One of the largest airlines in the world, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, is also considered one of the best in converting “Likes” into paying customers. Part of their marketing success is their willingness to take bold yet calculated risks. They are able to do this because they understand the customer buying journey. The touch points along the journey a lead or existing customer takes as they experience the KLM brand and then, how KLM works to improve each touch point along the path.
They began in social media the summer of 2009. Since then, they had a few failures along with great successes. One of their more controversial and successful campaigns is their Meet and Seat initiative. See below video. It’s a way for you to see who you may be sitting next to days before you board the plane.
Seven Social Media Campaigns Documented
To read the case studies of each campaign, go to their Facebook Page and click our social journey. They provide details about each campaign and insight into what made each one successful. They also did a 4 part series about their social media strategy. Part 3 of the series talks about some of the campaigns. Skip 1, 2, and 4. Weak on substance and depth. Not worth your time to read unless you are new to social media.
The Children’s Place, a trendy children’s clothing chain, had an online party hosted by Denise Richards and other celebrities to celebrate their one millionth fan on Facebook. Their goal – to increase the lifetime value of thousands of their customers using social media.
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To promote the party their primary expense was in the famous talent they hired to host the party. Most all other promotion was done through teaser posts to their existing 975,000 Facebook fans the week leading up to the party. They attribute most of the success to the gifts and discounts offered to entice people to signup to attend.
Results From Campaign
The campaign lasted one week and culminated in a one hour chat party to celebrate breaking the one million mark.
72,473 clicked to register to win one of 375 gifts and get a 20% coupon
48,245 people finished the registration process
During the week prior to the party they got 21,116 new fans
10,000 unique authors contributed during the one hour chat
How do you dethrone Google temporarily? You execute one of the most creative marketing campaigns of the year. It yielded 1.1 billion media impressions, took precious market share from Google, and got a book on the best-seller list. Bing teamed up with Jay-Z to launch his new book Decode by plastering all 320 pages of it — one page at a time — in different locations and in very unusual ways around the world for 30 days before the book was released for sale.
Primary Goal of Campaign
To drive millions of people away from Google to start using BING for Internet search and maps.
The Campaign
They began by staying true to each brand weaving Jay-Z’s very personal story, his journey through life and where it took him around the world, into Bing’s search and mapping technologies every day of the 30 day campaign. Each page of the book was reproduced and put into the real world in a number of innovative ways including on billboards, the top of parking garages, on building walls where Jay-Z grew up, to the bottom of a swimming pool. A website was created for the campaign where each day new clues were released on Twitter, Facebook, and Bing. You would then use Bing’s search and maps to “decode” the clue and find the location of the page and be the first to locate where the pages released that day were around the world. Over the 30 days, all the pages of the book were released so by the end of the campaign, you would have read the book.
Results
Average time a person was on the campaign’s landing page was 11 minutes.
Bing got 11.7% increase in visits to their search engine which finally tipped them into the Top 10 of most visited websites in the world.
The campaign yielded 1.1 billion media impressions
Jay-Z’s Facebook page grew by 1,000,000 fans
Jay-Z’s book, Decode was on the best seller list for 19 straight weeks.
Every major news channel and newspaper covered the campaign.
Large numbers of people started using BING for search and mapping over Google
This campaign became part of popular culture for an entire month.
Yahoo! Movies, a division of Yahoo! wanted to get a bigger piece of the multi-billion dollar movie going pie by the summer of 2012 through their Facebook page. Their goal is to become the source for movie goers who love to research, be in the “know,” get VIP passes to early showings, and communicate with other movie aficionados.
They get 24 million visitors on their main website but lack that kind of traffic on Facebook where they see untapped potential to grow their brand.
Joint Venture
Their campaign strategy was a joint effort with their offline partner, Regal Cinemas, who put up banners in theaters promoting the Yahoo! brand along with a QR code pointing to an offer most movie goers couldn’t refuse – free popcorn. People who did a social check-in via their Smart phones and liked the page got the popcorn. Offer applied online also. They would just redeem the popcorn when they arrived at the theater.
The Results From Campaign
1.2 million new Likes on their Facebook page
200,000 Check-ins
1.4 Million minutes spent on Yahoo! Movies Website
$1,000,000 of popcorn given away
Let’s Test Their Million Dollar Spend
They say their long-term goal is not about the “liking” it’s about building an audience of repeat visitors who will engage and make Yahoo! Movies their online source.
The great part about case studies like this is that you and I can take a peek behind the curtain and see if this is hype or really working. Below are the objectives/goals they hope to achieve now since the campaign began a few months ago. I encourage you to go to their Facebook page and see if the goals below are being lived out.
How Yahoo! Measured Success
Target a Season – focus on summer movie season
Hit Fans From All Angles – Reach fans online and offline
Relevant – Reward movie goers and capture “Likes” in return for continued activity on their Facebook page
Connect More – Interact with more movie fans via their website and Facebook page
Become The Movie Source – provide great content to keep fans coming back to their page regularly
My Take
I would question their last two goals – connecting and becoming the source. Out of the 2.15 million fans, they are not averaging the comments and interaction I would expect to consider this successful. It’s about amazing content and some of their biggest days of activity are based on movie blockbuster debuts or contests/giveaways they may be doing in a certain month. Their ratio of commenting back to people is very low and not that of a Sage archetype or the “in the know” type of a person I would expect running the page.
To view the full case study on SlideShare - go here. What do your think? Was it successful?
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.
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
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
Okay, I applied for the job. So did everyone I know last year when Queensland, Australia conducted a highly visible marketing campaign aimed at increasing awareness of, and visits to, the region.
It was, essentially, a contest. But it was packaged as a job — for six months, the winning “applicant” would be flown first class to the Great Barrier Reef from anywhere in the world, where your only tasks would be to feed the dog, clean the pool from time to time, and blog about how amazing it is being there. All expenses paid. Oh, and a salary of USD$8,800 per month.
While traditional advertising and public relations supported the campaign, this was one that was won in social media.
Note: Transcript of interview now available for download.
There are hundreds of social media evangelists out there who’ll tell you that your business absolutely needs a Facebook Fan Page, or you’re all but watching dollars slip away. Problem is, ask those same people what return you can reasonably expect from, say, creating and keeping a Facebook Fan Page updated, and the talk about return-on-investment starts going soft. Suddenly, it’s all about “return-on-influence.” Or maybe it’s just something you need to trust.
In the business world, at least where I stand, the only real proof is hard, cold, ROI numbers:
Is my business earning more money?
Have I reversed member attrition?
Has my cost to obtain a client gone down?
Are the numbers of customers walking through the door increasing?
The study “How Effective Is Facebook Marketing” is being featured in this month’s issue of the Harvard Business Review. Utpal Dohlakia is an associate professor of marketing Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business and Sara Brook is the owner of Desert Gallery Bakery and Café in Houston TX [Facebook Fan Page]
Case Studies Online publisher Tod Maffin interviewed them both about the company’s social media marketing campaign’s results.
* For the record, I do own a real license for eCamm’s Call Recorder for Skype. Never do software reinstalls just before doing a Skype interview! {grin}
So what about the numbers?
Researchers in the Rice study claim that Facebook Fan Page membership changed customer behaviour for the better. The study involved surveys of more than 1,700 respondents over a three-month period. As for the results, the bakery’s Facebook fans:
Made 36 per cent more visits to DG’s stores each month;
Spent 45 per cent more of their eating-out dollars at DG;
Spent 33 per cent more at DG’s stores;
Were more likely to recommend DG to friends;
Had greater emotional attachment to the company.
Still some caveats: Only about five per cent of the firm’s 13,000 customers became Facebook fans within three months. This could indicate that Facebook fan pages may work best as niche marketing programs targeted to customers who regularly use Facebook. “Social-media marketing must be employed judiciously with other types of marketing programs,” admitted the study author.
Has your company or client achieved similar real-world ROI success from a social media marketing campaign? If so, CaseStudiesOnline.com wants to hear about it! Please let us know about your success.
It took some convincing, but when the state finally jumped aboard, Iowa’s First State Lottery had built an interactive, digital footprint to support its brand, improve customer engagement, drive ticket sales and extend its reach, including to a younger demographic.
And the numbers panned out: Social media statistics for Iowa State Lottery included more than 18,000 YouTube video views, 1,600 Twitter followers and 1,700 Facebook fans. Source Case Study (hat-tip to Michelle C.)
One of the largest airlines in the world, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, is also considered one of the best in converting “Likes” into paying customers. Part of their marketing success is their willingness to take bold yet calculated risks. They are able to do this because they understand the customer buying journey. The touch points along the journey a lead or existing customer takes as they experience the KLM brand and then, how KLM works to improve each touch point along the path.
