25 Creative Marketing Plan Examples For Inspiration

Introduction

We’ve compiled a list of 25 creative types of marketing plan examples from some of the most successful brands in the world. These examples will show you how to use different channels, marketing plan templates, techniques, and marketing strategy templates to reach your target audience and achieve your marketing goals. Whether you’re looking for inspiration for your social media campaigns, email newsletters, content marketing, or influencer marketing, you’ll find something useful and relevant ideas in this blog post. Acquire a deeper understanding of marketing ideas with the help of Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing and Communication from MICA.

Innovative Marketing Ideas

Here is a list of a few of the most innovative marketing strategy examples that are trendy in 2023.

Social Media Marketing Ideas

• Start a Reel Challenge

Platforms like TikTok, and Instagram Reels are popular for creating engaging and viral videos that showcase your brand, products, or services. For example, Netflix used TikTok and Reels to promote its new movie “Wednesday” by creating a hashtag challenge and encouraging users to share their spooky makeup looks.

• Run a Social Media Campaign 

User-generated content is any content created by your customers or fans that features your brand or products. User-generated content can help you increase brand awareness, trust, and loyalty. For example, Starbucks used User-generated content to promote its new energy drink by asking customers to share their photos and videos with the hashtag #EnergyThatsGood.

• Run a Social Media Contest or Giveaway

Contests and giveaways are great ways to increase engagement, reach, and followers on social media. You can ask your audience to perform a certain action, such as liking, commenting, sharing, tagging, or following, to enter the contest or giveaway. For example, Firehouse Subs ran a Rewards Week campaign on their 7th anniversary where they announced exclusive rewards for 7 days to their loyal customers.

• Partner with Influencers

Influencers can influence their audience’s opinions and behaviors. Partnering with influencers can help you reach new and relevant audiences, boost your credibility, and drive conversions. For example, Traya or Kuku FM partners with youtube influencers like Druv Rathee to induce their audience to sign up for their services.

• Create a Social Media Challenge

Challenges can help you create buzz, engagement, and community around your brand or cause. For example, Gillette launched the #SayPubic campaign to challenge the stigma around women’s pubic hair and promote their Venus products.

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Urban marketing ideas

• Spotify Wrapped Campaign

Since 2016, Spotify every year release the activities of the users over the past year and allow them to share on the various social handles and invites others to share theirs to share it on social media too.

• Participate in local events

Local events offer an incredible opportunity for the brands to connect with the local people and encourage them to call for action. For example – Swach Bharat Abhiyan was a campaign run by the government of India in collaboration with the local MPs and influencers inducing the local community to keep the local street clean.

• Create an Event 

You can create an immersive and interactive event or activity that engages your customers and allows them to experience your product in a fun and memorable way. For example, Netflix created a Stranger Things-themed maze at the Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios.

• Feel the Street Spotify Campaign

Feel the Street was a concept for a Spotify campaign created by students from Miami Ad School in Mexico City. The idea was to showcase the street musicians of New York and their playlists on Spotify and to encourage people to stop and appreciate their talent. The campaign would involve creating street art with QR codes that would lead to the Spotify profiles of the musicians.

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Contest Marketing Ideas

• Event-Based Contests

These contests focus on a specific event or occasion, such as a holiday, a season, or a special day. For example, you could run a Diwali contest where you ask your followers to share their best movements or decorations and offer them a prize. Or you could run a riddle-based contest where you hide clues on your website or social media pages and reward the first person who cracks all of them.

• Quiz or Trivia Contests

These are contests that test your followers’ knowledge or interest in a certain topic related to your brand, such as your industry, your niche, or your products. For example – Amazon’s fun zone on the Amazon app tests users’ knowledge about upcoming or ongoing sales or about the services offered by Amazon in exchange for a reward for shopping. 

• Caption Contests

You could run a caption contest where you post a photo of your product in an unusual situation or with a funny expression and ask your followers to come up with the best caption. Or you could run a caption contest where you post a video of your team doing something silly or surprising and ask your followers to write what they think is happening.  

• Giveaway Contests

you could run a giveaway contest where you offer a free product, a gift card, or a subscription to your service. Or you could run a giveaway contest where you partner with another brand or an influencer and offer a bundle of complementary products or services. However, you need to make sure that the prize is relevant and valuable to your target audience, otherwise you might attract low-quality leads who are only interested in the prize and not your brand. 

• Tag-a-Friend Contests

you could run a tag-a-friend contest where you ask your followers to tag someone who would love your product or service and offer a prize to both the entrant and the tagged friend.

Marketing Ideas For Contest Promotion 

• Make Contests Super Sharable

One of the best ways to increase the reach of your contest is to encourage your entrants to share it with their friends and followers. You can offer bonus points for sharing, or make sharing a requirement for entry. For example, you can ask them to post a photo or a video related to your contest theme and tag your brand and the contest hashtag.

• Notify email subscribers of the contest

Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to communicate with your audience. You can use it to announce your contest, remind them of the deadline, and follow up with the winners and non-winners.

• Tie your contest to a well-known event relevant to your niche

You can promote your contest in conjunction with Comic-Con, the Champion’s League Final, or a major movie’s release to better attract people eagerly looking forward to that event.  

• Quiz or Trivia contests

Offer your audience an opportunity to answer questions, have a little fun, and potentially win a prize. People love feeling smart and accomplished, so make sure to have a mix of easy and hard questions to really engage customers.

• Hashtag-ify your contest

Adding a relevant (and unique) hashtag to your contest helps you keep track of our contest reach. For example – the Cadbury Dewali campaign encourages people to share those moments of celebration with their big family on social media with #BadiFamilyBadiDiwali.

Content marketing ideas

• Grow with user-generated content

User-generated content is content that’s created by your customers or fans and shared on social media or other platforms. It can help you increase brand awareness.

• Publish original research

Publishing original research helps you present new data or insights that you’ve collected or analyzed yourself. It can help you establish credibility, or attract links.

• Create a newsletter that excites subscribers

A newsletter is a regular email that provides valuable information, updates, or promotions to your subscribers. It can help you build trust, loyalty, and engagement with your audience.  

• Repurpose your content

Repurposing your content is a way of transforming your existing content into different formats or platforms to reach new audiences or extend its lifespan. For a content marketing example, you can turn a blog post into a video, a podcast episode, an infographic, or a social media post. 

• Join weekly hashtag themes

Weekly hashtag themes are recurring social media posts that follow a specific theme and use a certain hashtag. They can help you increase engagement, visibility, or creativity. For example, you can join #ThrowbackThursday, #MotivationalMonday, #WisdomWednesday, or #FridayFunday.

• Create content upgrades

Content upgrades are bonus pieces of content that complement your main content and offer more value to your audience. For example, you can offer a case study as a content upgrade.

Conclusion

Marketing is a creative process where an individual or a group develop and exchanges products, ideas, and inspirations with the objective of delivering certain values. But sometimes, it can be hard to come up with new and effective ways to promote your products or services. That’s where these creative ideas will help in running your marketing efforts successfully. For detailed marketing plan ideas, you can pursue Advanced Certificate in Brand Communication Management from MICA.