The goal of a marketing campaign is to help your audience understand the brand, increase awareness and engagement, and of course, generate sales. The best marketing campaigns go above and beyond to resonate with consumers by playing into emotions and generating excitement for a product or service.
Regardless of the industry you’re in, there are always unique ways to create effective and relevant marketing strategies. One of the best ways to help business owners think outside of the box is by working with marketing firms like Polar Mass. Often, it’s difficult for entrepreneurs to step outside their comfort zone and devise research-backed solutions to their problems.
While small businesses don’t have the budget of million-dollar companies, they can still work with third-party agencies that produce just as well. Many small business mimic the successful campaigns of big businesses to get off the ground. Some focus on content marketing, while others focus on social media marketing efforts. These five businesses created successful marketing campaigns by taking different approaches:
Good Greens
Good Greens is a health food company founded in 2011 by Keith Pabley, who sought to create food bars that were both tasty and delicious. His Good Green Bars are packed with probiotics, antioxidants, and were gluten and dairy free. The product was great, but Pabley needed a way to promote it with a limited marketing budget. To do so, they took a hyper-local approach and began reaching out to local bloggers for reviews. This increased the amount of mentions and put the company higher in the SERPs. With this outreach strategy, they were able to increase sales by 50% (at the rate of $50,000 monthly) within four months.
Nut Health
NutHealth.org created a campaign called Nut Year’s Resolution to help promote awareness of tree nuts and how they can improve health. They also wanted increase their social media presence 250 Pinterest followers, 500 Twitter followers, and 1,000 Facebook likes. Prior to the campaign, numbers across the board were significantly lower. They published a series of detailed infographics, blogs posts, and promotional opportunities in partnership with local businesses, and as a result, surpassed each goal.
Three Tarts
In 2011, Three Tarts developed a digital marketing campaign in conjunction with SneakPeeq to promote awareness of their marshmallows. To do so, they came up with a plan to increase social interaction that involved hosting outdoor events and offering in-store QR codes for discounts and promotions. They took a series of high-end pictures to create more visually stunning and shareable photos of their product. They also became more active on Twitter and used it as a platform to consistently speak directly with consumers. Within 36 hours of launching the campaign, they had hundreds of new followers and fans.
Dollar Shave Club
Before the Dollar Shave Club became popular, it was their marketing campaign that helped put them on the map within the competitive $13 billion men’s razor market. The company worked with an agency to produce a $4,500 comedic promotional video that catapulted them into the spotlight, garnering more than 9.5 million views and 12,000 new customers in just two days.
Since then, they’ve been a classic case study for the power of modern marketing. This guerilla marketing tactic proves you don’t need big bucks to create an impactful campaign. Focusing on the consumer stamp of approval can be just as or even more effective than a celebrity stamp of approval. Before the video, Dollar Shave Club had very little funding and no employees. The company eventually went on to raise $10.8 million.
River Pools & Spas
Marcus Sheridan, owner of River Pools & Spas, was faced with the challenge of selling pools during an economic crisis. To turn his luck around, he focused on becoming a thought leader and began creating content inground swimming pool industry. By focusing on inbound marketing, he saved $100,000 a year from his previous marketing efforts. According to Sheridan, the company’s business blogging helped them achieve goals that he previously thought were wildly impossible. With a content-first methodology, Sheridan’s website traffic increased 300%.
