Futurestate IT, a software company based out of Toronto went the swashbuckling route at the Microsoft Management Summit 2012 held in Las Vegas to drive more traffic and new business to their booth. It worked. They used the power of a fun treasure hunt theme coupled with an 8 step social media strategy.
Goals Of Campaign
To promote new enhancements to their product offerings. Primary goals were:
Build a buzz around the theme and company name
Attract as many people to the booth as possible to generate leads
Be very interactive with the attendees to begin building a relationship
Get an initial conversation started for those who are highly interested in the solution
8 Touch Strategy
Microsoft Management Summit (MMS2012) was a technical conference attended primarily by “left-brain” techies. Left brainers tend to be more reserved, but not when they arrived at the Futurestate booth. See their Facebook page for almost 200 photos of attendees having a blast. Note – Futurestate jointly hosted the Treasure Hunt with Juriba, its technology partner.
#1: Create Landing Page For Conference
To get the buzz started early, a separate MMS Treasure Website (www.mmstreasure.com) was created to inform people who have registered for the conference that there will be a treasure hunt event. People were able to download treasure maps at their leisure, and many people did.
#2: LinkedIn Event
To inform people of the Treasure Hunt event, a LinkedIn event page was created to generate awareness. Posts were also made within the official MMS2012 LinkedIn event.
#3: Conference Guide Ad
In the event that people had not heard of the treasure hunt by the time they arrived at the conference, an ad was placed in the hardcopy Conference Guide, to inform and attract their attention.
#4: Vertical Banner at the Booth
To ensure that interested attendees could find the booth easily, a vertical banner was erected near the booth to direct the traffic.
#5: Lady Pirates play Pirate Blackjack
To keep the treasure hunt light and fun, attendees could play Pirate Blackjack at the booth with the resident lady pirates. This gave them a chance to spend more time at the booth, and be interested in finding out more about the company’s solution.
#6: Treasure Hunt Rules and Instructions
Postcards were printed, and included the rules for the treasure hunt. Attendees could take away the postcards, in case they forgot the instructions on how to find the treasure.
#7: Twitter
A Twitter page was created to allow the attendees to interact with the company. A picture was taken of each attendee that played Pirate Blackjack with the lady pirates. Pirate gears were then added to the photo to make attendees into pirates. The modified photos were then tweeted.
#8: Facebook
A Facebook page, complete with information about the pirate ship arriving in Las Vegas with the resident feline mascot Thomas onboard, was also created to generate interaction. Throughout the treasure hunt, the Facebook page allowed attendees to find their modified photos and share them.
Those attendees that were able to find their photo, share or re-tweet it to their friends, got a chance to win one of three prizes: Microsoft Kinect, or one of two $100 Amazon gift cards.
The company targeted generating 200 sales leads, 100 Facebook entries, 100 Twitter entries, and an increase in company name recognition.
Measurable Results
The treasure hunt occurred in a very short time frame, just over 2.5 days, coinciding with the exhibit hall days. The responses were tremendous, and well over the set target:
Leads
523 leads were generated, with duplicates removed. Many people returned to the booth to play Pirate Blackjack with the lady pirates, in order to get extra chances to get onto Facebook/Twitter. Of those who visited the booth, 40 leads were extremely interested prospects that the sales team could begin detailed conversation immediately.
Result: 260% of target
Facebook
193 photos were uploaded in the 2.5 days timeframe, of which many were shared.
Result: 193% of target
Twitter
283 tweets were sent, with 84 followers.
Result: 283% of target
“We set out to engage people, and to have them learn about us. The response was overwhelming, and people had fun while they listened to our solution story. I think it was a well balanced lead generation and relationship building exercise. It exceeded our targets, so I would consider this a huge success,” said Helen Ching, Director of Marketing for Futurestate IT.
A large online retailer who many of us buy from on a regular basis sells thousands of products online in dozens of categories. They noticed a big drop in conversion rates and revenue per client and didn’t know why.
They went to McKinsey & Company for help, who did a 20,000 person study on consumer behavior and how selling and marketing to consumers has changed. They identified where efforts should be directed to yield the highest return on marketing efforts. Click here to read a great brief about the study – “The Consumer Decision Journey.”
Key Findings
They dug deep into existing online analytics to study the correlation between purchases and quantity of product per category
They used segmentation to calculate likelihood that customers in each category would “cross the aisle” and buy something in another category
After digging into the data, they found the lifetime value of a toy buyer increased greatly when they bought in other categories
Conversely, consumers who bought a lot of pet products did not buy frequently in other categories
After studying their consumer decision journeys they developed cross-selling and category penetration techniques to grow the lifetime value per customer
6 months into this project yielded a jump of 25% in email conversions, 60% increase in on-site conversions, increase in overall sales of 20% and and overall ROI of 30%.
Best Buy was seeking a way to give added value to their customers outside of their physical store locations, so they decided to develop a running promotion on Twitter to answer an array of electronic and computer related questions. They expected that by finding a service that their competitors could not provide and essentially giving it away for free, it would vault them into a much higher overall market share within their industry.
Qualified employees were asked to volunteer to answer questions on Twitter
Each response was catalogued so that other users could find information faster
Over 2,900 employees have answered 40,000 questions since the program launch
While it is tough to gauge the productivity of a free service, Best Buy has seen their @twelpforce account skyrocket with followers over the past twelve months. It also had an unexpected side-effect of boosting employee morale by making average workers the voice of the company; all on an extremely limited budget. You can read more about this case study here.
It’s a little light on content, but this short four-minute video is an excellent example of a well-produced case study. Interesting to note that they’re acutely aware of how many employees have active Twitter accounts.
JVC U.S.A. is halfway through their Like It To Win It Facebook campaign, with a new giveaway each day for 60 days. Fans that “like” the daily giveaway post are entered to win that day’s prize– headphones, iPod docks, video cameras, speakers, and TVs. All Facebook sat down with RFI Studios, the digital arm of PR agency Ruder Finn, to understand how they were able to take a page that had only 1,000 fans to 35,000. Read All Facebook‘s Case Study
LG came up with an exclusive marketing tactics of humanizing its LG60 HD LCD TV to deliver a brand message. The aim of the entire campaign was to humanize and personalize the TV by associating with features like beautiful, fashionable, intelligent and iconic to the actress, Scarlet. The company used PR, online buzz and social media to build on Scarlet’s image primarily in the campaign. Also as apart from this 500 people gathered at the Pacific Design Center in Hollywood for a screening of “Scarlet” the series of TV. The campaign was successful in using the actress’s traits to personify the TV’s features and benefits. Case study
To generate awareness regarding its new Compass, a powerful stereo system, the company Jeep intelligently utilized social mediums like MySpace and Facebook. The social networking campaign involved organizing a series of live musical concerts throughout the country and information about each of these shows was only available through MySpace and Facebook pages. The result of the campaign is visible from the fact that MySpace profile of jeep gathered over 12,000 friends, 258 comments and over 1.3M clicks. Case study
Nokia one of the brand leaders in mobile industry to compete with new contenders came up with a strategy to build a network of ambassadors to spread buzz about Nokia software and services through both on and offline channels. The company, in collaboration with Finnish Agency Satama, built a website/landing page, at which Nokia fans could register to become product ambassadors. The participants were also provided incentives to sign up. Within 4 months over 5500 consumers had signed up for ambassador program and helped the company to spread information regarding its software and services to over 134,000 consumers. Case study
Creative advertisement ideas and marketing through social media enabled Dell to successfully launch and sell its DJ Ditty. The campaign’s media mix was led by Mitch Ferrence where he launched world’s first air guitar, lip sync, and dance instructional videos for Dell’s MP3 player DJ Ditty. It also included viral clips, viral trailers, live appearances and regular communication with fans at Myspace.com. The promotion was a huge hit since it recorded a 75% higher clickthrough rate. Case study
Square Enix, introduced Slime Knights in North America by using viral and word of mouth marketing methods. The plan involved 4 steps: educate, create content, share user experiences and promotion. The plan worked and Slime Knights ended up getting more than 14,000 members. It received more than 143,000 word of mouth references, with 53% being online. Ultimately Dragon Quest VIII ended up selling more than 500,000 units in US. Case study
Futurestate IT, a software company based out of Toronto went the swashbuckling route at the Microsoft Management Summit 2012 held in Las Vegas to drive more traffic and new business to their booth. It worked. They used the power of a fun treasure hunt theme coupled with an 8 step social media strategy.
