Social Media Campaigns in Sri Lanka

Ongoing management keeps a page alive. A campaign is how a business moves something specific: a new branch, a seasonal offer, an intake deadline, a launch, an event, a clearance, a recruitment drive.

Every campaign we run has five things written down before anything is designed: the objective, the audience, the offer, the period, and the number we will judge it by. If any of those is missing, it is not a campaign — it is a batch of posts.

Day-to-day content and community work sits under social media marketing. The paid mechanics behind campaign delivery are covered under social media advertising.

Awareness and launch campaigns

New brand, new branch, new outlet, new menu, new project. Heavy on video and reach, measured on reach, frequency, video views and enquiry volume rather than immediate sales.

Lead generation campaigns

The most common request. A defined offer, a click-to-WhatsApp or instant-form route, and daily lead handling. Standard for property, education, healthcare, home services, finance and B2B.

Sales and promotion campaigns

Time-bound discounts, bundles, festival offers, clearance. These live and die on urgency — a real end date, a visible price and stock or seat limits.

Seasonal campaigns

Avurudu, Christmas, Ramadan, Vesak, Black Friday, back-to-school, the December–March and July–August tourism seasons, January and May education intakes. Planned four to six weeks ahead because creative and shoots take time.

Event campaigns

Exhibitions, open days, launches, workshops, weddings and corporate events split into three phases: pre-event registration, live coverage on the day, and post-event recap that feeds the next one.

Competition and giveaway campaigns

Effective for follower and email growth if the prize is relevant to your actual customer. A phone giveaway brings prize hunters; a free service voucher brings buyers.

Influencer and creator campaigns

Local creators for reach and credibility, usually paired with paid amplification of the best-performing creator asset so it is not left to organic chance.

User-generated content campaigns

Customers filming their own experience — strongest in food, salons, travel, fitness and retail. Needs a simple prompt, a hashtag and permission to reuse.

Retargeting campaigns

Aimed at people who already engaged: video viewers, form abandoners, site visitors, past customers. Usually the cheapest results in the whole plan.

Recruitment campaigns

Increasingly common. Social campaigns fill roles faster than job boards for sales, service and creative positions, especially outside Colombo.

• 1. Research. Your last 6–12 months of content and ad data, competitor activity, comment themes, what your sales team hears from buyers.
• 2. Audience. Who exactly is being moved — location, language, life stage, buying trigger, objection.
• 3. Offer. One clear thing to respond to, with a price, a range, or a genuine reason to enquire.
• 4. Creative concept. Two to four distinct angles, not one design in different colours. Angles are tested; the winner takes the budget.
• 5. Content plan. The asset list: Reels, statics, carousels, Stories, captions in each language, plus a shoot schedule if filming is needed.
• 6. Platforms and placements. Where the audience actually is, and which formats fit them.
• 7. Budget split. Awareness, lead and retargeting layers, plus a fixed testing allowance.
• 8. Timeline. Production dates, launch date, mid-campaign review, end date, reporting date.
• 9. Launch. Staged so early data can redirect budget rather than confirming it too late.
• 10. Optimisation. Weekly creative and audience decisions, with reasons recorded.
• 11. Reporting and handover. What was spent, what it produced, what we learned, and what the next campaign should keep or drop.

Response handling is planned with you before launch. A campaign that generates 200 WhatsApp messages nobody answers within the hour is a wasted budget, not a marketing success.

Restaurant or café — weekend traffic campaign, 4 weeks

• Offer: a specific weekend set or family bundle with a printed price
• Creative: one food Reel filmed in-kitchen, one dine-in atmosphere Reel, two price cards, Story polls
• Targeting: 7km radius around the outlet, plus retargeting of engagers
• Split: 60% reach and engagement in the radius, 25% click-to-WhatsApp reservations, 15% retargeting
• Measured on: reservations, WhatsApp enquiries, walk-in mentions of the offer

Property project — enquiry campaign, 8 weeks

• Offer: unit types with starting price and a site-visit invitation
• Creative: drone or walkthrough video, unit carousel, location-advantage static, buyer FAQ Reel
• Targeting: Colombo and suburbs plus expatriate audiences in the Gulf, UK and Australia
• Split: 40% video views, 40% lead campaigns, 20% retargeting of 50%+ video viewers
• Measured on: qualified site visits, not raw lead count

Education institute — intake campaign, 6 weeks before deadline

• Offer: named course, intake date, fee structure, career outcome
• Creative: student and lecturer testimonial Reels, course comparison carousel, deadline countdown Stories
• Targeting: school leavers and parents, Sinhala, Tamil and English versions
• Split: 30% awareness, 50% lead forms and WhatsApp, 20% retargeting in the final ten days
• Measured on: registrations and enrolments

Hotel or villa — season campaign, 10 weeks before the season

• Offer: direct-booking rate or package that beats the OTA rate
• Creative: room and property Reels, destination content, guest experience clips, wedding and event angles
• Targeting: inbound source markets plus local staycation and corporate audiences
• Split: 45% awareness in source markets, 35% direct-booking traffic, 20% retargeting
• Measured on: direct enquiries and direct bookings versus OTA share

Salon or clinic — new service campaign, 4 weeks

• Offer: introductory price for the new treatment, limited slots
• Creative: before-and-after sequences, practitioner explanation, real client reaction
• Targeting: tight radius, retargeting of past enquirers and past clients
• Split: 50% lead campaigns, 30% awareness in the radius, 20% retargeting and past customers
• Measured on: booked appointments and no-show rate

• January — new-year intent, education intakes, fitness and self-improvement offers
• February–March — peak inbound tourism, wedding season activity, school term planning
• April — Avurudu retail and family campaigns, plan creative in February
• May — Vesak, mid-year education intakes, corporate half-year pushes
• June–August — second tourism wave, monsoon-aware messaging in the south-west, school holidays
• September–October — B2B and corporate procurement, exhibition season
• November — Deepavali, Black Friday, early season hotel booking pushes
• December — Christmas retail and gifting, year-end promotions, peak tourism arrivals

Ramadan and Eid dates move each year and should be planned against the current calendar rather than a fixed month. Regional differences matter too: Jaffna, Kandy, Galle and Colombo do not share the same event or season pattern.

Most campaigns need more creative than clients expect, because paid distribution burns through an angle in about two weeks. We plan volume up front.

• A location shoot day producing multiple Reels and a stills bank
• Two to four Reels per month per active campaign, captioned for silent viewing
• Statics and carousels for price, proof and objection handling
• Stories for countdowns, polls, slot availability and behind-the-scenes
• Sinhala, Tamil and English versions where the audience requires it

Vertical video is produced through our reel creation and AI video production services, and design through graphic design.

Each campaign type gets judged on its own primary number, decided before launch.

• Awareness — reach, frequency, video view-through, branded search and page visit lift
• Lead generation — qualified leads and cost per qualified lead, not raw form fills
• Sales and promotions — redemptions, orders, revenue against spend
• Events — registrations, attendance rate, post-event enquiries
• Recruitment — relevant applications per role and time to fill

We ask for one thing from clients: tell us which enquiries turned into business. Without that, optimisation is guesswork dressed up as data.

• No specific offer — "contact us for details" is not an offer
• One creative asset expected to carry six weeks of spend
• Launching a seasonal campaign the week the season starts
• Enquiries answered the next day instead of within minutes
• Changing objective and audience mid-flight, so no learning survives
• No retargeting layer, so warm audiences are paid for once and abandoned
• Judging a lead-generation campaign on likes and follower growth
• Sending traffic to a page that does not show the price or the next step

Campaigns run either inside a monthly retainer or as a standalone project. Retainer clients get campaigns planned as part of the monthly calendar; project clients get a fixed scope, timeline and asset list.

• Kick-off session and written campaign brief you approve before production
• Asset production, with a shoot day where filming is included in your package
• Campaign build, launch and daily monitoring during the first week
• Mid-campaign review with creative and budget changes
• End-of-campaign report and recommendations for the next one

Inclusions by package level are on the packages page.