10 Social Media Marketing Examples: The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Social Media Marketing

Most people scroll right past social media ads without realizing they are being walked through a masterclass in marketing strategy. Every promoted tweet, every Facebook carousel, every LinkedIn video spot is teaching you exactly how brands move strangers off a rented platform and onto their own turf where they can sell. Once you see the mechanics, you cannot unsee them.

In this post we are breaking down real examples from Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. We will look at direct ads, indirect ads, and the chat bot strategy that lets a business bypass paid ads and email marketing altogether. Whether you are a first-time affiliate marketer or someone trying to grow a local service business, these examples show you the playbook that platforms like Netflix, State Farm, and ClickFunnels already use.

What You’ll Walk Out With

The single goal that every social media ad, direct or indirect, is trying to accomplish
Real Twitter examples: a job board, Netflix, QuickLoans, CNN Business, and the Wall Street Journal
Why Facebook is the most aggressive ad platform and how Doodly used a one-time price to beat the scroll
How LinkedIn ads work differently from Twitter and Facebook, including where the links actually take people
The Russell Brunson / ClickFunnels chat bot strategy that creates a direct line to customers without paid ads
A walkthrough of Facebook Ads Manager targeting: geography, demographics, and why the platform knows so much about you
Honest drawbacks of social media marketing that most tutorials skip
Not sure which online income method fits your skills? finder.platformproof.com matches you to a starting point in under two minutes

The One Goal Every Social Media Ad Shares

Before looking at specific examples, understand this: every advertiser on every social platform is trying to do exactly one thing. They want you to leave the platform. Click a link, tap an image, follow a button, and land somewhere the brand controls. That is it. The platform is borrowed real estate. You show up, grab attention, and then pull the person off-platform where you control the experience, run your own ads, and close sales.

CNN Business is not making money on Twitter. They are making money on their website, through display advertising and subscription offers, where they control every pixel and every upsell. The Wall Street Journal is not monetizing your scroll. They are monetizing your visit to their article page. Netflix is not selling subscriptions inside a retweet. They are building enough curiosity that you open the app. Every single example in this post, regardless of how different it looks on the surface, is doing the same thing: getting you to leave.

Twitter Examples: Direct Ads, Indirect Ads, and What Each Teaches You

The first example is a job search engine running a promoted tweet. You can spot a direct Twitter ad by the word “Promoted” at the lower left of the post. This ad does three things well. First, it makes its brand identity clear at a glance. Second, the message is short and direct. Third, it has one call to action: click the link. The audience is highly qualified because someone browsing Twitter while thinking about switching jobs is already primed to respond to a job board ad. Short, clear, and aimed at the right person at the right moment.

The second example is a Netflix retweet. This one is not labeled “Promoted,” which makes it an indirect ad. Netflix is sharing content, specifically a retweet featuring Keanu Reeves, to build awareness around a new movie or show. No price. No CTA button. Just a recognizable face and a brand people already trust. The goal is not a click. The goal is association: you see Netflix + Keanu Reeves, you remember the show exists, and you open the app later. Indirect advertising works because it feels like content rather than a sales pitch.

QuickLoans is a third example on Twitter. This one leans more text-heavy than the others, which creates a real problem. On a fast-moving feed, the more text you include, the harder it is to absorb in the two seconds someone has before scrolling past. The ad does include a clear CTA: “calculate new payment.” That is actionable and specific, which is good. But the volume of text surrounding it dilutes the punch. If you are building your own ads, the QuickLoans example is a lesson in what to watch. Clear and concise beats long and comprehensive on social media every time.

22 Words ran a Photoshop-related promoted tweet. Short, image-forward, one destination. The entire purpose is to get you to click the image and land on their website, where they can retarget, sell, or monetize through their own ad placements. Same playbook, simpler execution.

CNN Business ran an article about Twitter on Twitter, which is interesting in its own right. The article is not a direct pitch for CNN subscriptions. It is topically relevant to anyone on Twitter, which makes people likely to click. Once you land on CNN’s site, the CNN ad engine takes over. Display ads load, subscription offers pop up, and CNN starts tracking your behavior for future targeting. Clicking that CNN link is stepping into their revenue machine. The Twitter post was just the door.

The Wall Street Journal follows the same pattern. A headline with enough tension or interest to make you want to read more, and a link that drops you on their site where the paywall and subscription offers appear. WSJ is not advertising a product. They are advertising curiosity.

Facebook Ads: The Most Aggressive Platform for Advertisers

Facebook is more aggressive with ad placement than Twitter. On a typical Facebook feed, you will see ads embedded in the scrolling content AND a separate column of sponsored posts on the right-hand side. Two ad surfaces at once. That is more inventory for advertisers, more competition for attention, and more exposure for your budget.

Doodly is a strong example of smart Facebook ad strategy. Doodly is a screen animation software, and on Facebook they advertised it as a one-time price of $67. That framing is intentional. If you have ever looked into Doodly before, you know it is typically a monthly subscription. Seeing a low one-time price is a pattern interrupt, something different enough to stop the scroll. Click the link and you land on a sales page. Buy the $67 offer and you immediately enter an upsell sequence where the brand tries to get more from you. The Facebook ad is not meant to close the deal. It is meant to get the click.

State Farm ran an ad on Facebook that appears to rotate creative, meaning the image or copy changes periodically to keep the ad fresh for the same audience. The CTA is straightforward: get a quote. Click the image, leave Facebook, land on State Farm’s platform where they can collect your information. State Farm is not selling you a policy through Facebook. They are collecting a lead.

One of the more interesting Facebook examples is a Los Angeles Times article about Apple shutting down iTunes. This is an indirect ad that works on two levels. First, the LA Times gets a click, which means ad impressions and potential subscription signups on their site. Second, it functions as an indirect ad for Apple. If you read that iTunes is going away, you start wondering what happens to your music library, whether you need to download your purchases, and what Apple is replacing it with. That curiosity takes you to Apple’s website on your own. Apple does not pay for that click. It happens organically, and once you are on Apple’s site they have every opportunity to sell you cloud storage, a new device, or a subscription service.

Stove Bonfire is another direct Facebook ad that runs the standard playbook: eye-catching image, brief copy, a link that takes you off Facebook and to a product page. Nothing surprising, but it is a clean example of the core structure.

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LinkedIn Ads: Professional Network, Different Rules

LinkedIn allows advertisers to run image and video ads in the feed, with 15-second video spots being one common format. The Harley-Davidson example illustrates a key difference between LinkedIn and the other platforms. When you click “Learn More” on the Harley-Davidson ad, you land on their LinkedIn company page, not their external website. This is different from Twitter, where clicking the Wall Street Journal link sends you directly to the article. It is different from Facebook, where clicking a product ad sends you to an external website or sales page.

Where the link goes depends on the type of ad the advertiser runs and what destination they configure. LinkedIn gives advertisers the choice to drive traffic to a LinkedIn page or to an external URL. Some brands prioritize growing their LinkedIn following. Others use LinkedIn as a pure traffic source to their own site. Neither is wrong. The platform accommodates both strategies, and the right choice depends on what you are trying to accomplish with that specific campaign.

The 15-second video limit on LinkedIn, which is the same cap Facebook applies to in-feed video ads, forces a discipline that is actually useful for beginners. You have 15 seconds to establish brand, problem, and CTA. There is no room for a long setup. If you cannot articulate your offer in 15 seconds, you do not have a clear enough offer yet.

Chat Bots: The Channel That Gets Around Paid Ads and Email

The most underused social media marketing method in this video is the chat bot. Russell Brunson, the founder of ClickFunnels, uses Facebook Messenger as a direct-contact channel with his audience. Here is how it works in practice.

When you sign up for a free ClickFunnels resource, such as a pack of email swipe copy, part of the opt-in process requires you to authenticate with Facebook. By doing that, you are giving ClickFunnels permission to message you inside Facebook Messenger. Once that opt-in is complete, ClickFunnels has a direct connection to you that does not require paying for an ad impression and does not go through an email inbox where it might be filtered to spam or promotions.

The chat bot then sends automated sequences. In one example, the bot asked whether the person was still interested in a training they had originally signed up for. If you click “I’m still interested,” you enter a funnel specifically for that training. If you do not respond at all, the system records the non-response and moves you to a different targeting sequence, one designed for people who showed early interest but went cold. Every interaction, or non-interaction, is tracked and used to route you to the right next offer.

For someone building an audience around a free resource, the chat bot strategy is worth understanding early. The sequence is: create something genuinely useful that people want, use Facebook as the delivery gate, and build a Messenger list that you can communicate with directly. Done honestly, this creates real value for the audience and real relationship for the brand.

Facebook Ads Manager: How Targeting Actually Works

Inside Facebook Ads Manager, the setup process for a new campaign is structured. You go to Pages, click Promote, and then choose an objective. “Get more leads” is one option. You can also optimize for website traffic, video views, page likes, or conversions, depending on what you are selling and what stage of the funnel you are targeting.

The targeting capabilities are what make Facebook Ads powerful and, depending on your perspective, unsettling. When running a local business opportunity ad, it is possible to target only the counties immediately around you: Kenosha County, Racine County, Walworth County, and similar nearby areas. But geographic targeting is just the starting point. You can layer in demographic filters, including whether someone has children and the age range of those children. You can layer in behavioral and interest data collected from what people like, share, and click on the platform.

Facebook builds that targeting database from everything on the platform. Every post you like, every group you join, every link you click, every friend connection you make is logged. That data is what Facebook sells to advertisers in the form of audience targeting. If you are an advertiser, that is an extraordinary tool for reaching exactly the right person with your offer. If you are a consumer who did not realize this was happening, it is a fair thing to know.

The budget side of Facebook advertising is flexible. You can run a local awareness campaign for a small daily spend or scale a national campaign with a larger budget. The auction-based model means your ad competes against other advertisers for the same audience, and the more competition there is for a particular demographic, the more expensive that audience becomes. Starting with a tight geographic focus and a clear offer is usually the most efficient approach for someone just beginning with paid social.

Honest Drawbacks of Social Media Marketing

None of these platforms are free to use for marketing at any meaningful scale. Organic reach on Facebook has declined significantly over the years. Getting visible without paying for promotion is harder than it used to be. If you are counting on free reach alone to build an audience, you are working against the platform’s financial incentive to charge for that visibility.

You also do not own any of it. Your Twitter followers, your Facebook page, your LinkedIn connections are all hosted on someone else’s infrastructure under someone else’s rules. The platform can change its algorithm, restrict your account, or disappear entirely. Building an email list or driving people to your own website gives you a more durable asset because it is not subject to a social platform’s terms of service changes.

The chat bot strategy is powerful, but it requires a genuinely valuable free resource to earn the opt-in. Rushing into Messenger marketing without a real offer first produces low opt-in rates and annoyed subscribers.

Finally, the 15-second video cap on Facebook and LinkedIn is not a constraint most beginners are ready for. Writing a 15-second script that clearly communicates brand, problem, and CTA is harder than it sounds. Expect to go through several versions before you land on something that works.

Real-Numbers Breakdown: What You Actually Need to Start

Here is an honest look at what it costs to run the three types of social media marketing covered in this video, based on common starting budgets:

Direct paid ads on Twitter: Minimum daily budgets start around $5 to $10. Promoted tweets are sold through an auction. Without testing, it is hard to predict cost-per-click, but $1 to $3 per click is a reasonable starting assumption for low-competition niches.
Facebook ads (local targeting): A local awareness or lead generation campaign can run on $5 to $20 per day. Alston ran a local business opportunity ad targeting a handful of Wisconsin counties, which is a realistic entry point for anyone testing a regional offer.
LinkedIn ads: LinkedIn is the most expensive of the three platforms. Minimum bids are higher because the professional audience commands a premium. Expect to spend more per click here than on Twitter or Facebook, which makes LinkedIn better suited to high-ticket offers where a single conversion justifies the ad spend.
Chat bot (Messenger marketing): The cost to build the Messenger sequence is mostly time. You need a free resource people actually want, a way to gate access through a Facebook opt-in, and a chat bot tool to automate the messages. Once set up, the marginal cost per subscriber is low compared to paid ads.
Indirect (organic) advertising: Publishing content that organically promotes a brand, like the Netflix retweet, costs nothing in direct ad spend. The cost is time and the skill required to create content people want to share. This is the path most beginners start on before they have a paid budget.

Find Your X

Social media marketing is one of many ways to build an income online, and which method fits best depends on your skills, schedule, and starting budget. If you are not sure whether social ads, affiliate content, email, or something else makes the most sense for where you are right now, the two-minute quiz at finder.platformproof.com matches you to a specific starting point based on what you already know and how much time you have each week.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between a direct and an indirect social media ad?

A direct ad is labeled as promoted or sponsored, and it is paid placement by the advertiser. An indirect ad looks like organic content but still promotes a brand or product, even without a paid label. The Netflix retweet featuring Keanu Reeves is an indirect ad because Netflix is pushing brand awareness without a “Promoted” tag. Both types aim to drive behavior, but they do it through different levels of transparency.

Why do social media ads always try to get you off the platform?

Because the advertiser makes money on their own platform, not on the social media platform. On your own site you control the ads, the upsells, the pricing, and the customer data. On Twitter or Facebook you are renting attention. The moment someone clicks through to your site, you own the relationship.

Is Facebook Ads Manager hard to use for beginners?

Facebook walks you through the setup process with prompts that guide you from objective selection through audience and budget. The mechanics are learnable in a few hours. The harder part is knowing what to say in the ad and who to target. Start narrow: one geographic area, one clear offer, and one CTA. Broad targeting burns budget without teaching you much.

How does Facebook know so much about its users for targeting purposes?

Facebook logs every interaction on the platform: posts you like, groups you join, links you click, and your network of friends and family. That behavioral data is organized into audience segments and sold to advertisers as targeting options. Users generate the data through normal platform use, and advertisers pay to reach specific segments of that data.

What is the Facebook Messenger chat bot strategy and who is it best for?

A Messenger chat bot lets a business communicate with customers directly inside Facebook Messenger after the customer opts in, usually in exchange for a free resource. Once opted in, the brand can send automated sequences, track opens, and route subscribers into different funnels based on their responses. It is best for businesses that already have a genuinely useful free offer and want a direct communication channel that is not dependent on ad spend or email deliverability.

Why are LinkedIn ads more expensive than Facebook or Twitter ads?

LinkedIn’s audience skews toward working professionals and decision-makers, which makes it more valuable for B2B offers. Because advertisers pay a premium to reach that professional audience, the cost per click is higher. LinkedIn ads make the most financial sense when the product or service being advertised has a high enough price point to justify the higher cost per lead.

What makes an ad clear and concise on social media?

Clear means the viewer knows exactly what the brand is, what they are offering, and what the viewer should do next, all within two seconds of seeing the post. Concise means no unnecessary text between the attention-grabber and the CTA. The QuickLoans example in this video was flagged as too text-heavy. If someone has to work to understand what you are selling, they will scroll past instead.

Can you do social media marketing without a paid budget?

Yes, through indirect or organic methods. Publishing content that is genuinely useful or interesting, the way Netflix uses retweets and celebrities to build awareness, costs nothing beyond the time it takes to create. The tradeoff is that organic reach is slower and less predictable than paid reach. Most marketers start organic to learn what resonates, then use paid ads to amplify what already works.

Sources

Original video: Alston Godbolt, “10 Social Media Marketing Examples: The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Social Media Marketing,” YouTube, https://youtu.be/bJHXe2bcMEE
Facebook Ads Manager, Meta Business Suite, https://www.facebook.com/business/tools/ads-manager
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, advertising overview, https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions
Twitter / X Ads, promoted tweets overview, https://ads.twitter.com