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.
New Zealand fashion week, similar to New York’s fashion week, created a successful multi-platform social media strategy that helped grow attendance and revenue during the entire week of the event. Fashion weeks are a way to bring the top designers, retailers, socialites, and those just passionate about fashion together in one place to party and do business.
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?
ShipServ, a B2B e-commerce marketplace for the maritime shipping industry, sells to an industry that is not social media savvy and highly skeptical of, in their minds, an unproven way of doing business. ShipServ’s customer is a shipping supplier. To make money, those suppliers must pay ShipServ to list their offerings on the site.
The Video Campaign
They created a low tech animated video, “ShipServ Pages: The Movie” using Lego characters and even had a hero/star of the movie, Rex, depicting a typical owner operator of a shipping supply shop. Then posted it on their social channels, website and had their sales people send out emails to their leads with a link to the video. The goal was a low pressure approach to educate and entertain prospects and move them to try their online marketplace. Their CMO, John Watton reported that is was, “Highly successful. The innovation is really in how we’ve integrated it with our other social media and content marketing efforts.”
Hair Club, North America’s leading provider of hair restoration solutions for men and women created a mobile website with one purpose, to get mobile phone users to “click-to-call” for more information.
They worked with Google’s new free mobile marketing resource site to identify best practices in mobile marketing, from how to design their site to proper calls to action to move a mobile visitor to call their 800# or visit a nearby store. Their “click-to-call” button goes to a live sales person within seconds. Once a call is made, their close rate goes up exponentially.
Lesson Learned
There is still time to be an early adopter. Even though Hair Club’s mobile site is not visually appealing, it’s their effort to go mobile that paid off. Their competition is slow to act and they come up first on search from a mobile device leading to the clicks and calls. full case study.
Clorox had been advertising their Green Works brand of environmentally-friendly products for several months on Facebook without a noticeable boost in awareness or revenue. A new Facebook campaign was started in 2010 that aimed to raise community awareness with several different initiatives ranging from a $3 off coupon to helping the company decide where to send charitable donations. Another goal was to have fans register at their Green Works homepage on the web.
Campaign designed to increase awareness of Green Works
Various incentives offered for visiting Facebook page
Target audience was females aged 25-54
Clorox almost immediately discovered that the $3 off coupon was by far more effective than any campaign they had implemented to date. A .11% engagement rate was record setting for the company, which was later connected to a 12% increase in brand awareness in a Nielsen study. More than 20,000 fans voted and submitted comments for the charitable drives as well. Over 33% of Clorox’s Facebook visitors for the 2010 year can be directly linked to this advertising. To view the actual study, click 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
For the curious among you, know that Tayto crisps come in the following mouth watering flavours: Cheese & Onion, Salt & Vinegar, Smokey Bacon, Ready Salted, Prawn Cocktail (!), and Tex Mex.
Carnival Cruise Lines thinks it’s pioneered the use of social media to build customer loyalty and satisfaction. Its campaign included launching a blog, a Twitter stream, Flickr photostreams, and a web site offering a virtual interactive tour, an online community/ social network offering photo/ story sharing, scrapblogging, trip planning, event organizing. The target audience was travel agents and new as well as existing customers. The results — more than one million hits on the web site and more than 20,000 online bookings Case Study
The Rose Project, a Dublin based charity that helps HIV/ AIDS patients in East Africa, collaborated with Brightspark Consulting to launch a social media campaign to spread awareness about this noble cause. The campaign involved a brand new web site, a blog, Facebook page and Twitter profile. The results have been phenomenal – donations received from as far as Alaska and Adare. Amazon collaborated with The Rose Project through its Twitter feed and started distributing gift wraps for the project. Case Study
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.
