The ROI of Increasing Brand Recognition
A study conducted by AdAge and Google reported that customers “who engage more correlate with those who purchase more and that consumers can be inspired to engage with your brand.” The question for marketers then becomes: What can we do to make customers want to engage? We would argue that the secret sauce is increasing brand recognition.
The companies we like most are the ones that become partners, trendsetters, even buddies.
Most importantly, they reach out to us and make each interaction valuable (or at least, fun). Through providing valuable content and great customer service, these companies cultivate ongoing relationships with their consumers. Their consumers then become engaged, enthusiastic repeat customers and raving fans.
One of the ways a company can create a valuable and fun interaction is through a raffle, sweepstakes, competition, or giveaway. However, hosting a large-scale giveaway can be a time-consuming endeavor without the sizable infrastructure to support it.
Who is OfficeAdventure?
OfficeAdventure is an app designed to bring offices together with the common goal to embrace a fit lifestyle. It enables friendly competition between coworkers with game-like points for spending an hour doing Yoga or jogging during lunch, and its marketers capitalize on its ability to increase employee engagement through fitness camaraderie.
It’s a social tool, which gives it a natural opportunity for increasing brand recognition and consumer engagement using social media. OfficeAdventure is also a relatively new company, with a small, dedicated marketing team.
The Key Issue
OfficeAdventure’s marketing team decided early-on to push social media marketing, investing in Facebook ads and their Twitter presence, as well as Instagram. However, their efforts to reach out to their target audience weren’t garnering the ROI they had hoped for.
They needed to consider what they could offer that would both improve their long-term customer relationships and increasing brand recognition.
What’s in a Name?
Offer a Raffle or a Sweepstakes and you may be surprised that fewer people than you expected sign up. Statistically, the term “Giveaway” gets better results, even though there is no real difference between them.
Using a Company Store to Streamline the Process
OfficeAdventure was already using Inspire Marketing Services’ company store to supply their trade show marketing materials. They liked their branded OGIO backpacks and gym-friendly tank tops so much that they decided to use them for a giveaway promotion.
The idea was to do a nation-wide sweepstakes. OfficeAdventure asked customers to submit selfies on Instagram and Twitter while working out using the #OfficeAdventure hashtag. A handful of winners would then be chosen at random.
Our Inspire Marketing Services company store representative suggested a slight change to their original plan.
Instead of running the promotion nationwide with every OfficeAdventure consumer in the sweepstakes, we suggested they run individual campaigns in select cities. This would give the promotions a more local focus and a higher chance for entrants to win. They chose to run the promotion in Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago and Washington D.C.
Selected winners would receive a special URL to the OfficeAdventure company store where they would enter in their shipping address, size and color preference.
We completely automated the entire campaign for OfficeAdventure. Inspire spent weeks to ship-out backpacks and tank tops by the dozens. This level of shipping and fulfillment automation saved the marketing team countless hours of sourcing, packing, address-gathering, shipping and troubleshooting.
The Results
The OfficeAdventure giveaway was one of the most successful marketing campaigns the company had to date. The brand received record numbers of hashtags, site visits, “talking about” scores and leads generated.
Running individual campaigns in select cities gave the promotions a local focus, increasing brand recognition and participation in target markets. The most rewarding ROI was in how much fun the participants had showcasing their workouts.
OfficeAdventure posted their favorite photos on their website and cross-promoted them on their social media channels. This gave rise to a feeling of competition for who could take the most exciting selfie.
Submissions included challenging yoga poses, snowboarding, roping cattle, and even hiking in Costa Rican rainforest. The sense of fun and adventure marketers tapped into with this simple giveaway has heavily influenced marketing since.
Our Conclusion
The Inspire Marketing Services company store made giveaway fulfillment entirely hands-off for the OfficeAdventure marketing team. OfficeAdventure used this extra bandwidth to showcase participants and connect with their audience like never before.