You’ve heard about SEO, SEM, and social media marketing, but do you know what happens when they work together to create a fully integrated digital campaign?
If you’re curious about the potential of an integrated digital marketing plan, read on as we take a look at the powerful awareness campaign created for the Wild Blueberries Association of North America (WBANA).
A multi-faceted plan
In 2013 WBANA approached VONT and partner company Ethos to start a campaign that would build brand awareness of wild blueberries and educate blueberry lovers about the differences between wild and cultivated blueberries. The resulting campaign employs all that the digital world has to offer – social media, SEM, SEO, content marketing, blogger outreach/PR – as well as traditional marketing techniques.
Combining all strategies led to dramatic increases in measurables such as growth in website visitors, email list, blog subscription, number of engagements on social channels, shares, likes, and offer downloads.
The power of SEM
A newly designed and fully SEO’d website provided the base for the SEM campaign composed of search ads, display ads and video ads. Google AdWords are used to place the ads.
Search Ads
Search ads are text only and placed on SERPs. They are triggered when users search for ‘blueberry’, blueberry recipes, or the health benefits/nutrition of blueberries.
Display Ads
Display ads are both static and animated. They have appeared on websites as wide ranging as nytimes.com and motherearthnews.com to accuweather.com and cooks.com. Placement is targeted for pages with recipe content, and health and nutritional sites. Remarketing – targeting those visitors who have previously visited WBANA’s recipe section or Better Blueberry page – is also used. In addition, several large WBANA’s giveaways were promoted on the display network boosting sweepstakes entries at a relatively low cost.
In-Stream Video Ads
In-stream video advertising is the third component of the SEM campaign. The goal here is to increase video views and clicks to the website. Placement is targeted around blueberry and smoothie recipes. For example, JoyofCooking.com’s YouTube video on how to make a blueberry pie is a perfect partner for WBANA’s in-stream ad explaining why Wild Blueberries are better for baking pies. Other in-stream videos feature the advantages of wild blueberries in smoothie recipes.
The combined efforts of the ads have led to a whopping 388% increase in sessions on the WBANA website.
The power of social media
The key to the success of the social side of the WBANA campaign is the integration of all social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, together with WBANA’s blog, content marketing, blogger outreach and persona targeting.
Content Calendar
A content calendar lays out topics for articles and posts, pins and pictures for each quarter, and allows for tweaking whenever a timely topic comes around. For example, January focused on the health and nutrition benefits of wild blueberries to help with New Year’s resolutions, as well as Super Bowl snacks, while February recognized Valentine’s Day with an article on heart healthy wild blueberries and Mardi Gras with a King Cake with Wild Blueberries recipe. Yet, the calendar is flexible enough to allow for unforeseen topics such as the January blizzard that hit the Northeast. Posts on Facebook and Twitter are made six days a week, at least once a day, and blog articles are posted approximately twice a week.
Blogger Outreach
To help with the load, WBANA enlisted the help of guest bloggers such as nutritionists, fitness experts, and prominent bloggers to write articles. Bloggers share their expertise – and also post the article to their own sites creating more cross-pollination and connection.
Targeted Audience
The WBANA audience is made up of foodies, health and nutrition advocates, fitness seekers and LOHAS mothers. In order to ensure that each audience receives only relevant content, WBANA uses targeted social media advertising, as well as personas (fictional representations of each audience) to create earmarked content.
Promotions
Approximately once a month WBANA offers a giveaway or promotion such as Wild Blueberry Infuser water bottles, recipe e-books or a Nutribullet blender. In addition, three times a year WBANA offers larger giveaways such as May’s Feed Her Wild Side Mother’s Day Giveaway of a Wild Blue Beach Cruiser Bike and $1000 Visa gift card and December’s Giveaway that included a Vitamix, Kitchen Aid blender, and $500 Whole Foods gift certificate. Suhweet!
A big effort pays off big
Needless to say the sustained and multi-faceted campaign has paid off for WBANA. The Wild Blueberries Facebook page added close to 100,000 fans in just over a year. Meanwhile, unique visitors to the website increased by over 130%, and WBANA’s re-marketing database increased by over 500,000.
The takeaway
So what’s the takeaway for the campaign? When you take advantage of all the digital world has to offer, you can turn a lackluster campaign into a blockbuster campaign.
About VONT Performance Digital Marketing
At VONT we believe that change is the only constant in the digital world – and that excites us. When tools and environments are constantly changing, new opportunities to help our clients achieve success are constantly arising. Each new advertising technology, each new social platform, each new design approach allows us to improve on the results we achieve for our clients.
We believe in this idea of continual fine-tuning so much that we named our company VONT, which means to achieve exponential improvement in incremental steps. It is our core belief, and the reason why we are not simply a web design company or simply a digital advertising agency, but rather a long-term, single source partner providing a comprehensive array of web development and digital marketing capabilities for a variety of areas including food industry digital marketing.
In short, we’re here so that our clients achieve success in the ever-changing digital world. If you’d like to learn more about VONT and the work we’ve done with our food clients, visit our Work page. Or, if you have a question, contact us. We’ll get right back to you!
