London’s Summer 2012 Olympics embraced social media more so than any other Games before it (even Vancouver’s Winter Olympics which was where the social media movement surrounding the Olympic Games began). That meant that their advertisers and major sponsors had an additional channel to reach consumers.
Adidas was an official sponsor of the 2012 Summer Olympics. Nike sponsored many of the individual teams and athletes. Nike took to social media channels as well as developing heart-string-tugging television ads resulting in an increase of more than 11% for @Nike from opening to closing ceremonies and only 4% for @adidasoriginals. Nike used every inch of the Olympic experience it could to get people talking about their brand and they were wildly successful.
FanFeedr, a sports news site, discovered the secret formula to getting 10x higher click through rates than typical Facebook ads. Their company aggregates, organizes, and then publishes content from over 10,000 sports related sites each day in a format their visitors love.
This case study covers a number of the ads that yielded high returns. Their primary objectives in using Facebook ads are:
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%.
This case study features 4 examples of long form branded video content that drove millions of additional dollars and tens of millions of views using long-form copy in place of the typical 30-90 second spots.
What these videos prove is that people will make the time for well crafted stories that intersect with the narrative of their personal story. It is true that consumers are getting more savvy about the “noise” online by deleting, skipping, or unsubscribing from your site faster than ever but for valid reasons.
Most of the content online is not worth their time. Studies show that if you can capture their imagination and interest within the first 15 seconds of a video they will stay as long as you keep enriching them throughout the video.
Three of the four videos (HBO, Nike, KONY) in this case study are long. The forth, featured below, Chipotle, is just over two minutes but considered long because it’s a TV commercial. It was originally to air at the 2012 Super Bowl. Risking it would have to be shortened to 30 seconds due to budget concerns, Chipotle opted to preserve the full story and air it during the 2012 Grammy Awards. It ended up being so impactful it upstaged some of the Grammy performances that night.
Adidas approached the World Cup in 2010 as a genuine opportunity to create a strong public image in the minds of football fans around the world, so they decided to launch a Facebook campaign that would feature their F50 adiZero football boot before the matches actually started.
Although their overall goal was to establish themselves as the premiere sporting goods dealer for anything football relate, it was also very important to connect with South African fans on a personal level.
Target audience was worldwide, but specifically South Africans
Campaign raised funds for Nelson Mandela’s AIDS awareness program
Served as a link to original World Cup videos and editorials
Highlighted the product launch of the F50 adiZero football boot
Several 24 hour blocks were used to reach Facebook members
Throughout the campaign, over 2.3 million unique viewers had visited Adidas’s Facebook page, with 863,000 connections occurring over the first month alone. The average daily visits reached a half a million viewers, indicating that their campaign created genuine interest for return visitors. Brand awareness rose between 8-23% in different regions of the world. To view the actual study, click here.
Here’s a good lesson that the goal of Twitter efforts should not be to simply increase the number of Twitter followers (or Facebook Fans, or…). As noted by social-media-optimization.com, the objective of the Celtics online efforts is to drive people to their web site.
Celtics.com features GameTime Live, an application that features real time scores, tweets, and blogging with supporters throughout the world. The team beta-tested GameTime Live during the 2009 postseason, and more than 50,000 unique visitors checked it out during the triple-overtime loss to the Chicago Bulls in Game 6 of the first round.
It’s remarkable how many marketers, though, fall into that trap of trying to boost numbers for the sake of numbers.This is why setting an ROI goal is so critical. Are you trying to sell e-books (like me <grin>)? Then which specific page on your web site are you plugging?
Back to the Celtics:
YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/bostonceltics)
With less than 700 subscribers, the Celtics YouTube channel is not attracting a lot of attention at the moment. Most videos get around 1,000 views. However, the team recently began distributing exclusive locker room footage on YouTube which will drive more people to this channel and increase subscribers. This is a great example of providing different content for separate digital channels in order to make them more valuable in users eyes.
Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/bostonceltics)
With over 450,000 fans in its Facebook page, the Celtics are the second most popular NBA team on Facebook. Similar to the exclusive locker room video for YouTube subscribers, last week the Celtics launched 3-Point Play, an interactive stats prediction game for fans on its Facebook page.
Twitter (http://twitter.com/celtics)
With almost 22,000 Twitter followers, the Celtics have built up a good following. In addition to Tweeting quotes from press conferences and team events, the Celtics are also using Twitter to offer seating upgrades at games. The picture below was from earlier today.
I really like the stuff on Social-Media-Optimization.com. It’s worth adding their feed to your reader.
Can you use social media to sell a $140,000 product? Apparently, you can.
Piper Aircraft has sold one of its entry-level light sport aircraft, just days after launching a social media campaign that included a YouTube channel, a Facebook page, and a feed on Twitter. Piper hired a firm to create original content for all three channels.
The video strategy, as you’ll see in the embedded video below, was less about graphics but would focus on authenticity, featuring interviews with Pipers’ chief engineer and the chief pilot.
The site launched in early February and the company’s YouTube videos have been watched more than 30,000. The 7,500 Facebook fans are engaged (sending in photos, chatting with Piper reps on the page), and Piper says it’s already sold a plane online because of the campaign.
Total budget for the campaign was less than under $40,000.
Below, SearchEngineWatch.com correspondent Greg Jarboe interviews Michael Kolowich about the campaign, an in particular, the careful optimization of tags, key phrases, and descriptions used.
Do you know of any examples where a social media campaign paid for itself in a single sale?
Champion with the aim to provide its brand a distinct personality amongst young males, came up with a very creative and distinctive marketing strategy. It promoted the often ignored backyard athletes with incredible skills. Champion accumulated huge numbers of sports clips created by users on sites like YouTube which included videos ranging from trick basketball shots to mattress surfing. They sorted these video clippings and asked the most impressive to become part of a show. The entire exercise resulted in “Homestyle Sports,” a series of 12 episodes stitching together the best moments from these user videos. The impact of this program was far reaching then expected. Apart from creating a bond with everyday sports heroes; it achieved nearly 1.3 Mn views. Case study
Sports Media Challenge decided to popularize football among youth by launching the football blog called Every Game Counts (EGC). It carries posts by famous bloggers, most of whom are new to the online world. It is extensively linked to other blogs and message boards and carries details about hot subjects. Since its launch in August, the blog has attracted 25,000 unique hits and succeeded in building brand awareness online. Case study
Piper Aircraft has sold one of its entry-level light sport aircraft, just days after launching a social media campaign that included