Four Awesome Online Marketing Campaigns and What You Can Learn from Them

When you work in online marketing, it's easy to put on your blinders and focus solely on your SEO company and clients. This is a great way to get some work done, sure, but it is often helpful to examine your industry as a whole, and see what can be learned from the top business marketing campaigns.

Let's take a look at four particularly successful campaigns:

1. Old Spice

Despite the "old" in its name, Old Spice rocked a rather "new" social online marketing campaign featuring Isaiah Mustafa, the star of the company's TV ads. On a set staged in Portland, OR, Mustafa answered 186 user questions (in his trademark hilarious style) through a variety of networks, including Reddit, Facebook, Digg, Youtube, and Twitter. The business marketing campaign racked up a record 6.7 million views in only 24 hours.

2. Best Buy

We all knew that Best Buy's blue shirted Geek Squad employees were supposed to be helpful, but the company's @twelpforce Twitter account demonstrated just how helpful said geeks could be -- for both tech questions and business marketing. Best Buy employees from all over the country use @twelpforce to answer user questions directly. The campaign has helped Best Buy connect to thousands of customers, and it's still ticking.

3. Cloverfield

When promoting their 2008 monster movie, the creators of Cloverfield had viral marketing on the brain. The promotional team released teaser trailers online with hardly any information about the film, as well as fake MySpace accounts for the film's main characters. While the teasers helped gather hype, the MySpace profiles underscored the film's emphasis on realism.

4. Will It Blend?

Blenders aren't interesting, nor are they traditionally associated with a Gen Y audience, but Blendtec founder Tom Dickson reached out to this group -- among other fans -- through his super viral Will It Blend? online marketing campaign. In the campaign, which still exists, Dickson uses his company's blenders to demolish everything from whole chickens to iPads, posting videos of every feat on WillItBlend.com. The campaign demonstrates the power of Blendtec blenders, all the while helping to brand the company and connect to a younger audience group.

So, what can we learn from these business marketing campaigns?

1. In online marketing, humor is no joke.

For many consumers, the internet is a much-needed reprieve from the stresses of school, work, and other responsibilities. They want to be entertained online, not educated. For this reason, humorous campaigns like those of Old Spice and Well It Blend? have an edge over more straightforward advertising. In addition to giving surfers what they want, these online marketing campaigns can also help to humanize and brand a company. This is especially useful for distributors of traditionally unexciting products, like blenders.

2. Social networking is a valuable business marketing tool.

Creating a website is one thing, but if you want to reach consumers, you have to find them where they live: on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Reddit, and other social services. Best Buy, Old Spice, and Cloverfield all marketed their businesses on social profiles to tremendous success.

All that being said, for many small businesses, creating a sensational online marketing campaign isn't enough. If your brand isn't recognized and your website isn't receiving significant traffic, you'll also benefit from traditional search engine marketing internet advertising services with SEO and PPC plans.