Inspiring Social Media Case Studies from Reputable Brands and Digital Agencies
Brands are more than their products in today’s digital world. Memorable brands are the ones who know how to engage with their target audience effectively through their social media channels. In this article, we have curated the best social media case studies of all times.
Being on all the social media platforms is not necessary; however, it is important to be successful if you exist in one. There are a lot of brands inspiring us with their effective social media strategies. They are powerful enough to start a movement, raise awareness and change the way people think or buy.
Almost 4 billion people are using social media today worldwide. That fact clearly shows how a huge potential there is to reach out to your buyer persona.
Social media marketing services comprise organic social media, paid social media, community management, social listening, feed-based / dynamic ads, Facebook ads, Twitter ads, LinkedIn ads, Snapchat ads, Tiktok ads, Reddit ads, Quora ads and so on.
Effective social media case studies come from either an experienced social media marketing agency or a very successful in-house social media team of famous brands. It is not easy, but so effective that you shouldn’t neglect.
In this article, we have gathered the best social media marketing case studies by both brands and digital marketing companies to inspire your upcoming work.
What are the top social media marketing agencies with the most effective case studies?
- CEEK
- Spark Social Agency
- Emote Digital
- LOOP
- Hallam Agency
CEEK
The LOOKOUT Sri Lanka is the top Luxury Private Villa in Sri Lanka. CEEK Worked closely with the brand and the project consisted of Website Development, SEO, Social Media Marketing, Influencer Marketing, Content Creation and Paid Targeting services. The LOOKOUT social media was created by CEEK to showcase the beauty of the country and the villa itself in light of the increase in tourism around Sri Lanka and the country’s strong domestic growth in the use of social media. It has been established as a site that people enviously desire to stay at just for the aesthetics without taking into account the high level of service thanks to high-quality content and a highly active social media marketing strategy. Below you can find an example of the influencer marketing campaign:
Spark Social Agency
Spark Social Agency works with a variety of well-known brands from a selection of different industries, one of them being Johnson&Johnson. Spark is a boutique social media marketing agency. This enables Spark to provide J&J with fast turnaround and greater impact than larger agencies they’ve traditionally worked with.
When J&J collaborated with Spark, the brand needed to pivot social content to reach an updated audience for multiple J&J brands such as Band-Aid, Aveeno Baby, and Tylenol. Additionally, the company sought assistance so that J&J brands could be more active on platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels. For various J&J brands, Spark produces a monthly stream of captivating social content. Social posts on their monthly content calendar now feature short-form video, which has a significantly higher interaction rate than previous content.
All these efforts resulted as the following:
- 1,600% increase in engagement per post for Band-Aid
- 110% increase in engagement per post for Motrin
- Produced 40 assets for J&J baby brands in 3 weeks.
Emote Digital
Since it might be difficult to convey complex ideas using social media advertising, Australian digital marketing agency Emote Digital believes that you need excellent and simple-to-read content as well as targeted audience marketing. Emote Digital ran campaigns for the Bakers Delight Franchise over the course of a year that included frequent content and creative improvements to prevent user fatigue. Utilizing a variety of advertising channels, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google, Youtube, and more, the agency developed a broad-reaching campaign to identify the relevant leads first. Emote Digital assisted Bakers Delight in growing its franchise network by using a variety of top and bottom of the funnel methods to improve the quality of the leads.
These are the outcomes:
-
- 45% Increase in conversions from social media
- 29% increase in franchise enquiries over 12 months
LOOP
LOOP is a fully charged digital agency that explores the intersections between design, digital technology and content marketing for leading brands. They have offices in New York, Sydney, Berlin and Copenhagen.
LOOP has worked with a lot of famous brands through social media case studies. My favorite one between those is their influencer marketing campaign with PUMA. They actually have run more than one case study with them. We will be focusing on the one with PUMA and Usain Bolt.
As a human being, we can be attracted by the brands which are preferred by the people we admire, just like Usain Bolt. In LOOP’s social media case study with PUMA and Usain Bolt, they let Usain Bolt tell his story in his point of view. We can, of course, find a lot of articles explaining his background, achievements etc. However, they can never be as effective as Usain Bolt’s own words.
With this social media campaign, PUMA has reached 4.7 million views and 828,000 engagement with 41.2 million total reach. You can check LOOP’s website to see the full case study and get information to work with them for your social media campaigns.
Hallam Agency
Hallam is a UK-based social media marketing agency founded in 1999. Since then, they’ve they have combined strategic thinking, creativity, and technical know-how to develop integrated digital marketing strategies that produce the only outcome that matters: business success. Four of the eight gas distribution networks in the UK are owned and managed by their customer, Cadent Gas, who needed to develop their brand and raise awareness of this aspect. The goal of Hallam’s comprehensive video-based campaign was to promote the true stories of the “Cadent Heroes” across various service areas.
Three campaigns were created to provide Hallam the chance to plant positive seeds and take ownership of constructive topics. Their earned Media and Creative Teams worked together to create a landing page that served as the organization’s main hub of information. The 5 Campaigns attracted a significant number of views during the course of their 6-month run. The video showing a day in the life of a Cadent Gas Limited employee received over 4 million views. The campaigns generated nearly 15 million impressions overall, exceeding the initial goals and expectations.
What are the most effective social media marketing case studies by reputable brands?
There are many brands that use social media in the best possible way. With the rise of social media platforms such as TikTok, brands have changed the world of social media marketing and became even more creative and popular online. Below you’ll find our all time favorite social media marketing case studies by the big names:
- Apple
- Starbucks
- Disney
- Always
- Airbnb
- Nescafé
- Tesla & Elon Musk
Apple | Shot on IPhone
With no doubt, Apple is very fast and effective when it comes to social media marketing. Their case studies are leading the industry.
With their social media case study #ShotOnIphone, millions of pictures and videos are shared on social media platforms.
It clearly shows that people do not need other cameras to take pictures or videos as long as they have their iPhones with them.
This campaign is not only followed by the general public, but also by the famous singers and bands such as Selena Gomez and Florence + The Machine. Some singers took their videoclips with an iPhone whereas some of them have used an iPhone on their concert tours in the world.
This campaign has been used in all the social media platforms. However, as it is more related to taking pictures and videos, of course, the hashtags are more common on Instagram.
If you just scroll down your Instagram feed, we promise that you will see a lot of pictures with the hashtag #shotoniphone, which indicates this social media case study is known by the world. You can read our article on Apple’s digital marketing strategy, in which we explore how the company got to be one of the most well-known names in the world, to discover more about the brand’s worldwide success.
Starbucks | #WhatsYourName
Starbucks is remembered by its successful social media campaign to support transgender and gender-diverse youth on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and traditional advertising.
Brands will be memorable with where they stand for the social phenomena. In this social media case study, Starbucks UK partnered with Mermaids to understand the gender-diverse youth better and create a way to support them.
If you buy and post photos of your mermaid tail cookie with the campaign hashtag, you help to raise funds for Mermaids.
The video on YouTube explains it all:
Disney | Share your ears
Disney’s digital marketing strategy is ever successful, making the company one of the leading media and entertainment brands in the world. Celebrating 90 years of Mickey Mouse, Disney created a social media campaign with the hashtag #ShareYourEars on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. For every photo shared with the hashtag, Mickey Mouse donated $5 to Make-A-Wish®.
Make-A-Wish® is a nonprofit organization helping to fulfill the wishes of children with a critical illness. At the end of the case study, Disney donated $2 million to the organization.
This has been one of the greatest social media case studies of all times with 1.77 million photos shared and 420 million social media impressions.
Always | #LikeAGirl
Equality of the sexes is another controversial phenomenon in the world. It has been placed in the cultures and languages so strongly that sometimes we don’t even realize how sexist we might sound.
“Like a girl” is a phrase in English and many more other languages, which is mostly used as an insult to women. Always definitely raised awareness for this subject with their social media case study #LikeAGirl. I promise if you watch the video below, you will be more careful with the expressions, idioms and phrases you say or hear in your daily life:
Airbnb | We accept
There are different ways to use social media effectively. It can depend on the brands, target audience, brand culture and identity. Some brands might prefer to speak up for a social phenomenon whereas some prefer to stay silent and unbiased.
There can be some situations where you are expected to explain something, for example, if your company or a branch of your brand is accused of something. What you say/share there is very critical which can affect the life of your business.
Airbnb was accused of discrimination in 2016, which they answered with their “Community Commitment”. After a few months, the US banned travel to some countries with a Muslim majority. That has created a chance for Airbnb to create a social media case study, #WeAccept. This successful campaign has reached over 87 million impressions on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
Doubtlessly, they handled this critical situation really well with their video below:
Nescafé | Really Friends?
You might not be using Facebook now as much as you used to do. However, Facebook can be still a powerful platform for your social media campaigns depending on your target audience. Certainly, Nescafe’s marketing strategy proves it right.
Our Facebook friends can be from our childhood, the neighbourhood we used to live 20-30 years ago, a friend circle who we are not in touch with any more, etc. Sometimes, when we scroll down in Facebook feed, we don’t feel so close to some of these old friends. Regardless of their age, I’m sure everyone feels the same way every now and then.
With this fact in mind, Nescafé France ran a successful social media case study on Facebook, which is their biggest platform.
This video is an example of emphasizing with your buyer persona and affecting them emotionally so that they feel attached to your brand:
Tesla & Elon Musk
Tesla is a leading brand for electric vehicles. We might not know the CEOs of similar companies; however, the CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk is known by people all around the world. Considering the way he is using social media, we can even say that he is an influencer. Despite the marketing methods of other major companies, Tesla’s marketing strategy is distinct, exactly like its social media marketing.
Tesla’s social media marketing way is going to be a little different from what we have discussed in the other examples above. The reason is below:
When there is a new product launch or an update regarding one of their services, Elon Musk shares some spoilers on his social media – before Tesla announces it officially. His followers are very interactive which also shows a successful social media engagement case study as a brand.
Tesla doesn’t even need to do influencer marketing as its CEO is already a powerful influencer who has dedicated followers for the brand.
If you feel like this wasn’t enough, make sure to check out social media campaign ideas for more inspiration.
Hope you have enjoyed reading our article. If you are interested in creating effective social media case studies for your business, you can check our list to partner with a social media marketing agency.
