Cheers to Social Media – a social media marketing case study

Back in March my colleague Simon B and I spent some time promoting a beer festival via social media. We took on this project with the specific goal of experimenting to see if social media, and in particular Twitter, could be successfully leveraged to drive people to a real world event. Cutting to the punch line, yes we were successful.

We have now published a short case study on the results of this social, which you can see below or by going directly to Cheers to Social Media on Slideshare:

One of the key findings was that there is a positive Social Media ROI. For this campaign (or event) we managed to drive:

• 63% of attendees were a result of Social Media Marketing
• £571 revenue per 1 hour spent on Social Media
• £11.41 for each £1 spent (=11x ROI)
• 5.6% total cost of sale for revenue generated by Social Media

We also believe the ROI can be significantly increased by deploying ‘emerging’ Social Media best practices and development of better tools to manage campaigns and review data (ie, a social media analytics work bench).

The primary lesson was that with attention at a premium,  Social Media does indeed provide a great platform to ensure the success of marketing campaigns and in this case a real world event. In particular Twitter and Eventbrite proved cost effective and easy ways to drive awareness and consumer actions (e.g. attendance, footfall, purchases ).

Interesting to note that Facebook underperformed on what we expected. We also found that social media magnifies the value of search, at least for something very time based (ie, event).

For the event microsite we had 3175 unique visitors  during the promotional period and the traffic sources were as follows:

• 61% search (Google 58%)
• 24%-38% social media (*estimated low end of 24% to as high as 38%)
• 4% blogs

As a follow-up – “sort of  real time mini case study” – we are finding that social media again is proving a powerful way to drive awareness and interest in the actual case study!

Cheers To Social Media is currently being showcased on the ‘Business & Mgmt‘ page by our editorial team [slideshare] …

An additional proof point for success if using social media – here’s the screen grab is below.

Top 100 Websites for 2009 from The Guardian

The Guardian had a nice top 100 websites list in yesterday’s tech sections - worth checking out (note: its a UK centric list). I guess AFV should come with out own top website review one of these days. In the meantime its interesting to note the top picks in the ‘location, location’ category by the Guardian – Qype is gaining traction for sure, yet they don’t seem to register in ComScore (wonder why?).

Location, location

Services like these blossom with a mobile phone that can access the internet

Dopplr dopplr.com “share your future travel plans with friends and colleagues”, then find out if others will be there too.

Qype qype.com localised search for pubs, restaurants, etc; also a bit of a social network.

Loopt loopt.com “transforms your mobile phone into a social compass”.

Brightkite brightkite.com a “location-based social network”.

Is Twitter Missing the Boat?

Looks like Twitter is killing outbound SMS (ie – getting updates to your phone) in the UK for now and as TC UK points out this doesn’t look like a good business model or strategy. Wake up! You are leaving money on the table guys. I know its summer and the surf is up out west, but this is not a smart move. One of these days Twitter does need to start trying revenue models (I’ve got some solid ideas for them and others in the Web 2.0 space  who need to start generating some cash)… Twitter me at AFullerView if you want some high value advice – for free if you act fast…

Qype Stickers in London

Last week while getting my lunch I noticed my 1st Qype sticker in the window of the restaurant – Just Falafs. I am not sure how long Qype has been promoting this to businesses but it follows a similar strategy to Google Maps and Yelp. Qype is a local reviews and information site with user generated content and social media angle – it is basically a European Yelp and also competes with the likes of Trusted Places (which is A Fuller View favourite!)… All I can say is this is more fuel for bye bye Yellow Pages which no bad thing…

Smart Move by The Guardian

The Guradian Media group in the UK announced last week that they are buying ContentNext, the parent company of digital business website PaidContent, as part of its US expansion. ContentNext is basically a very good blog publishing outfit.

Why is this smart? Easy. Great content. Online traffic. Digital savvy team. A platform for expansion into other markets, like the US.

There were lots of posts around the web last week about this deal and by people a lot smarter than me – so I am not going say much more tonight. Its a good move. The Guardian is one of the top newspapers groups in terms of digital strategy! Right up there with the likes of Schibsted and the Irish Times.

Please Recycle these Yellow Page Books

These new editions of the yellow pages are all over London near where I work. As far as I can tell, the vast majority of them have been on the street for well over a week now. Please recycle and lets just stop printing these things!

Globrix.com using car advertising

We saw this car on Parsons Green in west London last week – the Globrix Car. Pretty good way to advertise. We’d like to know if this a one off or are their a fleet of these cars? Nice to see its a small economical and probably pretty ‘green’ car.

Trustedplaces Partners with bview

Trustedplaces – which is agreat site for local business reviews – annouced an interesting partnership with bview this week. From the official PR:

We’re very excited to announce that TrustedPlaces has just partnered with Bview to offer online marketing solutions for local businesses. Bview is a new customer reviews directory for all UK businesses. The combined offering is the first collaboration of its kind in the UK and places the two companies in a unique position to benefit from the growing local, online advertising market. It presents a viable and cost-effective alternative to traditional directory players, at a much lower cost.

The partnership enables and supports local business owners to manage their online reputation by providing attractive advertising models and enhancing exposure to relevant customers across both sites. We believe this is a fantastic opportunity to provide our growing community with great special offers from relevant businesses and establish a two-way, constructive conversation between TrustedPlaces members and business owners.

You can read the full PR HERE.

Multimap Gets Better – integration with Live Search

I am a little bit slow posting about this news from UK based Multimap, which is now part of the Microsoft family – Multimap is now tightly tied to Live Search in the UK – which is cool! Here’s some details from the official blog:

First things first, Multimap is now the lead consumer mapping experience for Live Search in the UK, and we’re proud to welcome all the UK users of Live Search Maps to Multimap.com. It may have been a while since you last used Multimap.com, but we hope that you’ll find all the great features that you’re used to, plus much more.

For those of you not familiar with Live Search Maps, and the Virtual Earth platform that powers it, check out the fabulous Bird’s Eye images, which are now available on Multimap.com. Unlike normal satellite and aerial imagery that is taken from directly above, Bird’s Eye images are captured by low-flying aircraft and are taken from a 45 degree angle, facing north, south, east and west directions to give a unique perspective.

Read the full blog post here OR better yet use the new and improved Multimap directly. I’ve always found Multimap to be one of the best UK focused mapping sites and was always an early innovator. Its great to see that they are improving the product and taking back ground from Google maps.

Thinking about Summer Holidays – vw camper vans

Today is a sunny, mild and bluster spring like day in London. We had a big rain storm blow through last night. For what ever reason I’ve been thinking about summer and holidays. Which reminded me about this travel piece I read in the Guardian ages ago about a company that rents VW Camper Vans – Seven Degree West – that have been fully kitted and sound way cool. Maybe this is just the ticket for our summer holiday. I hope that VW vans become available all over the world for holiday rentals and to inspire the beach bum in all of us.