SUCCESSFUL STORIES OF WEB MARKETING STRATEGIES
Many articles are made to explain the several advantages that web marketing can provide, but in short two can be considered the most important. First, today’s social networks count billions of users, allowing to big and small entrepreneurs to reach a big sample of potential customers in one shot. Second, with successful social media campaign, it is possible to merge and stand out between the rest of the competitors and earning a good share of the market.
But what are the factors that determine a successful marketing campaign? It doesn’t exist one unique formula and it is why marketing is always seeking to be diverse and innovative in all its aspects. Creativity is essential and, whenever associated to the ability of identifying the current trends and how to exploit them at the best, then the success is guaranteed.
Obviously, these are only words that do not proof anything in practice. For this reason, in the following article we will show you 4 successful stories of web marketing strategies which can be a model for your future initiatives.
Among the campaign that result to have more success are those which face and denounce a social issue or take a stand regarding a political debate. The Airbnb’s campaign against racism, #WeAccept, was launched in an advertisement during the Super Bowl 2017, the most followed and loved event by the Americans. Indeed, notwithstanding the limited length of the advertisement, only 30 seconds, the message arrived loud and clear by saying “We believe no matter who you are, where you’re from, who you love or who you worship. The world is more beautiful the more you accept. #WeAccept”.
Airbnb took advantage of the national event to start a critique and a protest against the Donald Trump’s Muslim Ban, which last year has largely reduced the immigrant entrances and impeded to many refugees to stay in the US, especially for those coming from the seven potentially dangerous and terrorist countries that the President had outlined. Airbnb is one of the enterprises that oppose such initiative and, with this video, the giant of the home sharing invited thousands of its clients to host and accept anyone in need, making no distinction if these are refugees or victims of natural disasters.
What differentiates this campaign for the others, except for the great performance on the social media, is that Airbnb was able to turn in its favor a possible negative situation for its market and initiated a campaign which instead permitted to manage the debate over the issue.
Heineken, though a social experiment, has launched a new initiative to break down the barriers that takes us apart. The experiment requested to three couple with complete opposite values and life styles to relate. In more details, all the respondents are demanded to see a video, previously recorded, where the partner explains his/her world’s view, opposite to the first ones. Then, the respondents are given a choice: to have a beer with the partner and talk their mind out, or to walk away.
And just like this, an environmentalist and a climate change skeptic or a masculinist and a feminist, in short people belonging to world always in conflict between them, have gathered at the same table and discussed pacifically their opinions. After all, the founder Freddy Heineken often used to say “It always happens something beautiful around a beer”.
Beyond the billions of views on YouTube, on Facebook Heineken opened a chat box that allowed to repeat the experiment online.
Although it is not clear how effective is this initiatives on the sells, for Heineken’s reputation was certainly a successful campaign.
Ed è così che ambientalisti e petrolieri o maschilisti e femministi, insomma, persone appartenenti a mondi sempre in conflitto tra loro, si sono ritrovati allo stesso tavolo a discutere e confrontarsi pacificamente. Del resto, il fondatore Freddy Heineken spesso diceva “Succede sempre qualcosa di bello attorno ad una birra”.
Oltre alle milioni di visualizzazioni su YouTube, su Facebook Heineken ha aperto una chat box per permettere lo stesso confronto sul web.
Nonostante non sia ancora chiaro l’effetto che questa iniziativa ha avuto sulle vendite, in termini di reputazione la campagna è stata sicuramente un successo.
Not all the successful campaigns are socially or politically engaged. Some have fun in finding original initiatives, sometimes quite unconventional. It is in this way that the ultimate game for horrible people decided to provoke once again its players in the Black Friday 2015. While many companies were engaged in selling something for practically nothing, Cards Against Humanity decided to give the chance to its customers to purchase nothing at 5 dollars.
The attitude of provocation perfectly reflects the style of the board game, often used to promote its new products.
Notwithstanding the absurdity of the request, 12,000 people filled in the online template to donate 5 dollars in exchange of nothing and the initiative recorded a high success on the social networks, increasing the notoriety of the game.
Finally, other web marketing initiatives include new systems that facilitate the communication seller-buyer, fundamental for commercial entities like restaurants. Domino’s Pizza, for example, took advantage of the brand new chatbot by creating Dom, that is a proper virtual assistance who communicates with the clients through the Facebook chat. Thanks to this, a lot of customers who wanted pizza delivery could accede to the menu directly on Facebook and make the order through Messenger.
Thanks to this initiative, Domino’s Pizza has exponentially incremented its sells, especially during the Super Bowl where it usually collects the highest income. Now, the Dom platform records an activity of at least 1 billion of people per month.
Domino’s was one of the first brand to use the chatbot in its Messenger platform and, seen the results, this strategy was surely a winning one.