As marketers, we are always on the lookout for the next big thing. We also know that it is the small things that often make the great campaigns. It’s all about the mix of the right platform, for the right audience, with the right message and at the right time. But in reality, it is much harder to get all these right at the same time.
So we decided that we should let the world’s best social media campaigns inspire us. The Warc 100 is an annual ranking of campaigns based on their performance in 87 effectiveness and strategy awards from around the world. It seemed like a good starting point.
(Read until the end, to get realistic take-aways)
Also Read: Get Your Fingers Out Of All The Trending Pies…
So what can we learn from the world’s best social media campaigns?
1. Scale It
Campaigns ranked in the Warc 100 use more channels than the other campaigns, with 7.4 on average against 6.5 for the rest of the cases.
This suggests that using a broader ranger of channels can help reaching out to more of your audience and bring in more success to your campaign.
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2. The Longer, The Better
When it comes to social media campaigns, too many marketers still bet on short term campaigns. It’s like a fast hit, or a quick fix if you prefer. Looking into the Warc 100 case studies, it appears that campaigns lasting from 3 to 12 months are in fact the most successful.
The above graph clearly shows that campaigns should be long enough to produce measurable results. This comes in direct opposition of what most social media marketers may believe, but it actually makes perfect marketing sense. Your campaign should have the time to reach a maximum of individuals before you could even pretend to measure its real impact.
3. Money Matters
This one is going to sound cliché, but bigger budgets tend to bring better results. Most Warc 100 case studies featured budgets over £3 million. Having said that, the following chart also confirms what we already knew: most social media campaigns have up to £500k maximum budget.
4. Personalisation Is Overrated
Ask a “social media guru” and he will almost always swear that social media is about personalising the message. Well, while this is not a bad idea, the Warc 100 comes to show us that it is rather overrated.
In fact, emotion, storytelling and humour seem to be the differentiating factors for successful campaigns.
Of course, participation and user generated content as also always important creative approaches, but they do not seem to have a clear impact on the success of a campaign.
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Take Away (Let’s Be Realistic)
I don’t pretend that these 4 factors are what will make your next social media campaign a success. As we explained, the Warc 100 best campaigns were often built on large budgets and probably benefited from months and months of planning. I know too well the reality of the industry to pretend we all have access to budgets over £3 million and 6 months to plan our next campaign.
I wanted to share these with you, because they can be an inspiration for your next campaign. For example:
- – Stop focusing on the very few channel you think are best and try out new ones
- – Plan longer campaigns, don’t look for a quick marketing burst
- – Maximise your yearly budget: do fewer but more successful campaigns
- – Play your cards right: trigger emotion, use humour, tell beautiful stories
I’d love to hear back from you. Try to implement these ideas and come back to share your results.
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