The 5 Best Marketing Campaigns

The 5 Best Marketing Campaigns

As consumers, we are inundated with targeted marketing campaigns every day.

But the thing is, there are marketing campaigns—promo codes, marketing emails, social posts, search ads, etc.—and then marketing.

Activity. The ones you talk about or share with others. The ones that make you look at the brand in a completely different way. The ones you remember.

Now, not everyone is Spotify or has a billboard-sized budget – but we can learn a lot by looking at some of the best marketing campaigns. So today, we’ll cover:

• What exactly is a marketing campaign.
• Different types of marketing campaigns and requirements.
• Five examples of the best marketing campaigns we’ve seen.

Each example comes with takeaway tips, so you can simulate, replicate, and iterate over each of these examples.

What is a marketing campaign?

The term “marketing campaign” is very broad and can mean many things. I define it here as a project executed to drive a specific action and executed through one or more channels.

 For example, you might be running a giveaway marketing campaign and do it all on social media. Or you can send an email about it, write a blog post on it, get influencers to promote it, etc.

Marketing campaigns are designed to drive specific goals, such as increasing website traffic, boosting sales of a specific product or service, or getting more people to try out a free tool. They are also often assigned specific time frames for accurate testing, analysis, and optimization.

A successful marketing campaign has many elements:  

• Who: Which audience segments are you targeting? new customer? Dormant client? Users of a specific service you offer?
• What: What are you promoting and what assets do you need for the event?
• Location: Where will you be doing your event? Social, email, website, offline?
• Timing: When do you plan to start, run and end the event?
• Why: Why are you doing this activity? What are its short-term and long-term goals?
• How: How will each piece of content work together to maximize the success of the campaign?

Types of Marketing Campaigns

There are many ways to use marketing campaigns to drive your marketing goals. Let’s take a look at some of the types of marketing campaigns you can run.

1. Launch an event

For those of us who enjoy working for startups, you’re probably familiar with the hustle and bustle of getting a brand new product out in front of an audience—whether it’s a new product, service, or feature.

This is a great opportunity for a marketing campaign! Depending on the size of your launch, you may want to have full news across all your marketing platforms. Especially for releases, consider including:  

• Press Releases (Learn how to write a press release here!)
• News Feature or Sponsorship
• Blog Posts Written by Stakeholders
• Syndicated content on LinkedIn or Medium
• Advertising campaigns on social platforms
• Influencer or Network Support

The iPod launch event was so well done, that Apple still uses this type of imagery and copy on their wearables.

For tips on this type of activity, check out 12 Ways to Promote Your New Product or Service Effectively.

2. Promotions

Just want to lower the price of your service for a limited time? Upgrading your bread and butter products? Sounds like a great time to market with a limited-time campaign.

You need to communicate with existing customers to update them on discounts or new user experiences, and you can try to leverage them to spread the word.

You need to:  

• Email communications (example promotional emails here).
• Blog posts (depending on the duration of the event).
• Network support
• Shareable social media assets

Here is a list of promotions you might use for this type of event.

3. Event Marketing Activities

The conference is finally making a comeback! It’s close to home as I have a lot of experience planning conference sponsorships, speaking and booth design. Not to mention attending a webinar after a webinar on “how to” and “how to”.

To ensure people attend your webinars, attend your seminars, or buy tickets for conferences you host, please include some of the following materials:  

• Drip Email
• One-on-one outreach
• Landing page with registration form
• Shareable Social Assets

Need some event marketing ideas? Just check out these 11 brand-building campaign marketing ideas.

4. Many other marketing activities

These are just three of the many types of marketing campaigns. The list keeps growing based on your goals, business context, and your definition of your marketing campaign.

For example, here are some more things to consider:  

Re-engagement with marketing campaigns: Get dormant or former customers back.  

Product- or service-specific marketing campaigns: Promote existing products or services that require extra care.  

Rebranding Marketing Campaign: There’s nothing more fun than showing the world your new makeover.

Without further ado, let’s get into some examples! You can use these to inspire your next marketing campaign, spark some creativity for your current marketing campaign, or help you plan your roadmap.

The best marketing campaigns we’ve seen and what we can learn from them

Here are five great examples of marketing campaigns done right. I’ll also discuss how to apply them to your campaigns.

1. Two Kinds of People (Apple)

Long before Macs were “books,” when personal computers were a luxury, Apple introduced the Lisa—the first computer with a mouse. Their launch campaign included a TV commercial starring Kevin Costner.

No, this isn’t the first influencer marketing campaign. It’s a pre-fame Cave.

No, Lisa never took off.

It was the playbook of this ad that made it an iconic campaign: “This is why we make the most advanced personal computers in the world. Why soon there will be two kinds of people: people who use computers and people who use Apple. “

Takeaway: Stick to Your Brand Voice

As you can see, “Think different” may be Apple’s current marketing slogan, but that’s been their message since the 80s. Contains a history of their brand information. You can’t brand your business without consistency, and Apple has been doing due diligence in this area for the past three years.

2. Operation Santa Claus (USPS)

I’m obsessed with USPS. I mean, you can put a cheap sticker on an envelope and put it in a box outside your house and it will magically disappear thousands of miles away, which is amazing incredible?!

But I digress. Through Operation Santa, USPS encourages children to write letters to The North Pole, a collection of pictures of letters posted online. Participants can then read the letters and respond to one or more of the requests in the letters by mailing the child a package.

So while this marketing campaign helps drive more business to USPS, it’s a charitable way to make everyone feel good.

Takeaway: Involve a third donor in your campaign

Technically, all marketing is a win-win: your customers get the valuable offer you’re promoting, and you get their business. But with a charitable marketing campaign, you can achieve a win-win.

A third benefactor here—children in underserved communities—encourages USPS and its customers to make the most of this marketing campaign. We all love to buy products that also have a positive impact on our society.

3. What Agnes saw (Tokyo Olympics)

This inspirational ad features the oldest Olympian (Agnes Keleti) and several incredible Olympic moments from her life. “What Agnes saw” means she saw the torchlight and thousands of athletes like her.

If that doesn’t tug on your heartstrings or make you want to get up and do something, you probably don’t have a heart. To be honest, I have no plans to watch the Olympics this year.

Mainly because I don’t have cable (not OTT). But after I stumbled across Agnes’ fond memories, I stole my parents’ cable plan login.

Takeaway: Try a “look back” activity to showcase your achievements, challenges, and even mistakes.

The Olympics are an event like no other. The events held each year are very different from last year; location, culture, geopolitical events, and athletes all influence the makeup of the competition.

This marketing campaign for the Olympics shows us how to meet different challenges and achievements. Don’t shy away from where you’ve been, celebrate where you’re going.

In practice, this means apologizing for any wrongdoing and showing the client how you corrected it (admitting mistakes has its benefits, you know). Or, at best, show how generations of families have developed the perfect recipe for your business.

4. Prime Day (Amazon)

In 2015, Amazon held its first Prime Day event to attract more Amazon Prime subscribers. Oh boy, it worked. Great, six years later they’re still having a multi-day Prime Day.

The Takeaway: Give Loyalty Something Extra

If you’re a subscription-based business, take a page from Amazon’s book and give your subscribers something extra to boost their loyalty. Something that will make their friends and family jealous and they will want to subscribe to your service ASAP.

I always recommend free stuff because people love free stuff. The gym I went to recently had a “membership day” focused on fun games and giveaways for their members. They even brewed a specialty beer for the event!

5. Where is my dock?

How could we not include an influencer marketing campaign here? No, I won’t mention some kind of diet gummies/teas/supplements…

Where Is My Dock is the ultimate influencer campaign. Does anyone remember Chrissy Teigen blowing up Quay sunglasses in 2019?

After the comedian/model/John Legend’s baby mom endorsed them through a series of ads and social media plugins, everyone *must* own a giant pair of sunglasses.

Great move, Quinn. While unfortunately, my kid’s face is too small for any of their products, I’ve also fallen victim to this movement. You can find my sunglasses on Poshmark, please take them off my hands.

Takeaway: Seek True Recognition

First, know your audience. Who do you want to contact? Who is in their sphere of influence? How do you match people in your sphere of influence with your product?

Working with influencers is not easy. However, in my experience, sometimes the right influencer will fall in your lap (aka send you an email). You want someone who loves your product as much as you do because genuine endorsement cannot be faked.

What’s the best marketing campaign you’ve ever seen?

While these are just some of my favorite marketing campaigns, it’s certainly not an exhaustive list. And you crazy marketers just keep coming up with ideas. So send us your favorites and we might add them to the list!

When you verify your business, Facebook will ask for some legal documents to confirm that your business is legitimate. This minimizes the risk of future ad bans (while adhering to Facebook’s advertising guidelines, of course).

Use Facebook’s verification instructions as these will be up to date, but for this post, here’s how to verify via Business Manager:

• Go to Security Center
• Select Verify.
• Verify your domain

Verifying your domain ensures that you can effectively track your ads. This is just a case of uploading a small file (provided by Facebook) and adding it to your website’s header.

To verify your domain on Facebook:

• Go to Business Manager and find Brand Safety > Domains.
• Click Add and follow the instructions.
• Set up aggregate event management

You need to set up Aggregated Event Measurement (AEM) or your ads will not track properly. Facebook events indicate activity in your omnichannel strategy when users turn to your CTA. The event is like this:  

• page preview
• View content
• Add to cart
• Initiate checkout
• Buy

For example, an online store might track: View Content -> Add to Cart -> Initiate Checkout -> Purchase

In the past, an unlimited number of tracking events could be created in a Facebook ad account; now, they limit it to eight. Most advertisers only track 1-5 events per campaign, so this shouldn’t be a major hurdle.

However, if you do use many different tracking events, just merge your events and use the same events in various activities (learn more about this strategy here).

To set up aggregate event management:

• go to the event manager
• Click the Aggregated Event Measurements tab
• Click on Manage Events and select your (now verified) domain
• Click Manage Events
• Add events to track across the entire campaign.

You need to list your events by priority. If your campaign is about selling, make sure buying (for example) is the highest priority.