The company’s marketing team had laid out plans for a traditional marketing campaign with the concept, “The Golden Year,” and wanted to expand it into a multi-media campaign using new or existing digital resources as well as social media channels.

The Challenge

One of S4’s core principles is that goal-driven marketing campaigns that have measurable results are the only way to impact real-world business objectives. This is especially true when it comes to social media campaigns at this scale. We’ve seen dozens of campaigns that stumble out of the gate from disjointed tactics because they lacked clear, measurable objectives and goals for success. After a brief kickoff the company ironed out three primary goals for the campaign:

1. To thank loyal customers
2. To acknowledge the realtors and employees who helped along the way
3. To increase the brand’s market share

Research and Planning

Along with being goal-driven, our team also believes that the best way to maximize a brand’s social media impact is to use it to provide content that is both timely and valuable to the consumer. Brand anniversaries present a unique challenge to this because they are on the one hand valuable (contain honest and heartfelt acknowledgements), but on the other easily seen as a thin excuse for self-congratulations and promotion (if planned haphazardly). To combat the possible negative response, Station Four initiated a short research phase that identified opportunities for the campaign to provide value to its target audience. This phase included in-depth audience research, market analysis and an audit of their existing marketing materials. The findings were then used to inform the overall campaign strategy that would attempt to provide value to the consumer while simultaneously satisfying the company’s business objectives.

The Solution

Using the results of the research as well as the client’s original concept, “The Golden Year,” we produced a cohesive social media strategy for the campaign that included clearly defined goals, aesthetic guidelines, supporting tactics and project management timelines. For added value, the team also recommended that the client create a microsite for implementing the strategy. This would separate the campaign content from the more established corporate blog, would allow for more creative freedom in the type of content that could be created, and provide a clean slate for all the reporting metrics from the campaign.

Additional Value

During the initial research phase, we identified a content gap in the industry for quality content that focused on the process of buying and selling. There was an overwhelming amount of both do-it-yourself (DIY) and financial planning content readily available for home buyers and sellers, but nothing in regards to the nitty-gritty of the process. Creating and publishing content in this space ultimately became a large part of the campaign that drove traffic and laid a foundation for future content marketing efforts.

Execution

Unified by discrete 50th anniversary design elements, color scheme and messaging, the first three months of the anniversary campaign focused on promoting content such as company history, important milestones, customer stories, old photographs and video assets to celebrate and thank both customers and employees for 50 years of support. After the initial campaign kickoff, the strategy shifted to leverage their team’s 50 years of experience and expertise by creating consumer-facing content. This was a new concept to the clients’ leadership team as their corporate blog featured almost exclusively company news or content that was crafted to help their Realtors in the sales process. We created design elements to be implemented across all social media accounts—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube—and banners that were placed on the corporate site for consistency and to help push audiences over to the microsite.

Measuring results

The metrics for measuring the campaign were set at the beginning and included net likes and un-likes, reach, and sentiment and engagement metrics including clicks, comments and shares. For the microsite, we focused on traffic volumes, referrals, unique pageviews and time on page to track user’s engagement with the content. In the end, we used these metrics to show clear increases in both reach and engagement via social media*, particularly among new audiences who did not previously follow the brand on any social channels. This was a tremendous success on several fronts: the 50th anniversary served to increase brand awareness, help kick-start an inbound marketing mentality, build a new content platform to expand upon, and poise the company as a consumer-facing brand. *Final results and measurements are awaiting the completion of the full campaign strategy.