A recent survey done by a leading magazine speculates that small businesses are losing out their money on social media sites and the campaigns to promote their businesses are not nearly as effective as they are thought to be. Worse, more than 61% small business owners feel that their money is unnecessarily being wasted on these campaigns and they are nothing but a waste of time.
When the average consumer spends more than five hours every day on these social networking sites, there is a neck to neck competition among business enterprises to hook their attention. Marketing strategies are dynamically developed keeping in mind the popularity of the social media. Hence, it is imperative that businesses that use social media campaigns keep in mind the low investment costs needed here. Social media can be all the more lucrative for small scale businesses, given that they can come up with an original angle.
To establish this point, this post will talk about six social media campaigns that have hugely promoted the products and services of small scale companies and will surely inspire you to take social media campaigns seriously. Have a look:
Blendtec – Will It Blend
The blender company engrossed their audiences with the “will it blend” campaign. It features Tom, who tests a variety of blenders and products in his lab and based on his tests, suggest you to try or not to try that particular blender or product at home. He tries to blend iPads, Halo4 DVD, a rose, superglue and so on, finishing with normal household items such as coffee or avocado.
The videos were entertaining as well as educative and became extremely popular with the sales of the company notching up. Imagine the low cost of blending an iPad or a McDonald’s meal compared to over 300 million people who saw the videos and made a boring company that makes blenders popular almost overnight.
Coconut Bliss
This small scale ice cream company used strategic partnership power to achieve what most of the big scale companies could not- they simply started using the real life images of their products on their websites and promoted them exaggeratedly on their social media channels, they coupled that with various promotional contests, awards and giveaways and made a killing.
Anna White Homemaker
Ana White, a small time carpenter started getting popular through her Facebook page where she shared her opinions on Carpeting and garnered a fan following of almost two hundred thousand users. She also writes on her own blogs and the campaign is more popular because of her initiative to let readers post about their experiences and engage them thoroughly.
She managed to build a community through years of hard work, but if a mom from a remote location in Alaska can make carpeting interesting to 200 thousand people, imagine what you could do with your business.
OraBrush
OraBrush, a company that makes tongue cleaner brushes hit off its marketing campaign with a single video that is short yet engaging. An interesting guy with a unique phobia talks about how to tell if you have bad breath. The popularity is evident from the 18+ million views that the video has garnered in YouTube alone and helped move over 1 million units of the product.
Mater Prize Homes
The campaign undertaken to drive in more attention towards the company’s website was a fairly local one with a slogan called ‘changing lives’ and needed people to participate by messaging or emailing friends and letting them know about the campaign and its benefits. The campaign was a huge hit and even though the budget was tight, its results were excellent and grabbed far more eyeballs than anticipated.
Admittedly, they have been successful with the help of Brisbane Lions, a local football team with lots of fans. Fans had the chance to spend time with the team if their entry for the prize draw, gained by sending the SMS, was selected. This was a perfect way for a charity to make a huge local impact.
Emerson Hair Salon
Alex Garcia and Matt Buchan, the owners of Emerson salon hit it off with an aggressive social media campaign on Twitter, Facebook and other media by promoting their services, linking their social profiles with their websites and adding a button through which users can easily book the appointment to get their hairs cut. Today, about 3/4 of their business comes from their website and social media channels. They have sucessfully built a community by sharing everything that interests both them and their costumers, like local fairs or what the finale of a popular TV show was like.
These are just some of the endeavors taken by the company and the sales have already tripled over the last few years thanks to this clever consumer oriented strategy used on media on which consumers are plentiful.
Mark Tomich is a freelance social media manager who has worked with some of the top brands. Find him on Twitter – @TomMark84.
Image courtesy Jason Howie
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