Case Study: Creating an Online Presence from Scratch to Thriving in 3 Months

Written by Rose Souders

The Project Overview: Digital Launch for an Educational Product

We were brought on a temporary project to launch and build an online presence to promote an educational product. When we came on board, there was very little online presence. The client needed to build multiple social media accounts, launch a new website, and develop an email marketing strategy. This project was a team effort that brought together the strengths of designers, web developers, partners, and, of course, Potluck’s strategic approach to digital marketing!

Our aim was to build a strategy that would serve our client long after the initial phase of the project ended, so we developed a cohesive digital marketing plan designed to not only produce results but gather assets and information to be used on other platforms and in future marketing efforts.

We created an online presence on multiple social media platforms, a healthy Facebook ads account, as well as a two- month strategic email marketing campaign to promote the website launch, provide ongoing value to subscribers, and create action for the client’s sales team. To make the most of our efforts, we ensured that the email, ads, and social media strategies were well-coordinated and designed to benefit each other via cross-promotion, retargeting, etc.

The Strategy: Build Relationships & Create Action

The focuses were to lay the groundwork for establishing a presence on social media in a professional manner, increase visibility to potential customers, generate excitement around the launch of the new website, and ultimately begin building relationships with people who would benefit from the product.

Before we begin a new project, Potluck typically analyzes a client’s data to inform our strategy. In this case, since there was little history to analyze with the brand new accounts, we instead started by focusing on who our target audience would likely be and how to build a social media image and structure that would be appealing to them, clear, and consistent with other marketing efforts. In preparation for the web site launch, we initially focused heavily on brand awareness and building audiences for our paid ads.

Our primary social media focus was Facebook. Here, our focuses were accomplished by starting organic content to give new followers an idea of what to expect from following the page and attracting followers with an informative and engaging ad that was distributed to people who fit our target market, using the email list to generate additional lists of similar audiences and creating our own audiences by targeting interests that indicated that they would be a good fit for our page. After collecting a following on Facebook to whom the product would be relevant, we maintained the relationships with selected organic content that would be engaging and in line with the client’s mission. Furthermore, we had a partnership with a relevant organization, which included hosting a giveaway that resulted in a massive amount of social visibility for our client. All posts included imagery and/or links. We also began preparing our email templates and campaigns for the mailing list. We ensured that content was consistent across platforms. This preparation would pay off as the initial campaigns had impressive results, which will be discussed in the following section.

Our Results: Online Presence Unlocked!

Overall, our efforts created valuable audiences, allowed us access to insight about our users that will help inform our client for their future marketing efforts, brought in a great deal of visibility, and provided a solid foundation for them to move forward in digital marketing.

Highlights in Three Month’s Time:

Facebook: Our client went from having no online presence on Facebook to having over 1,800 likes, which exceeded our initial goals! Initially, nearly all of our page impressions (times that we were seen) were from ads, but as our following grew, so did our organic (unpaid) impressions. In month three, we received an enormous amount of viral visibility from being tagged in our partner’s giveaway content. By collecting a large and carefully targeted following, we have not only given our client an audience for future organic content but a valuable audience for advertising campaigns, mailing list promotions, and growth on other platforms.

Email Marketing: We launched an email marketing campaign in tandem with the website launch, beginning with an introductory email about the client. Along with sales emails, we included engaging emails that would provide value to our targeted customers to keep subscribers engaged. Our subject lines were designed to be as clear as possible about the contents of the emails, and we had a fantastic open rate. In our launch month, we had a monthly unique open rate of 11.66%, and grew to a unique open rate of 19.16% in the month after launch, which is unusually high for a sizeable email list! As you will see in the next section, there was a massive increase in web traffic in the launch month (March), with 37.66% of that traffic from our email marketing efforts! Our client now has flexible templates and examples of effective emails to continue their successful email campaign as well as a robust audience that has already had many opportunities to become increasingly familiar with their brand and product.

Website Traffic: We saw a clear improvement in web traffic in month two even before the new website was launched (there was an older website live before the new website launched). In addition to the enormous amount of traffic from our email marketing efforts we had in month three, we saw increases in traffic from organic traffic from search engines, such as Google, and social sources, such as Facebook. This was exciting because not only did we get immediate gratification from social media efforts, but we saw that more users were finding us through search engines!

Now that the website has more activity, our client will be able to use Facebook pixel data to create additional audiences for future marketing efforts as well as their existing ads based on visits and behaviors on the website. 

We are confident that our client has the resources they need to continue marketing effectively, and we wish them all of the best!

Takeaways

• Create a social media presence that is approachable and transparent about the value people will get from following you.
• Keep your various digital marketing efforts in sync with each other and use opportunities to cross-promote within your own marketing structure as well as promoting with other collaborators to get results that benefit everyone involved.
• Carefully select the people you target who will be more likely to connect with your company’s mission and engage in meaningful ways.
• Be clear in your intentions and provide value to your email subscribers for their loyalty.

Looking to hand-off your digital marketing efforts to an experienced team?

Potluck Consulting offers strategy and management services for social media marketing, paid advertising, email marketing, SEO, and content marketing. Take a look at our Pricing Guide to learn more about what working with us might look like for you.