5 Facebook marketing campaigns that drove meaningful results

Organic reach is at an all-time low. The average reach for posts from Facebook has plummeted to 2 percent for some brands.¹

Not only do you need to pay-to-play for brand awareness, but you also need a way to stand out from your competition. This is where well-planned and expertly executed Facebook marketing campaigns can help. They provide exposure beyond organic reach in addition to the following benefits:

• They create a positive brand experience.
• They drive meaningful results, not just impressions.
• They build customer networks and create consumer demand.

The best Facebook marketing campaigns have one thing in common: they give audiences the freedom to use Facebook in their own way. From creating custom memes to simply commenting on a post, these are the actions Facebook users are already taking every day.

Here are five promotions that drove meaningful results to review with your team for inspiration before you launch your next award-winning Facebook campaign (read our Social Media Pocket Guide for additional campaign tips).

You’d have to be living under a rock, without a phone, in a Wi-Fi dead zone to have never heard of this award-winning campaign. In less than 24 hours after launch, #StraightOutta became the number one trending topic on Facebook and Instagram. Overnight, it seemed that everyone and everything were coming #StraightOutta somewhere — from librarians coming #StraightOutta the library to pizzas coming #StraightOutta the oven. The campaign started with more than 100 celebrity influencers across to share their #StraightOutta. But the popularity of the campaign was driven by an app created for everyday people to make their own custom memes and share to Facebook.

More than Just a Trending Topic

According to Facebook, “The app received 11.7 million visits, with 7.2 million unique visitors, 8.3 million downloads and 10M+ shares in total…fueled by the success of the campaign, Straight Outta Compton took $201.6M at the global box office on a production budget of $28M.” ² It’s not surprising with these results that Beats by Dre was a Facebook Award 2016 global winner and that it’s considered one of the best Facebook marketing campaigns.

In 2015, AmBank Group launched an innovative community platform to enhance its connectivity with young professional customers. The goal of TRUE Lab is to crowdsource ideas on banking solutions and services by engaging with their clients as content creators. In conjunction with the launch, customers who signed up for TRUE Lab could participate in the TRUE Potential campaign. This campaign was launched to listen to individuals who have always dreamed of realizing their TRUE potential but couldn’t due to financial circumstances. The Lithium (now Khoros) platform enabled members to share their ideas via the Lithium ‘Share’ function on Facebook and other social media outlets, and this helped their idea gain more kudos.

TRUE Results

Within six weeks, the campaign had over 146k page community page views. Nine million impressions on Facebook helped to generate 256 unique ideas with 1,358 kudos.

Think your campaign budget is too small for meaningful results? Think again. Carlton and United Breweries shows what you can do with just $400 in paid media and 10 cases of beer. The campaign was aimed to increase awareness of a new brand of brew called Lazy Yak. While many brands’ giveaway campaigns make their audience jump through hoops to enter, Agency Clemenger BBDO did the opposite. They created The Laziest Competition Ever allowing people to “do whatever they wanted to try and win a slab of beer.” They then chose the laziest, craziest or most ingenious entries. What they ended up with was a highly entertaining experience for both the entrants and those viewing the “hilarious and diverse entries.”

They created The Laziest Competition Ever allowing people to “do whatever they wanted to try and win a slab of beer.” ³

Big Results, Next to no Effort

With approximately $400US they were able to reach over 120k Australians which resulted in a 10% entry rate. And the high levels of sharing and click engagements on the post were far from lazy.

The hotel and travel industry is incredibly competitive and it takes a well-executed campaign and social media presence to cut through the noise. With over 100 million hours of video watched a day on Facebook ⁴, Hotels.com knew that incorporating videos in its recent ad campaign was a great way to reach potential customers. But they also understood that 85% of Facebook video is watched without sound⁵. According to their Shorty award-winning entry, “the goal with this Facebook campaign was to create work that could break through the ‘wall of silence’ and improve consumer engagement.”

Using Captain Obvious to acknowledge the obvious fact that ads auto-play silently, they made "silent ads" that not only drew viewers in, but they also invited those viewers to engage with the ads and then rewarded when they did.

Meaningful Results

The Silent Facebook Ads campaign resulted in more than 5 million views in just three weeks, which is 5X the average engagement rate for Hotels.com. Also, the videos earned millions of more impressions and more consumers engaging with the brand.

Using social media, the March of Dimes found a better spread the word about its “March for Babies” marquee event. According to Chronicle of Philanthropy, “the group created an application whereby fans could directly register on Facebook itself and not have to go to a separate registration page. This app also allowed supporters to broadcast on their Facebook walls and to their friends that they were participating.”⁶

Meaningful Results

As a result of all of its online efforts, including Facebook outreach, the March of Dimes increased their event registrations by a whopping 75% and increased revenue by 102%.⁷

Before you go out and start building a Facebook marketing campaign of your own, read our Social Media Pocket Guide to learn all the best practices and tips on running a successful social media campaign.

¹ http://adage.com/article/digital/advertisers-shake-facebook-s-latest-reach-cuts/295913/

² https://www.facebook-studio.com/gallery/submission/beats-by-dre

³ https://www.facebook-studio.com/gallery/submission/the-laziest-competition-ever

⁴ https://techcrunch.com/2016/01/27/facebook-grows/

⁵ http://digiday.com/platforms/silent-world-facebook-video/

⁶ https://www.philanthropy.com/article/March-of-Dimes-Evolution-in/226115

⁷ https://www.philanthropy.com/article/March-of-Dimes-Evolution-in/226115