How IKEA Uses Digital Campaign to Deliver Purpose-Driving Messages to its Customers?
As one of the projects in the digital market class, our group chooses a furnishing company to do the digital marketing campaign which is “Wayfair”. After research, I found that Ikea is the world’s largest furniture retailing company, plays as the primary competitor of Wayfair. Before I did the project, I realized knowing a competitor’s social media strategy is a necessary procedure. In my following text, I’m going to introduce how Ikea is using its social media to advance its brand.
Ikea is a brand that operates its selling empire worldwide. It requires a platform with the capacity to reach out to every corner of the world, which is social media. In my Opinion, Ikea fully incorporates social media into the brand’s development and made several innovative campaigns. Despite using traditional social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, Ikea is developing by using other platforms simultaneously. They decided to put more effort into platforms like YouTube and Pinterest, which I think is innovative. Besides, Ikea’s main target is middle-class people between the age of 20 and 34, thus these two platforms whose users are considered mostly younger generations allow Ikea to approach their target consumers more easily.
Ikea is utilizing the power of Pinterest to contact new customer groups. More specifically, the company uses keyword targeting and Promoted Pins to reach student consumers about their dorm furniture. Ikea’s campaign focuses on driving both in-store and online engagement among student Pinterest users.
This campaign is aimed at increasing web traffic and student consumers’ cognition towards its dorm series furniture. As Pinterest claims, “back-to-school season” is extremely important to Ikea. Students hope their dorms are fashionable enough while not costing too much. To address the potential customer, Ikea has chosen Pinterest since more than half of the millennium in the US are the platform’s users, and 72% of its users use it to search for ideas for their daily life.
In this campaign, Ikea uses Promoted Pins to connect some keywords with its products, for example, “dorm creativity,” “dorm organization” and “dorm ideas.” Ikea is the first retailer to use Pinterest’s self-serve platform to launch a search campaign, which means the consumers can use Pinterest as an idea starter while lacking specific ideas. I believe that this is an effective approach for the retailers to reach out to their new target consumers.
Ikea Shows a Good Night’s Sleep Video to Drive Customer to Store on YouTube
Ikea has always played a good performance on its YouTube channel. It actively operates its own video channel in different countries and regions (e.g., IKEA USA, IKEA Canada, etc.). IKEA Canada partnered with YouTube and agencies Jungle Media and Rethink to establish the first digital-led video campaign. When it comes to digital, advertisers have long aimed to reach audiences with a relevant message at exactly the right movement.
Ikea learns that one in three Canadian has less than seven hours of sleep every night and is always exhausted. Ikea decides to use its insights as inspiration for a campaign message around sleep to promote their mattress. They use customized YouTube videos to influence online and in-door shopping behaviors.
This campaign creative includes a 15-second video that played at late night on YouTube.
Ikea’s customized campaign has made a significant outcome.
My Insights
The reason why I think Ikea’s campaign was a great success, is that it used a universal message to find its audiences. For example, by launching a campaign around something all Canadian need more sleep, Ikea’s message has become prevalent among its consumers.
Besides, Ikea is good at using personalized digital ads, which helps to enhance more active engagements with its targets. No matter the back-to-school campaign for students on Pinterest or the sleeping condition campaign for the Canadians on YouTube, customized creativity and targeted ads allowed Ikea to address the right groups with proper messages. These campaigns were both effective and money-saving.
Overall, engaging with the customer is an excellent approach to understanding their ideas. Yet, it is not enough. Ikea also understands the potential needs of its customers successfully by learning the insights from their perspective. I believe these are the points that make Ikea stands out in the battle of the digital campaign between it and Wayfair.
Originally published at https://medium.com/@KathyXue on March 6, 2022.
