As a top San Francisco digital marketing agency, Colibri Digital Marketing knows what is needed to create and develop digital brands for San Francisco’s very specific market. We’ve quickly learned never to underestimate the power of networking and the value that can be found in building strategic partnerships.

In this digital marketing case study, we’ll describe how strategic partnerships can increase a brand’s social media numbers, website traffic, and targeted leads. We’ll show how our agency created a strategy that secured a high volume of targeted leads for a local San Francisco brand. And how that converted to sales and allowed the client to meet their marketing goal.

The Client

The client is an inspirational speaker residing in San Francisco who produces events and workshops with high-profile speakers and industry leaders. The client also has an online course. Working in a saturated industry, the client largely depends on networking and word of mouth as strategies for selling event tickets and online courses. However, in an increasingly digital world, these marketing tactics are becoming more difficult to secure and yet more valuable than ever.

The Problem

When the client contacted us, they had a very small digital marketing presence. There were no systems in place to track the results of their various marketing efforts. Nor to track their analytic data in general. They had recently signed up for an email service that could provide automated workflows, tracking tools, and analytics but were unsure of how to use the programs.

With little understanding of digital marketing, the client faced the challenge of needing to sell a large volume of tickets for an upcoming event in a short period of time. Additionally, they wanted to time the date of the event with the launch of an online course and hoped to sell course admissions. Since local partnerships and word-of-mouth strategies had been over-utilized for previous events, the client wanted to turn to digital marketing to achieve their sales goals.

Digital Marketing Strategy for Lead Capture and Strategic Partnerships

The following four-prong strategic partnerships strategy was created to help the client meet their goals and allow them to gain additional long-term benefits and brand awareness.

Strategic Partnership

Our first step was to establish a strategic partnership with the high-profile speaker that was to be the guest of honor at our client’s event. While it was not in the speaker’s contract to promote the event on social media, we set up a correspondence with the author to secure promotion on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Before contracting our services, the client hesitated to ask the speaker to do social media promotion for the event. With our networking expertise, we could leverage the partnership between the client and the speaker as a promotional tool for the other components of our strategy.

We want to stress how crucial the strategic partnership was in executing our digital marketing strategy. Positioning the speaker to leverage the client’s brand was critical for promotion and yet free of cost. However, the partnership needed to be set up in a way that did not upset the speaker by making them feel as if they were being taken advantage of. Our solution was to highlight the benefits the speaker would receive by aiding in promotion while also making them feel valued and respected.

With the strategic partnership secured, our next step was to create a lead capture and sales strategy.

Lead Capture

Rather than ask the strategic partner to simply promote event ticket sales, which would only meet a short-term goal, we decided that a lead capture strategy would be more effective since we could market to the leads beyond a single social media post. To capture the leads, a highly desired incentive was needed.

Brands have many lead capture incentives at their disposal — ebooks, tutorials, webinars, etc. — but we decided that a giveaway of tickets to the event would be best suited for this lead capture strategy because it would promote the event and create a buzz. The giveaway could also be used to increase the client’s social media numbers.

Social Media

We used a social media app that allowed the giveaway to be hosted on the client’s Facebook page. This encouraged participants to both “like” the Facebook page and enter their email addresses.

Promotion for the giveaway included posting on the client’s social media accounts, advertising the giveaway in the client’s newsletter and on their website, and, most importantly, asking the strategic partner to post the link to the giveaway on their Facebook page.

The result? Our client gained immediate ticket sales, an increase of over 5,000 followers on Facebook, and an increase of over 7,000 email leads. All in a single day.

Email Automations

With leads captured and a nice bump in social media followers secured, our final step was implementing several email workflows that would take giveaway participants through a sales funnel. Upon entering the giveaway, participants received an automated thank you email that offered a small discount on event tickets exclusive to the giveaway participants.

Over the next few weeks, several automated emails were sent to the leads who were in the email workflow. That workflow promoted the event and prompted people to claim the limited-time discount offer. As such, over a hundred event tickets were sold.

After the giveaway closed and the winners were announced, the client, of course, retained the leads and social media followers acquired during the giveaway promotion. This allowed us to continue marketing the event to the leads and social media followers.

Tracking Results and Analytics

During this period, we could track the number of event tickets and online course admissions sold to the leads we secured by utilizing the tracking and analytics programs provided by the email service. We were also able to monitor the increase in activity and engagement on the client’s Facebook page by utilizing our expertise in analyzing Facebook insights and page data.

The Results

What you see above reflects a fully developed digital marketing strategy. It took a four-pronged approach to help our clients successfully meet their sales goals. As a San Francisco digital marketing agency, we have a team of experts at our disposal. This allows us to create robust strategic partnerships that incorporate numerous areas of digital marketing.

The long-term results we envisioned for our client proved to be a success. With this single digital marketing strategy, we achieved the following results for our client:

  • 70% of the sales of overall event tickets sales goal came from the lead capture strategy
  • An increase of over 5,000 Facebook followers
  • An increase of over 7,000 email leads
  • A successful course launch, with the majority of course admissions sold to the leads captured during the giveaway promotion
  • A substantial increase in website traffic, resulting from the increased number of leads and Facebook followers and their engagement with the client’s newsletter and Facebook posts
  • An increase in the client’s overall brand exposure

Do You Need a San Francisco Digital Marketing Agency?

We’re in the business of accelerating success for visionary brands. We take pride in helping clients with their digital marketing needs while focusing on the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profit. For more news, updates, and case studies, keep an eye on our Facebook and Twitter feeds!

To get a taste of what we can do for your business, schedule a free digital strategy session with us. It’s entirely complementary, and you’ll come away with actionable steps for your strategic partnerships.

It’s fun 🙂