Social Media Case Studies: Driving ROI in Unexpected Categories.

We’ve been in the social media space for over seven years now and alongside our clients, we’ve seen some incredible results. But we still continue to be surprised by how well it can perform – despite the maturity of the channel.

Here are two recent examples that couldn’t be more different in terms of the target market, KPIs and category involvement. In both cases, social came up triumphant against most other media.

Buying toilet paper is a very low involvement purchase (or is it?)

The brief

In March 2017, Kleenex relaunched its toilet paper.

We were challenged to re-engage an audience who aren’t all that energised about the product…

The iconic golden Labrador is a strong brand asset of Kleenex. But did the relaunched superior product deserve a more superior spokes-animal? We leveraged this big idea on social media to get our audience to fall in love with Kleenex again.

Strategy

We created a social strategy showcasing three social-only audition videos (original footage was filmed by creative agency JWT) – where a variety of animals auditioned to see if they could take the top job from the famous Kleenex puppy.

We used the audience’s love of the puppy as well as their natural interest in fluffy bunnies, French bulldogs and baby alpacas to create tension and divide our audience.

And boy did they divide!

There were the passionate puppy loyalists, there was the bunny-is-best banter and who knew there were so many alpaca lovers in Australia?!

Our community had their say – in fact there were over 2000 comments on the alpaca audition alone. Our community even joined us in the auditions – their pets loved tearing up TP, ‘nesting’ in newness and generally having a great time with the improved Kleenex product.

The cherry on the sundae? The close-knit collaboration of the agencies involved. This had been the biggest campaign for the brand in a while and every agency had their part to play. Working together with JWT, Edelman and Mindshare, we achieved outstanding results for our client.

Results

• The highest ROI compared to any other media channel for the campaign
• Paid social drove 43% of media sales with only 13.75% of the total media budget
• A CPM 50% lower than target
• Unique reach of 6,633,113 (70% of the target audience!)
• 13M more impressions than expected

Key takeaway for brands

It’s eminently possible for social to drive higher ROI than other channels – even in a low involvement category. But only up to a certain point. In other words, investing ‘too much’ money in social could likely increase sales at the penalty of a higher cost per sale. The challenge for brands? Identifying that point for social (and every other channel), then dividing the media budget accordingly. What’s more, as social intersects with many other sales and marketing activities, it’s crucial that clients help facilitate positive working relationships between agencies.

Engaging an older audience… with social?

The brief

StatePlus is a financial planning firm and an expert in retirement for the state sector. There was a YoY decline in people requesting appointments with their financial advisors. The current social activity worked well to drive people to the website but not in driving actual conversions. StatePlus tasked us with driving more qualified leads from their social channels.

The ‘a ha’ moment

We reached out to StatePlus planners about why people weren’t converting into appointments and they spoke about consumers being ‘too cold’ at the point of call.

We needed to create a broader messaging strategy to expose potential customers with more content rather than simply targeting them with sign-up ads from the start.

Strategy

Our first move was to add the top layers of the social marketing funnel using video ads for awareness and consideration, and nurturing content to drive interest.

Then we needed to drive people down the funnel. So we developed a retargeting strategy for those who had watched one of the videos or visited the website without converting.

And to top it off, to capitalise on peaks in super interest we held live Q&A sessions on social with the CEO after announcement of the new super regulations in July 2017.

Results

• 262,000 people reached in the public sector (potential audience of 340,000)
• 9,448 clicks to site (with a 10.8% conversion rate!)
• 48% lower cost per lead (CPL) than set target

Key takeaway for brands

Social can be used to engage an older audience – not only for branding campaigns but also to generate leads. While our success with StatePlus is by no means a blanket rule indicating success, if your brand targets older Australians, perhaps social deserves a bigger piece of your media budget pie!

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