branding will make or break your campaign. You ideally want your visual assets to be eye-catching but also consistent with your overall brand, so choose wisely.
6. Budget and targeting
This step is only for if you choose to make use of paid advertising (highly recommended). Here you will need to specify your budget, advertising goal and your schedule (this is how long you would like the campaign to run for). You will also need to upload your chosen visual and written content for the ad to run.
If you prefer to launch an organic campaign, you can skip this step and just post or schedule your content as you would normally.
7. Launch, monitor and analyse
Okay, you have put in all the hard work and made it this far, well done! Now it’s time to launch your campaign! All that is left to do is initiate the campaign by pressing either ‘live’ or ‘schedule’, depending on the route you chose to go in terms of a paid or organic campaign.
From there you can start to monitor the success of your campaign, during and after it’s ended. You can use social analytics and listening tools to determine how well your campaign went and if you reached your goals or not. If not, you can use the info to continue to tweak your strategy until you see the results you desire.
Get in contact with us to find out how we can work together with you to create the ultimate social media campaign for your business today!
