Describe the business problem or objectives of the campaign
Flagler Hospital Bariatric found they could not accurately track new leads or new surgeries by using traditional marketing (TV, billboards, etc.). They came to XE Corporation to explore using a social media campaign to gain awareness of their services and increase the numbers of their surgeries.
Other areas in need of improvement included:
- Increase new patient counts
- Increasing the number of attendees to their free seminars.
- Increasing referral rate to both seminars and Flagler Bariatric.
- Increasing past patient participation/engagement on social channels and at events.
- Increasing fan counts/participation on Facebook.
How were the business challenges / campaign objectives addressed?
XE Corporation formulated a comprehensive social media campaign that utilized offline and online tactics to create buzz around their brand, establish an on-going conversation around their services and engage members of their community to refer their friends to attend Bariatric seminars and then become new patients of Flagler.
Tactics:
Customize Facebook Landing Page
Re-branding of the Facebook page via landing pages and other customization to better control the experience for users.
Create Online Invitations for Events
Promotion of Flagler Bariatric Events using social networks to gain more attendance
Launch a Referral-Based Giveaway
Created a referral-based Wii Fit Giveaway requiring entrants to “like” the Facebook page and to refer a friend to attend one of the Free Seminars held by Flagler Bariatric.
Online Surveys
Designed and promoted surveys to gather feedback specific to social efforts from the Bariatric community
Fan-Favorite Recipe Module on Website
Creation of Fan-Generated “Menus”, where current and past bariatric patients shared their favorite recipes/meals to eat that are bariatric-approved.
“Spotlight Fan” Facebook Contest
Patient submitted Before & After pictures as part of “Spotlight Fan” Facebook Contest to increase support and conversation among fan community.
Campaign Results
- Cut marketing costs by 93% by switching from traditional media to social marketing.
- Increased Facebook Fan Page conversation by 5 times
- Increased visits to the Facebook Fan Page by 400%
- 30% participation rate with online survey after 5 weeks
- Using “crowdsourcing” from survey – it helped Flagler decide on the next Facebook patient appreciation campaign – Giveaway a year’s supply of custom vitamins and supplements
- Recruited 40+ volunteers to be community leaders online to help promote the Flagler Bariatric Community with other fans and potential patients.
- Produced 24 qualified leads to attend free seminar
- Estimated 16 new surgeries from this campaign
Want your own success story featured here? Tell us about your social media campaign!
(image source: Seruds)
As your humble servant and intrepid case study discoverer, I invite you to join me on my ongoing trip around the world as I move from Ireland to India, two countries very close to my heart. What do they have in common? Easy. Generous people with warm hearts living in two fascinatingly complex and rapidly evolving societies.
Enter “Give India”. This online donation platform harnesses the power of the Internet to facilitate grassroots support for non-profits in the country. Visitors to the site can choose to support a variety of initiatives like:
A one day Human Rights Awareness Workshop for 50 poor women
Sponsor the honorarium of a paralegal counselor for a year to fight against domestic violence
1 month nutrition and health care for a child living with HIV
Contribute to a fund to build a shelter for 50 neglected aged
Construct a Rain Water Harvesting Unit or Recharge Pit for a drought prone village.
Having worked with and having sat on the board of more than one non-profit, I can certainly attest to the constant scramble for funding. Hopefully, no stone goes unturned, which is likely why Give India chose to participate in the challenge set forth by the Chase Foundation. The task? Leverage your network in a bid to gain votes supporting your race towards a 1 million dollar prize.
Today’s featured case study could certainly been about the Chase Foundation’s visibility program. The $1M campaign was unfortunately not without controversy…
But back to Give India:
Objectives:
- Get 40 000 votes
- Increase traffic to Give India on Facebook and Twitter
- Win $1M from the Chase Foundation
- Educate 40 000 children
The Campaign: 1 vote = 1 child’s education for a year. A vote for India.
Results:
- Key influencers, including Bollywood stars Purab Kohli, Shekhar Kapur and Farah Khan shared this campaign with their Twitter networks
- Number of Twitter followers rose from 200 to over 350 in 8 days
- Number of Facebook fans increased from 150 to over 500 in 8 days
- Raised awareness for Give India among more than 4000 people
How did they do it? By mobilizing influencers and their network through Twitter, Facebook and email. While they didn’t walk away with $1M from the Chase Foundation, the Give India case study is generously rich with key learnings, so check it out. It’s posted on India Social, India’s largest social media community. Rajesh Lalwani, founder of social media consulting firm Blogworks, who I had the great pleasure of meeting in Delhi, is one of the driving forces behind the India Social initiative.
Anand uthaayein!
Michelle
Found a great interview with the team behind the wildly successful Old Spice campaign. In the interview, they talk about how they decided to employ various social media strategies, and which people to send personalized videos to.
One interesting disclosure was that Old Spice had built a custom application that ranks the influence level of people tweeting Old Space, providing the team with a shortlist of people to produce customized YouTube responses to:
We’ve built an application that scans the Internet looking for mentions and allows us to look at the influence of those people and also what they’ve said. They’re working in collaboration with the creative team that are there to pick out the messages that: 1. Have creative opportunity to produce amazing content; or 2. Have the ability to then embed themselves in an interesting or virally-relevant community. It’s not just picking people with huge followings, it’s a really interesting combination.
Full interview is here.
Houlihan’s Restaurants, a chain that competes with the Appleby’s of the world, has taken a unique approach to marketing themselves online. Eschewing common advice to “go where the eyeballs are,” Houligan’s created a closed online community, letting it promote exclusive invitations to tasting events and other member-only events.
Backed by a 200,000-person email address list, the chain started by identifying its most active customers (those who participated in surveys, RSVPed to offers, etc.)
The chain’s community runs on the private-label Ning service. About 15 to 20 per cent are active members. “We gauge that by hits to the HQ site (when an e-mail is sent asking for feedback, to do a survey, etc),” Houligan’s digital marketing manager said.
(NOTE: During this beta period, this is the only case study using the Regions category. Case studies will be categorized by region by the end of February.)
The Great Bear Rainforest is one of the few truly wild places remaining in B.C. until a few years ago, there were no concrete, long-term plans in place to preserve it.
To try to pressure the provincial government to ratify a protection agreement, Greenpeace Canada, ForestEthics, and the Sierra Club of B.C. launched the “Keep the Promise: Save the Great Bear Rainforest” campaign in fall 2008. Capulet Communications was brought onboard to run the social media components, which included a Facebook group that attracted more than 4,000 members and became the hub for online activities. Other tactics used included a “Bear Your Soul” Flickr Contest, local blogger outreach, and both Twitter and YouTube presences.
In the end, the government promise to protect one third of the globally significant rainforest was fulfilled. Full Case Study
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