Sometimes elaborate tactics aren’t required to stimulate a viral response; all it takes is one great idea. Ad agency McKinney’s idea was to take holiday ecards to a new level by putting an employee inside a giant inflatable snow globe for four days and broadcasting it on a microsite 24 hours a day. Visitors could receive “season’s greetings” from Snowglobe Boy and chat with him.
In a week, a small seed of a Facebook page, a YouTube video and about 1,000 emails to McKinney’s friends attracted about 50,000 unique visitors, network press coverage and lots of search traffic. The buzz was astounding. The campaign generated 105 million PR impressions across all mediums.
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: 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?
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.
“philosophy”, a skincare company with an objective to build brand loyalty with new visitors launched a Mother’s Day-inspired contest where it encouraged clients to share their mother’s philosophies at www.yourmomsphilosophy.com. Philosophy promoted its clients to share personal stories and pictures online with their “Your Mom’s Philosophy” campaign, which they implemented and managed using Bazaarvoice Stories. The results were exceedingly inspiring since it received more than 1,000 stories and nearly 39% of all site traffic originated on the Stories page. Case study
Radian6 took support of social media to advocate its social-media-monitoring platform amongst marketing and communication professionals. For the same, they planned a webinar series to educate and attract marketing decision-makers who wanted to learn about social media but had yet to embrace it in their own activities. It also announced the program through emails, Facebook ad and word-of-mouth organizations. The campaign turned to be huge success as over 1,500 people registered for the first Twebinar and it generated significant blog coverage and website traffic from 71 countries including over 2,000 tweets that were recorded during the event. Case study
To promote the privately funded trip of Richard Garriott to the Russian I Space Station, MindComet, an Interactive agency, created a multifaceted strategy designed to leverage this rare space voyage and promote it. To generate awareness, Operation Immortality, an eight-week national campaign prompting participants to help preserve mankind was launched. MindComet also designed and launched operationimmortality.com, a minisite that would be the focus for the promotion. The agency made efforts to reach hardcore gamers. MindComet also engaged IZEA for blogger outreach and assistance in additional social media promotion. The tremendous success of the site can be gauged from the fact that Operation Immortality minisite received over 100,000+ visitors and Blog outreach and PR effort generated over 130,000 mentions on sites. Case study
Tod Maffin, COO and Senior Strategist at tMedia Strategies, is a digital marketing strategist, specializing in social media, mobile marketing, and viral marketing. [keynote speeches | bio]
Sometimes elaborate tactics aren’t required to stimulate a viral response; all it takes is one great idea. Ad agency McKinney’s idea was to take holiday ecards to a new level by putting an employee inside a giant inflatable snow globe for four days and broadcasting it on a microsite 24 hours a day. Visitors could receive “season’s greetings” from Snowglobe Boy and chat with him.
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.)
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Tod Maffin, COO and Senior Strategist at