April Fools’ Day is great to treat your fans with a new campaign. The concept of the holiday itself gives a great foundation for generating unusual and fun ideas for entertaining campaigns which engage the audience and stay in your customers’ mind.
Top brand pranks for April Fool’s Day
A short history of Internet marketing has a rich collection of bright and memorable online marketing campaigns which brands executed on this day. Of course, Google, YouTube, and Twitter are among those which pranks we should mention first of all.
Google nose announcement. With its constant updates, Google always keeps us on the toes. So when search engines announced that now we can smell the search results, many were ready to believe it.
You have probably heard about a YouTube shuts down prank, so we will tell you about another trick the video giant had. Vimeo has informed the world that they transformed into Vimeow – a video platform for cats where it is possible to “sit on and survey your domain; tenderly rub up against; or scratch fervently, as if trying to claw the eyes out of the human who refuses to put more food in your bowl. It’s a place to hide when people come over, and a way to connect with other feral, potentially rabid strays.”
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No vowels on Twitter? Yes, it was real on April 1st, 2013, when the search network announced that it splits into two services: the new one – Twttr, a free service in which users can send tweets in consonants only, and Twitter, which gets premium and allows users send classical posts with vowels for $5 per month.
Sources for April Fool’s Day marketing ideas
If you still don’t have enough promotional campaigns ideas for the nearest April Fool’s Day, here are several posts worth checking for more inspiration:
- 1. Top10 brand pranks for April Fools Day 2013
- 2. 6 Examples of April Fools’ Day Gags for Business Marketing
- 3. 12 brand pranks on April Fools’ Day
How to capture the audience with April Fool’s Day campaign
No matter how great your idea for this holiday is, there is always a question how to promote a campaign properly and get it in front of the maximum number of people. This is especially true for a one-day campaign such as April Fool’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, and so on. So, we asked marketers how to solve this task and what methods to choose. The recommendations they shared can go a long way and be successfully applied to various short-term campaigns.
Frank Riolo from Conversation Agency stresses the importance of creating buzz around a campaign that is focused on a single day is to concentrate on engaging fans. He thinks that it is important to keep a dialogue going with the audience and not to ignore posts from fans even if they are negative. He also notes that the online campaign should be simple and understandable for the audience.
Co-founder of Datify, Ben Harper, says that he relies heavily on paid channels when it comes to running a short time campaign. For example, if you’re marketing on Facebook, boost the posts about your competition, or a time-sensitive event, to ensure you achieve the best reach possible in a short time. Using Facebook targeted advertising, you can go beyond Facebook’s default settings “friends of fans” and target based on precise interests, demographic, and broad categories to ensure that you reach the most relevant audience possible as quickly as possible.
Alice Zindagi from ABCs of Attraction considers images to be very prospective when it comes to campaign promotion. She says that many small businesses and even YouTube celebrities are starting to use large pictures with the link in the caption because a photo catches someone’s attention faster. The reason behind this is that people don’t usually want to read a link. But a picture tells them everything they need to know without having to read it.
Brad Hines, Digital Marketing & Social Media Strategist, BradfordHines.com says that groundwork should be laid as much as a month in advance so that the trigger can be pulled at the right time, and what is needed is already in place. As an example, he shares a case when you can send an email about your campaign to a group of people on a given day. He also recommends making the use of such syndicates as Triberr, Linkedin Groups, Gaggle Amp, and even Facebook groups.
More of April Fool’s Day marketing tips
- • Make the use of hashtags, the most widely used on Twitter are #Aprilfools and #Aprilprank, though people can also search for queries like “April Fool”, “April Fools”, “prank” or “fools day”.
- • Try to choose the right timing and social media scheduling. Statistics says that 92.4% of all retweets happen within the first 60 minutes after the tweet has been published, so consider the time when your audience is active the most.
- • Integrate different online marketing channels and make them complete one another. You can post the hook on Twitter and then continue on Facebook and YouTube. Finally, you can leverage email marketing and send the message with the campaign links to the right people.
Basic requirements for an April Fool’s Day campaign
- • Make sure the joke weaves into your company image naturally.
- • Always target a certain business goal with the planned campaign, say to increase brand awareness.
- • After you have engaged users with the campaign, ensure you have reached your business goal, e.g. provided a link to the actual products or services a user can buy, etc.
- • Hit more goals: you may run a little market research. For example, by offering a new product on this day, you can check how many people are ready to buy it and whether it is worth to launch its mass production or not.
- • Make the campaign easy to believe or else the trick will lose the zest.
- • The concept of the prank should be neutral or positive, you surely don’t want the campaign to damage your brand image.
- • And of course, it should be fun after all because that is what April Fool’s day has been invented for 😉
To start planning your next campaign, contact us today to receive an efficient solution.
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