Want to Go Viral? Copy These 35 Social Media Campaigns Now
When it comes to your online sales funnel, social media can be a vital source for fresh traffic.
And while you probably already have a social media presence…
Is it really driving you traffic?
For us, the simple answer is... NOPE, not really.
Our website Growbo, has been great at generating tons of organic traffic from Google since we started posting an article once per week all the way back to 2014.
And now that we’ve recently ramped things up to 4 articles per week, the results are only getting better.
But the problem was, we didn’t always know exactly what to post on social media.
The solution? Simple: getting inspired from studying what works.
So to help your business grow traffic, I put together this guide with the best social media campaigns I’ve seen.
These examples are designed to inspire you to come up with ideas that will drive more traffic to your site from social media.
In this resource, I’ll show you:
- 35 examples of the best social media campaign examples on the web.
- In-depth breakdowns of what made these social media campaign examples successful in the first place (and major takeaways you can apply to your own social media marketing).
- Examples of social media campaigns done right in 5 different industries: B2C, B2B, SaaS, Nonprofits, and Info Products.
Now, to grow your business’ traffic with social media, borrow a page from the playbook of these successful campaigns. Let’s check it out…
In a rush? Want to download this article as a PDF so you can easily take action on it later? Click here to download this article as a PDF guide.
B2B
1. MOZ’s Whiteboard Fridays
What is it?
We’ve discussed Moz’s Whiteboard Fridays on this blog before because it’s a great resource for SEO tips.
Every week, a member of the Moz team breaks down a marketing concept or idea via a whiteboard. There’s both a video and an accompanying article.
Here’s a sample of the whiteboard in action for one of the latest Whiteboard Fridays about page speed optimization.
Here’s a link to the video if you want to check it out.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
Moz has more than 81,000 subscribers on YouTube. And what’s made this campaign so successful is the consistency.
Moz has been releasing solid, engaging content almost every Friday since 2009.
Now, their platform’s changed a bit throughout the years (starting on Vimeo, moving to YouTube, and now being hosted through Wistia).
But the point is, consistency is key when it comes to creating successful social media campaigns.
2. Microsoft’s #MakeWhatsNext Campaign
What Is It?
In honor of 2016’s Women’s International Day, Microsoft unveiled its #MakeWhatsNext campaign.
It involved videos launched on social media that focused on young girls describing why they love science.
However, the girls struggle to describe famous female inventors, coming up with only men instead.
The point, of course, was meant to both show the greatness and worth of women in science and reduce some of the gender disparities in STEM fields.
Check out their most recent video.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
Videos from the campaign earned over 14 million views through 2016 along with 184 million media impressions.
Plus, Microsoft has continued to release new videos over the years too. For instance, the most recent one brought in a whopping 55,000 views alone.
The lesson here is to find a cause that both overlaps with your business and is close to the heart of your audience.
3. Ume.net’s YouTube/Oculus Rift Campaign
What Is It?
Ume.net is known for its fiber broadband services.
Like many broadband companies, they were out to show how fast their services were compared to the competition.
Ume.net went about that in a creative way, using YouTube and Oculus Rift hardware to prove the effectiveness of their services.
They published a video called Living with Lag, which showed two people using Oculus Rift to play a game of enhanced ping-pong.
Lag made it practically impossible to get even a few consecutive returns in. Luckily, lag is avoidable with Ume.net.
See the video for yourself.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
This social experiment of sorts did work. The campaign video netted more than 6.2 million views since it was first published back in 2014.
4. Wpromote’s Pinterest Campaign
What Is It?
Wpromote offers web design, email, social, SEO, and other digital marketing services. Some of their notable clients include Zenni Optical and Forever 21.
To improve the reach of their clients in a low-cost way, Wpromote decided to use social media, specifically Pinterest.
Here’s an example of the posts shared on the platform.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
Costs per action generally decreased for Wpromote’s clients that used Pinterest, especially Promoted Pins. Some clients reported as much as a 40% to 70% decrease in costs per action.
5. Cetera Financial’s Full Funnel Marketing Campaign
What Is It?
Cetera Financial Group created a full funnel marketing campaign to promote job availability. It included social advertising, targeted displays, and LinkedIn’s sponsored content, or native advertising, to appeal to LinkedIn’s financial sector.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
The campaign drove traffic to Cetera’s website, where they had 900 first-time visitors over a 3-month span. On top of that, this single campaign netted the company more than $1 million in new business.
Not too shabby at all.
6. Duo Security’s Partnership With CRI Using LinkedIn
What Is It?
Duo Security safeguards customers against credential theft and security breaches. Zillow, Yelp, and Etsy use their services.
To sharpen their lead generation tactics, Duo linked up with Charles River Interactive or CRI, a digital marketing agency.
CRI decided to focus on Duo’s LinkedIn presence using ads, targeting users by LinkedIn Group membership, skills, and job titles.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
With that social media campaign makeover, Duo reported higher-quality leads and a whopping 239% increase in their conversion rates.
7. PwC’s #BallotBriefcase Snapchat Social Media Campaign
What Is It?
Tax company PwC has always had a quiet role in the Academy Awards.
In 2016, they were not as quiet about it, starting the #BallotBriefcase social media campaign.
Using Snapchat stories, the campaign followed a briefcase ahead of the Academy Awards. The goal was to engage with a younger audience.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
It worked. The campaign increased potential impressions by 136X. Plus, in the first 3 weeks of the campaign, there were 1,062 mentions on Twitter with 12.3 million impressions and 406 mentions on Instagram with 126,000 impressions.
Definitely one of the best social media campaign examples out there.
8. MarketStar’s Zombie Lead Social Media Campaign
What Is It?
Marketing and sales company MarketStar got creative with their social media campaign.
Instead of characterizing leads generically, they created Zombie Lead personalities and then expressed how their services could remove them.
Then, they published the guide on social media outlets like Twitter.
Take a look.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
The virality of the campaign boosted MarketStar’s popularity on social media. Today, they have more than 2,100 followers as of this writing.
9. Maersk’s Kenyan Avocado Trade Social Media Campaign
What Is It?
When you think of Maersk, what do you think?
Containers, probably, but not avocados, right?
Well, to humanize the brand, Maersk began telling the stories of its employees and operations. One of those operations was avocado trading in Kenya.
Check out the video below.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
People definitely wanted to learn more about the container brand. The campaign led to 172,000 interactions. And Facebook likes increased by 700,000 as well.
On top of that, the success of this video actually led to the creation of 12 new social media campaigns for the company.
The takeaway here is that no matter what your company does, emotional storytelling is great for connecting with your target audience (even if you’re a container company).
10. Cisco’s Social Media Product Launch Campaign
What Is It?
Software company Cisco has a healthy social media presence (we’re talking 1,698,783 Facebook followers and more than 705,000 Twitter followers as of this writing).
Yet they still found a way to draw an even bigger audience with their social product launch campaign for a new router.
Oh, and it was cheaper than other traditional marketing options too.
How?
Cisco made several games that would appeal to its audience and combined that with their high social media following.
One (pictured below) involved players “defending the network” from invaders. The top scorer would go on to win a $10,000 prize.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
In all, Cisco earned 40 million impressions out of the 9,000 people who were engaged with the product launch. That’s a 90x higher rate of attendees than any other product launch Cisco had done.
All in all, the product launch was about $100,000 cheaper than if they had launched using traditional strategies.
11. TD Ameritrade’s #ItAddsUp Social Media Campaign
What Is It?
Investment and stock trading company TD Ameritrade started a campaign several years back called #ItAddsUp.
The campaign was created in conjunction with the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi and compared the rigors of athletic training to banking.
In the campaign, current athletes were shown alongside pictures of them when they were much younger and just getting into the sport they were competing in.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
The timely campaign boosted brand impressions (up to 97 million), led to a follower growth of 12%, and an increase of 44% Twitter audience.
12. LYFE Marketing Client’s Social Media Campaign for Growth
What Is It?
Marketing firm LYFE Marketing shared a case study from a beauty client, Taliah Waajid. LYFE used paid social media marketing to boost Facebook posts like this one.
They also posted tutorial videos like the one below that were a hit with the client’s target audience.
The campaign lasted about a year.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
In that time, LYFE’s client earned nearly 147,000 video views, about 5,000 YouTube subscribers, more than 3,700 Twitter followers, almost 21,000 Instagram followers, and 25,468 Facebook followers.
This case study in particular goes to show that evergreen content like tutorials are always a great investment for growing your audience through social media campaigns.
Need a social media revamp
B2C
13. Taco Bell’s Snapchat Filter in Honor of Cinco De Mayo
What Is It?
Let’s start with a fun example of social media in action—Taco Bell’s Snapchat filter.
This debuted just in time for Cinco de Mayo 2017.
Taco Bell’s filter let you turn your face into a taco, giving users a fun way to share Cinco de Mayo with friends.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
According to social media company TINT, the taco restaurant “successfully shattered a Snapchat record” with their Snapchat filter.
It was viewed more than 224 million times and accrued a replay value worth 12.5 years. This was just in a 24-hour period.
14. Chiquita Banana’s Solar Eclipse Tie-In Campaign
What Is It?
Chiquita Banana knew people were going to obsess over an upcoming eclipse, so they made a cute video about their fictional Banana Sun.
Watch this video Chiquita Banana below.
In addition to the video, there were GIFs, Twitter posts, and even a website dedicated to the phenomenon.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
The videos racked up more than a million views on social media, while some of the tweets had as many as 6,500 likes.
15. Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” Social Media Campaign
What Is It?
Beverage giant Coca-Cola already has a huge customer base.
The brand wanted to appeal more to its younger generation though, so they created the “Share a Coke” campaign.
If you’ve bought a Coke in the past few years, then you’ve seen this campaign in action. Cans and bottles both glass and plastic are labeled with various names with the #ShareaCoke hashtag.
If you have a common name, there’s likely a Coke named after you.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
This campaign is from 2011, but is still going strong today, 11 years later.
The campaign first rolled out in Australia and targeted about 23 million people.
In the first year of its existence, the Share a Coke campaign led to Australians buying more than 250 million cans and bottles with names on them. No wonder the rest of the world got to experience the campaign too.
16. Vitamin Water’s Flavor Creator Lab Facebook App
What Is It?
Vitamin Water is an incredibly popular retailer that has over 3.7 million Facebook followers as of this writing.
Part of that probably has to do with their Flavor Creator Lab, a Facebook app that generated major publicity.
The Flavor Creator Lab, as the name suggests, allowed Vitamin Water fans to create their own beverages, come up with a name for the drink, and design customized packing.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
Vitamin Water earned nearly 500,000 fans from their campaign. Plenty of people participated, with 116,000 fans coming up with their own various Vitamin Water flavors.
At the time of the campaign, that was almost 10% of Vitamin Water’s audience.
17. KFC’s Colonel Sanders’ LinkedIn Profile
What Is It?
When you think of where some of the best social media campaigns are taking place, LinkedIn might not come to mind.
Fast food brand KFC changed that when they unveiled a LinkedIn profile for Colonel Sanders, the company’s founder.
Now, obviously this isn’t the real Colonel Sanders, but rather today’s representation of him.
Adding to the lighthearted nature of the profile is past jobs like “Captain” and “goat milker.”
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
With plenty of endorsements coming his way and 500+ connections, the Colonel’s social profile campaign was undoubtedly a success.
18. Ted Baker’s Meet the Bakers 360-Degree Video Campaign
What Is It?
High-end clothing brand Ted Baker could have introduced its spring/summer 2017 fashion line the same way most designers do: with a fashion show.
But instead, they made social media campaign history with their Meet the Bakers campaign.
The eponymous suburban family had a multi-video series as well as Instagram stories. All clips used 360-degree and virtual reality technology for an immersive experience.
Of course, Baker’s products were proudly put on display, and viewers could shop as they watched.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
The video linked to above brought in nearly 700,000 views on YouTube, while other clips in the series have as many as 1.1 million views.
19. Mastercard’s Sound of Priceless Social Media Campaign
What Is It?
2016 was huge for the Chicago Cubs, who finally made it to the World Series and eventually took home the win. Their 71-year drought was over.
MasterCard decided to get in on the fun, introducing their Sound of Priceless campaign during this pivotal moment in sports history.
As the name suggests, the Sound of Priceless involved the use of a sound meter app that could determine the volume of fans at Chicago’s Wrigley Field as they cheered for their favorite team.
There was also an accompanying video.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
MasterCard hit it out of the park. They had two times more organic reach for the duration of the campaign, at 18%.
The video and Twitter content got more shares than anything else MasterCard had ever posted.
Also, the accompanying video brought in 527,000 views, while the campaign as a whole had 897,000 engagements.
The Sound of Priceless was such a great social media campaign that it got nominated for a Shorty Award.
20. Patagonia’s “The President Stole Your Land” Social Media Campaign
What Is It?
Patagonia’s clothing brand stood up for Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments and Bears Ears with a brave graphic, emblazoned with the words “The President Stole Your Land.”
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
How strongly did people respond to Patagonia, either for or against the statement?
Enough so that they temporarily crashed the site.
Yes, that’s right, Patagonia practically broke the internet.
And that feat alone helps it stand out as one of the best social media campaign examples ever.
21. Pampers’ #BetterforBaby Social Media Campaign
What Is It?
Pampers’ #BetterforBaby campaign was about more than spreading brand awareness. It was also about giving back and helping those in need.
The campaign showcased “disadvantaged families who are struggling to help their babies and the impact that their brand has on these people’s lives,” according to Fat Guy Media.
As part of the campaign, Pampers worked with a family that had a baby fighting cystic fibrosis. The company remodeled the baby’s room, which you can see in this video.
There was also a Hush Little Baby video promoting the campaign, which you can watch below.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
#BetterforBaby was obviously quite impactful for new parents within the Pampers community.
The original Hush Little Baby tie-in video alone (now taken down) accrued more than 18 million views on YouTube.
SAAS
22. Shutterfly’s Free Personalized Mugs Social Media Campaign
What Is It?
Shutterfly is a company that prints your images on home decor, calendars, stationery, cards, and more. When they wanted to give their sales a boost, they decided to start a promotion aimed at mothers.
The promotion, which utilized Offer Claims on Facebook, gave customers free ceramic mugs that could be personalized.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
This campaign only lasted for 3 days.
In that short time, 16,000 customers got their free mugs. And not only that, but Shutterfly also accrued 8,000 extra purchases.
23. Slack’s Sandwich Videos
What Is It?
Team chat software Slack created a series of videos aptly named “Yeah, We Tried Slack” that featured Sandwich Video.
The video marketing company’s team uses Slack and gets great enjoyment out of doing so.
Check out the video below.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
The authentic promotion that was the backbone of the campaign must have resonated with a lot of people, because Slack’s video was viewed more than 1.1 million times.
24. Intuit’s “A Giant Story”
What Is It?
Financial software company Intuit wanted to promote its Quickbooks, TurboTax, and Mint services.
How did they do it? Through the power of storytelling.
“A Giant Story” is a YouTube clip starring Intuit’s robot creation.
Pari makes the robot for her workaholic husband, Pete. The robot simplifies both their lives, much like Intuit does for its customers.
Watch the video here.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
The YouTube clip quickly racked up 20 million views. Today, it has hit 21.5 million.
25. Mailchimp’s Instagram Social Media Campaign
What Is It?
We’ve written about MailChimp a lot, and with good reason. The way they promote themselves is always interesting, such as with their recent Instagram campaign.
Here’s a fun post featuring the company’s mascot, Freddie…and a cat, too.
Here’s one with pie:
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
These visually appealing images are just a few of what MailChimp regularly posts. It’s no wonder they have almost 153K followers!
26. Hootsuite’s Game of Thrones Parody
What Is It?
Everyone has heard of Game of Thrones, even if they haven’t seen it.
Social media management platform HootSuite was counting on that with their fun parody video.
Debuting in 2014 when the show was first becoming a household name (and before it was ruined by the last season), HootSuite chose the right time to make the clip.
It manages to tie in all of HootSuite’s social media services in a way that will appeal to Game of Thrones fans.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
In that same year, the clip raked in nearly a million views.
It was even considered viral at one point. And to this day, it has garnered up 1.3 million views on Youtube.
INFO PRODUCTS
27. Michael Hyatt’s Book Campaign
What Is It?
Michael Hyatt is the author of Living Forward, a book about finding one’s life plan. There’s a print version, an eBook, and an audio book available. Oh, and a coloring book, too!
To engage his audience ahead of the book launch, Hyatt quizzed his Facebook fans about potential titles for the book.
Using Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula, Hyatt went on Facebook to try to get endorsements.
In all, 53 people endorsed him, including major names like Seth Godin, John Maxwell, Dave Ramsey, David Allen, and Tony Robbins.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
With this campaign, Hyatt’s book immediately shot up on the bestseller list (it was the third most popular).
And within 7 days, people bought 20,000 copies of the book.
28. Marketo’s Virtual Event (Fueled by Their Social Media Campaign)
What Is It?
Automation company Marketo had just made LaunchPoint, a partner ecosystem. After a so-so live event that cost 5 figures, Marketo tried a virtual event instead.
Called “Good to Great—A Marketing Virtual Event,” Marketo got people interested in the event through email newsletters and social media promotion.
With 50,000 followers on Twitter and 30,000 on Facebook, Marketo had a huge audience to market to.
They used promoted Facebook posts, a social referral program, and an internal social program to do so.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
The virtual event was extremely successful. People tweeted about the event 2,000 times, and Marketo got 10,115 fresh registrations.
29. CourseMinded’s Product Promotion Contest
What Is It?
Course-building resource CourseMinded was about to launch a new product.
Before they did that though, they sought to build up their email list by collecting 500 email addresses.
To do so, they did a giveaway. News of the giveaway was published on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and even Reddit.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
CourseMinded more than met their goal, proving the power of a well-built social media campaign.
30. Jon Schumacher’s Virtual Summit Facebook Retargeting
What Is It?
Jon Schumacher held a virtual summit on how to host a webinar that makes money. He immediately got close to 3,000 registrations.
He also did Facebook retargeting, which was aimed at those who didn’t take advantage of the summit offer at its various price points and access levels.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
The Facebook retargeting cost Schumacher about $100, yet he made nearly $1,200 for his efforts.
This just goes to show how far a few expertly-crafted retargeting ads can take you.
NONPROFITS
31. WWF’s #EndangeredEmoji Social Media Campaign
What Is It?
The World Wildlife Fund, also known as the WWF, hooked onto the popular trend of emojis for its social media campaign.
WWF works to preserve endangered species, so the organization used emojis of 17 of the most at-risk creatures.
These cute emojis featured monkeys, dolphins, whales, snakes, and more.
Twitter users were asked to spread the endangered emojis across social media, as well as donate at least 10 cents towards animal conservation.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
The #EndangeredEmoji hashtag grew to be one of the most popular on Twitter after the campaign began.
Even better, more than 1 million Twitter users retweeted the emojis.
32. Worldwide Breast Cancer’s #KnowYourLemons Social Media Campaign
What Is It?
Corrine Beaumont’s #KnowYourLemons campaign for Worldwide Breast Cancer put her organization on the map.
While Taco Bell’s social media success was driven by humor and lightheartedness, Worldwide Breast Cancer had a more serious goal with their campaign: informing women of breast cancer symptoms.
The viral image was a dozen lemons in an egg carton.
Each represented a different symptom of breast cancer, with “lemons” being a metaphor for breasts.
Those who wanted to learn more about their potential symptoms could then visit Worldwide Breast Cancer’s website for more information.
The organization even created a video to accompany the image.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
Erin Smith Chieze, who overcame breast cancer herself, shared the image, which led to it booming.
In about 3 weeks, 166 million viewers saw the campaign. And it also had 45,000 shares.
Worldwide Breast Cancer still uses “know your lemons” as its tagline, even though the campaign was from 2017.
It spread so much that it’s been translated in nearly 20 languages and posted in more than 70 countries.
33. Disney & Make-a-Wish’s #ShareYourEars Social Media Campaign
What Is It?
If you’ve ever gone to Disneyland, then surely you’ve purchased a pair of Mickey or Minnie Mouse ears, right?
Those ears became the central focus of the #ShareYourEars campaign, where Disney joined up with the Make-a-Wish Foundation to get more donations.
When someone posted a picture of themselves on social media wearing their Disney ears with the hashtag #ShareYourEars, Disney set aside $5 that would go to Make-a-Wish.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
The goal was to raise $1 million, but Disney did better than that. The campaign was so wildly successful that they were able to raise $2 million dollars.
34. The Ice Bucket Challenge (One of the Most Viral Social Media Campaign Examples)
What Is It?
In 2014, the ALS Association created the Ice Bucket Challenge to create awareness about the disease.
Since then, the challenge has gone super viral.
Over the summer, the organization was able to get $115 million through various Ice Bucket Challenges by everyday people and celebrities alike.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
Although it wasn’t an intentional campaign, the Ice Bucket Challenge became one of the biggest and most impactful social media campaign examples ever.
Everyone wanted to post a video of themselves taking the challenge and then challenge their friends to do the same.
In all, there were 17 million such videos in a 6-week span along with a whopping $131 million raised for the organization.
35. M&M’s Red Nose Day #MakeMLaugh Social Media Campaign
What Is It?
Red Nose Day Fund is an organization that combats childhood poverty.
They teamed up with beloved candy brand M&Ms to create the #MakeMLaugh campaign.
This campaign took place around Christmastime 2015.
It was simple: the candy brand encouraged its fans to post on social media about their most side-splitting, laughter-inducing stories using the #MakeMLaugh hashtag.
When they did, the Red Nose Day Fund received a dollar from M&Ms.
What Sort of Results Did It Get?
The Red Nose Day Fund was able to raise significant money from their partnership with M&Ms. Social media impressions were in the millions (270 million, to be precise).
Nearly 3 million people engaged with the campaign, which led to a Red Nose Day Fund donation of $1.25 million.
In the end, it achieved 115% of its original goal. Also, 47% of the total number of contestants were referred by someone else.
Conclusion
Download the “35 Creative Social Media Campaign Examples You Can Copy” so you won’t forget to take action on it later. Click here to download it now.
This selection of the best social media campaigns examples proves that there’s no one way to achieve social media success.
Sometimes going viral is based on timing and other times, pure luck.
To review:
- Latching on to pop culture trends is a good way to get attention to your brand. An example of this includes the 2017 solar eclipse Chiquita Banana campaign.
- It takes more than one type of social media channel to get a huge reach. Many of these examples were posted on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and more.
- A shareable, unique hashtag is another great way to get exposure for your brand. Many of the examples on this list had their own campaign hashtags.
- While we personally shy away from it, if you’re comfortable making a bold political statement, it will definitely get people talking.
Now tell me something, which of these 35 examples was your favorite?
Did any of them give you ideas for your own social media strategy?
Which ones?
Let me know in the comments.
And if you need help getting your company’s social media campaigns to go viral, reach out to us. At Growbo, we can take care of all your digital marketing tasks without the headaches of hiring.
Or if you want to do it yourself, we also have great resources like training and customized, done-for-you products like Facebook Ads Sets in our brand new Marketplace.
Keep Growin’, stay focused.
