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The goal of any marketing strategy is to improve sales. Creative marketing campaign ideas allow you to appeal to your current customers while expanding your customer base. This article explores various B2C and B2B marketing campaign ideas you can use to reach new potential customers.
What Makes for Good Marketing Campaign Ideas?
No single marketing campaign strategy is right for every business or industry. Establish your primary campaign goal before choosing your strategy. The best digital marketing campaigns are memorable and create a lasting impression on your audience. These campaigns resonate with your ideal customer and inspire them to take an action. This action may include sharing social media posts or signing up for an email list.
Once you establish your goals, start coming up with creative marketing ideas. The following list gives you a few examples of creative ideas you can apply to your own business. Take notes and fire up your creative engines to find your next digital marketing campaign.
9 Marketing Campaign Ideas
1. Run a Contest
Nothing attracts an audience like the promise of getting something for free. A fun social media contest is a great way to build brand awareness and attract new followers to your social media channels. Contests allow you to engage with your audience while increasing your social media presence.
While it might seem like offering a large, expensive prize is the best way to inspire participation, businesses of all sizes can run successful contests on a smaller budget. Consider holding a series of follower giveaways in which you offer a prize to one of your social media followers after you hit a certain milestone.
Encourage your customers to advocate for you by running a photo contest showcasing people using your products. Spread the word with a branded hashtag and have entrants tag you and share their posts.
To improve its image as an exciting attraction, Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry once ran a “Month at the Museum” contest. The winner got to live at the museum for 30 days and share their experiences on social media.
2. Partner With a Micro-Influencer
Letting the most well-known people within your industry advocate for your brand opens you up to a larger pool of potential customers. Over half of the respondents to a recent survey stated they trust recommendations from influencers more than those from a brand itself.
Partnering with social media influencers through platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube can give you a serious boost in brand recognition and generate curiosity around your business.
But partnerships with influencers can be expensive, especially if they have a large following. Influencers with a large social media following naturally expect to be paid accordingly for sponsored posts.
By working with social media personalities who have a smaller following, you still get exposure without the hefty price tag. In addition to being more cost-effective for brands, micro-influencers have also been shown to have higher conversion rates with companies with established brand awareness.
3. Run a TV Ad Campaign
Gone are the days of 30-second ad spots during prime-time TV shows that cost you an arm and a leg — and may or may not generate interest in your brand. As customers increasingly cancel cable TV in favor of streaming platforms, companies are following suit to reach them.
Connected TV (CTV) and over-the-top advertising (OTT) refer to commercials that appear on internet-based video platforms. CTV ads appear on streaming platforms like Hulu or Amazon Prime, while OTT can refer to these or ads that run over videos on YouTube and Vimeo. This marketing channel is expected to grow to $13.41 billion in the next three years, but right now, it’s more affordable than traditional TV advertising — and likely has more of your ideal target audience watching.
OTT ads let you create video content based on audience interests. The key to successful OTT is to make a memorable ad and include all relevant information in the first 15 seconds. On some of these platforms, users can skip the ad after a few seconds, so shorter, more personalized videos are best.
When Hulu wanted to showcase its own live television channel lineup to entice more people away from cable TV, the company created an OTT campaign that appeared directly on the platform. This creative ad shows a woman participating in various TV formats while sitting in her chair.
4. AMA on Livestream
Social media offers an unprecedented opportunity for customers to interact with you in real-time. Livestreaming is one such tool that lets you respond to customer feedback, and it is among one of the emerging marketing campaign ideas for B2B. AMA, which stands for “Ask Me Anything” is a popular topic for livestreams.
Invite your customers to follow your live stream and spend an hour answering all of their questions in real-time. For best results, narrow down your focus to one topic per session and choose a company representative to answer them. Promote your live stream a few weeks in advance to attract participants.
Choose a time in which you typically have high engagement on social media. Once you go live, look for questions as they pop up in the chat and answer them. This type of marketing campaign helps you build a rapport with your clients and also establishes you as a trustworthy and authentic business owner. When done correctly, interactive content like this strengthens your community while improving customer loyalty.
5. Start a Rewards Program
While this marketing campaign is nothing new, it is one of the most successful marketing strategies. Loyalty programs have been shown to account for up to 20% of a company’s revenue.
You can offer a variety of perks with your loyalty program including:
- Early access to sales
- Special promo codes
- Rewards for every dollar spent
- And more
A simple loyalty program could consist of a punch card where customers get something free after a set number of visits. You could take it up a notch and offer different tiers for varying levels of loyalty. This system lets you offer something extra to your loyal customers. Consider combining your loyalty program with a contest that includes special rewards for top-tier members.
The North Face has a tiered loyalty program, and members at its top tier are given exclusive perks. They can test out new merchandise, have early access to limited edition collections, and are even given special a customer service line. If you haven’t implemented a loyalty program, consider it in 2022.
6. LinkedIn Advertising Campaign
LinkedIn is a great social media platform to use for B2B advertising. Since this social network is primarily used for networking, get sponsored ads in front of potential decision-makers at companies in your industry.
LinkedIn offers different campaign types based on your specific goals and targeting interests. You start building the campaign with the goal in mind, set your budget and create your ad. For best results, use vibrant graphics with copy that indicates what customers will receive by using your product and include a clear call to action.
Use the description on your post to further refine your message and expand on your ad copy. Software company Outreach offers engagement and intelligence platforms to various businesses. The company posted this LinkedIn ad promoting an online networking event. The ad clearly states how the webinar will benefit attendees and offers a button they can click to register. Its use of bright colors stands out among other LinkedIn posts so people will likely see it when scrolling the platform.
7. Change Your Call to Action
Any marketing campaign you run should include a call to action (CTA). But what if the CTA were its own campaign? Learning to write CTAs that inspire your audience will help you create ads that are more likely to inspire customers to reach out and contact you.
You might write a simple CTA like “contact us today,” but this isn’t very inspiring. The best CTAs address known frustrations your customers are facing and offer them solutions. Use action words like “join,” “click,” or “call.” Let your clients know how you will help them.
Instead of a CTA that says, “call us today to see how we can help you,” make it more urgent and dynamic. Try a CTA like “Call now for this limited offer and learn how you can make logistics more effective for your customers.”
One marketing goal could be to include urgent and actionable CTAs on all digital ads and see which creates the highest number of new leads. You can use these insights to further refine your content strategy.
8. User Generated Content
Let your customers speak for you. Contests and giveaways are great ways to encourage customers to tag you on various social channels and post on your behalf — but you don’t always have to offer an incentive.
Tap into popular hashtags and create fun, branded ones that inspire others to get in on the trend. Have people post themselves using your product in creative ways. Ask questions and post quizzes to generate new, effective marketing ideas for your campaign.
Frito-Lay has hosted a flavor creation contest for several years, encouraging people to submit their best ideas for the chance to win $1 million. Users were asked to share their ideas using the hashtag #Dousaflavor. Not only does the company increase its online presence, but it also gets new product development ideas, and customers have fun outdoing each other to create the best flavor.
If you’re hosting an event, make sure it has a branded hashtag so people can share their experience with their followers on social media.
9. Video Marketing
Don’t overlook the power of video. With 2.9 billion users, YouTube is one of the most widely used social media platforms. You can create excellent branded content that draws in viewers and helps generate interest in your product.
If you have someone on your staff who is good with animation, create a series of animated shorts that address frequently asked questions. If someone on your staff is a dynamic public speaker who knows how to garner attention, have them interview others in your industry. Use your channel to share information on your products and/or services and create better connections with customers.
At the end of each video, include a CTA asking people to like, subscribe, and share your videos. Growing a following is a bit of a time investment, but with consistent, engaging content, you can create a channel that resonates with target customers and inspires them to contact you.
How to Come Up with New Marketing Campaign Ideas
Coming up with creative marketing campaign ideas that widely impact a business and generate sales is the ultimate goal of any marker. But brainstorming new ideas and executing them can be a frustrating challenge. To kickstart your marketing campaign ideas:
- Evaluate your overall marketing goals for the next year.
- Look at your past work to see what worked and what didn't.
- Use that information and brainstorm creative new campaign ideas that successfully connect with customers.
Begin your year of new campaigns with a series of target metrics you can use to measure each campaign’s success.
Then, assess previous campaigns to see which were the most successful to serve as a springboard to drive your marketing. If your Facebook ads didn’t generate a lot of traffic but your sponsored Twitter posts did, start thinking of campaigns for that platform. Or evaluate what didn’t work with your Facebook ads and strategies tactics you can use to make your campaigns better. Perhaps you were targeting the wrong audience. Maybe you need to create more appealing visuals with a stronger CTA.
After you have celebrated your previous successes and analyzed the campaigns that were not as effective, start creating new campaigns. Your campaigns can be simple and elegant or over the top and funny, but each campaign should include copy that informs the viewer of how they benefit from your company along with a CTA that creates a sense of urgency.
Now that you have some ideas, start creating your unique campaigns to connect with your ideal customers.
