It’s no secret that social media platforms have become a powerful marketing tool for businesses of all sizes. The number of social media users is growing, and users continue to flock to social networks like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Furthermore, over 70% of the world’s internet users turn to social platforms to search for brand information.
For marketers, social media and, by extension, social media marketing campaigns, unlock benefits that include cultivating brand awareness, promoting a product or service to a wider audience, having a better way to connect with their audience, and driving traffic, conversions, and sales.
With that said, creating social media agency campaigns from scratch isn’t easy. Think of it as a machine with many moving components, such as developing an omnichannel strategy, deeply understanding your audience, including their needs, behaviors, and preferences, and knowing what the competition is doing. However, while making a successful social media marketing campaign seems like a Herculean task, it’s not entirely impossible.
In this article, we’ve curated some of the best social media agency campaigns that have become hugely successful over the years and have significantly impacted both brands and their audiences.
6 Social Media Agency Campaigns to Take Inspiration From in 2024:
Inspiring Social Media Agency Campaigns to Take Cues From in 2024
Browse our list for inspiration and start creating social media campaigns that’ll blow your audience’s socks off in 2024:
1. Spotify Wrapped
Source: newsroom.spotify.com
Spotify Wrapped first made waves in 2017. However, its earliest iteration came out in 2015, when it was still known as “Year in Music.” Over the years, it quickly became a hugely successful social media campaign, with users from everyday people like us to celebrities and influencers sharing their Wrapped results all over social media. This interactive social media campaign is highly shareable and lets users share their Spotify Wrapped list without the need to reformat it for different social media platforms, using the official hashtag #SpotifyWrapped.
Aside from letting over 574 million global Spotify users know their Top Artists, Top Songs, how many genres they listened to, or the total time they spent listening to music on Spotify, the Spotify Wrapped campaign shows brands how they can use personalization to create custom digital content and engage their audiences. Plus, it also shows us a peek at global music trends in 2023, such as how Gen Z is open to embracing genre-less or hybrid music trends and how certain seasons or major events contributed to the spike of trends like character playlists and the rise of the Afrobeats genre.
Source: newsroom.spotify.com
2022 was a big year for Spotify Wrapped. Compared to 2021, there was a 17% increase in total engagements and a 17% increase in potential impressions. Furthermore, according to the same Sprout Social report, between 2020 and 2021, there was a significant increase in the number of tweets about Spotify Wrapped, which reached 461%.
Source: sproutsocial.com
For marketers, the immense success of Spotify Wrapped offers several key takeaways:
- Creating personalized and easily shareable content is crucial to your social media marketing strategy.
- Following the same format isn’t always a bad thing. While you can reuse the same format for your content year after year, you can still spice things up by tweaking certain elements, such as design and aesthetics.
- As a brand, you can benefit from jumping on the bandwagon. Since Spotify Wrapped has gained much traction, you can use this momentum to join in on the fun and keep your audiences engaged while keeping your content on-brand.
2. Heinz x Absolut
Source: vml.com
The Heinz x Absolut collab took the world by storm in 2023. Headed by Wunderman Thompson, the viral social media agency campaign achieved critical acclaim, garnering over 500 million earned media impressions. It was also covered in over 900 media titles spanning more than 30 countries.
On TikTok, video creations with the #AbsolutelyHeinz hashtag generated more than 6.6 million views, sparking significant conversations on social media. The campaign also immensely benefited Heinz, boosting sales on the brand’s pasta sauces range by 52%.
3. Walmart Black Friday
Walmart’s epic 2023 Black Friday campaign was so “fetch,” banking on nostalgia and bringing together three icons from the Tina Fey hit “Mean Girls.” Created by a Publicis Groupe agencies collective, the campaign became a viral hit before the video was made unavailable on YouTube. During its launch, the winning campaign generated a lot of buzz, earning Walmart over 46,000 engagements and getting over 3,000 articles written about it.
4. McDonald’s: Grimace’s Birthday
Source: grimacesbirthday.com
Created by creative company Wieden + Kennedy, the Grimace’s Birthday campaign leverages brand nostalgia and, of course, people’s love for Grimace. In this widely successful social media agency campaign, Grimace takes the spotlight with a new shake flavor released by McDonald’s (after almost a decade!), a Grimace birthday meal, and even a Gameboy Color game developed by Krool Toys. To launch the campaign, Wieden + Kennedy created a TV spot that featured Grimace celebrating his birthday at McDonald’s.
The world went wild for this campaign, resulting in millions of TikTok users posting videos with the Grimace Birthday Shake and big names like Skrillex even tweeting about the McDonald’s IG account. The winning campaign helped boost sales for McDonald’s, and in many McDonald’s locations, this new limited-edition shake flavor quickly sold out.
McDonald’s IG account is so unhinged
— Skrillex (@Skrillex) June 11, 2023
5. Apple: #ShotoniPhone
What started as a user-generated content (UGC) campaign years ago has now become a global phenomenon with over 27 million posts and counting. Apple’s #ShotoniPhone campaign works because it’s focused on the brand’s audience. Apple also uses the campaign to build a bond with its audience, with some submissions being selected and shown on billboards and Apple retail stores.
The campaign highlights users and how they can create or capture something beautiful even without relying on expensive equipment. By putting the power in users' hands, the brand allows them to tell their unique stories through the photos they’ve taken using their smartphones. This, in turn, creates an empowering message that focuses on each user’s individual creativity.
Source: apple.com
6. National Geographic #YourShot
National Geographic’s #YourShot campaign is one of the most notable social media campaigns ever made. While Nat Geo removed the original platform years ago, they moved the Your Shot community to Instagram in 2019, where it has since garnered over 10,000 posts and 6.6 million followers. In 2019, Your Shot celebrated 10 million uploads—and this community of user-generated content continues to grow.
According to Digivizer, the hashtags #yourshotphotographer and #natgeoyourshot have 11 million photos on Instagram. The campaign works because, aside from leveraging UGC, it allows users to put the spotlight not just on their truths but also on significant moments. Moreover, the campaign gives users the opportunity to express their creativity, take a closer look at nature, and discover other cultures.
What Are Social Media Campaigns?
As much as 98% of consumers consider using social networks to make at least one purchase this year alone. For 90% of marketers, social media is crucial to their clients and businesses, while over 91% of marketers in the US use social media for marketing campaigns.
In a nutshell, social media campaigns refer to a strategy that requires the coordinated marketing efforts of brands to reach their business goals using social media platforms. Unlike normal social media efforts, social media campaigns take things further. They’re more focused and targeted. They’re also measurable, which helps determine if they’re successful or not.
Some common components of social media agency campaigns include organic posts, branded hashtags, collaborations with other creators, and UGC. Meanwhile, common social media campaign goals include:
- Driving sales
- Boosting brand engagement
- Collecting user feedback
While the goals of social media agency campaigns can vary, they need to be measurable. Before starting your campaign, it’s best to establish a benchmark or baseline of your target metrics. This helps you track your campaign’s performance and any changes throughout its run.
Best Practices to Create Killer Social Media Campaigns
Social media agency campaigns involve complex processes that require both businesses and agencies to have an in-depth understanding of their audience, their brand, their offerings, and their competition. One of the biggest challenges of social media marketing campaigns is how to create campaigns that are genuine and reflect a brand’s values, all while being able to address their audience’s needs.
What Makes a Social Media Marketing Campaign “Great”?
A successful or viral campaign is a combination of several different elements:
- Using the right platform
- Having an in-depth understanding of your audience
- Defining a purpose for your campaign
- Having the right timing
- Creating unique, engaging, and relevant content
- Utilizing user-generated content
Aside from these components, viral social media campaigns are shareable, capable of evoking emotions in your target audience, and relatable to them. Aside from a laser focus on audiences, viral social media campaigns are authentic. They can convey your brand’s story, vision, and goals.
Aside from taking inspiration from some of the most successful social media marketing campaigns in the last couple of years, here are some tips to help you craft winning social media agency campaigns in 2024:
Keep doing research
There’s no fixed formula for creating successful social media agency campaigns. However, to allow your campaign to gain traction, you need to look at what your competitors are doing. This means looking at which similar companies have already had successful social media campaigns, how they’re implementing these campaigns, and what their success metrics are. Doing so also helps you see what’s working and what isn’t in your niche or industry. Plus, this can give you a good idea of how you can make your campaign stand out.
Create a solid campaign strategy
While this might be easier said than done, here are some additional tips to help you craft a winning campaign strategy:
- Know your target audience and determine how your campaign-related content will continue to appeal to them. Also, think about what you want to achieve for your brand and audience with your campaign.
- Create content that’s relevant and useful, and consider providing incentives like prizes or exclusive offers to encourage your audience to want to listen to what you have to say.
- Look at current and emerging trends. Assess how your target audience perceives or engages with such trends and find ways to incorporate relevant trends into your campaigns.
- Your content should be unique. When someone sees your campaign, they should know that it’s from you and not from one of your competitors. Whether it’s a series of posts or short videos on TikTok, you should give your audience something they’ve never seen before.
- Figure out how you’ll promote your content and what key message you’ll focus on. With this in mind, it’s important to stick to promoting one key message across your social media channels, as repetition helps with retention.
- Consistency is crucial to making your social media agency campaigns a success. This helps you maintain relationships with your audience. You can simplify this task by using social media management tools and platforms like Brandwatch.
Engage your audience throughout the campaign
To make your campaign stand out and drive audience engagement, you need to be proactive in connecting with your audience. This means reinforcing positive interactions and promptly addressing any concerns or questions they might have. For instance, in the Grimace’s Birthday campaign, Wieden + Kennedy worked quickly with posts from McDonald’s clients to post responses across various social media channels. This helped garner more coverage and attention for the campaign.
Leverage Data
Gather important insights about your campaign by analyzing data. Use this information to determine what worked and what didn’t, what insights you’ve gained from your audience and their interactions with your campaign, and what you can do to improve your future campaigns. You can also run tests before launching your campaign to see if it’s effective for a particular audience segment.
Final Thoughts
The social media agency campaigns we’ve presented only represent a small portion of all the viral campaigns over the past couple of years. While they may vastly differ in their execution, they do share similarities, such as leveraging nostalgia, making campaign-related content easily accessible and shareable, and being measurable.
Making great social media agency campaigns doesn’t stop at promoting your content. While it can be a difficult feat, it’s not impossible to create wildly successful campaigns. While you can always do it yourself with an in-house marketing team, some of these campaigns show how working with an agency can help you achieve greater results.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I hire a social media marketing agency for my campaigns or go the DIY route?
There’s no right or wrong answer to this. Your decision will ultimately depend on your business’ marketing needs. If you have the resources to hire your own team of social media marketers, including marketing managers and coordinators, and if you know what you’re doing when it comes to social media campaigns, then you might benefit from going the DIY route.
However, if you want a greater chance of having successful campaigns and to save time so you can instead focus on growing your business while having access to skilled experts who have the best tools and techniques, then partnering with a reliable social media marketing agency may be the best option.
What key metrics should I track for my social media marketing campaigns?
Metrics give you valuable insights into how your social media agency campaigns are doing and if they’re on track to helping you achieve your marketing goals. Below is a list of the social media metrics to pay attention to:
- Reach
- Engagement
- Awareness
- Website traffic
- Cost per acquisition (CPA)
- Follower growth and audience size
- Impressions
- CTA
- Conversion rate
If I’m working with a social media marketing agency, how can I assess their effectiveness?
Regular evaluation of your partner agency’s performance is crucial, as this lets you see if they’re still effective or not. When assessing the agency’s performance, base your evaluation on the following factors:
- The quality of their content creation and how consistent they are
- How the agency aligns with your goals and objectives
- Their reporting and analytics capabilities
- Transparency in campaign management
