If you didn’t notice the ribbons, hot pink swag, or the thousands that walked in a local Race for the Cure, this October was Breast Cancer Awareness Month. With 1 in 8 U.S. women diagnosed, this is a worthy and major cause to participate in.

This October, we ran a Breast Cancer Awareness Month Campaign for our Elite Packages of the Growth Engine.

SIDE NOTE: This January we are officially kicking off our new Growth Engine offering, however we’ve started to unveil it to existing clients a few months ago. The Elite Package is the most robust package we offer on the Growth Engine.

To the funeral homes that ran this campaign, it was automatic and effortless. But behind the scenes, our team put a lot of thought and work into creating a successful campaign to build awareness and leads for the funeral home. We wanted to explain the campaign in a bit more detail, describe how it was made, some challenges that resulted, and break down why it was so successful.

 

WHAT IT IS

We define CAMPAIGN as a project of a certain topic that is promoted through Facebook ads that catches the interest of members of your community and allows them to take action.

In this case, the topic was Breast Cancer Awareness Month, more specifically honoring those who have lost someone to breast cancer with a small memorial candle holder.

The action that was taken was to click [Sign Up] to be entered to win one of the small memorial candle holders. (click to see the link on Facebook)

 

HOW IT PERFORMED

We ran this campaign for the entire month of October. Of all the client funeral homes we ran it for, it averaged 4,871 people reached, 229 clicks on the landing page, and 152 leads! In other words, on average 152 people choose to enter their contact information (including address and phone number) in order to have the chance to win this memorial candle holder.

One beautiful thing about this campaign was how it provided a space for people to share their heart and feelings. They commented with who their candle would be in memory of, names of loved ones they’ve lost, and even a photo. You can see the sincere comments made on this post of the campaign (click on image to the right to see comments).

 

HOW IT WORKS

For all our campaigns, including this one, we craft two to four different ads. They have unique text images so that Facebook can use them to see which begins to perform better, depending on the audience, and chooses the most effective version as the winner. This helps get the most reach for the ad budget.

Each ad in the campaign was promoted to a targeted audience within the funeral home’s community, with a large ad budget that ensured it reached thousands of community members with the funeral home’s message. When a community member saw the ad and expressed interest by clicking “Sign Up”, we collected their name, email, address, and phone number which we then saved within the funeral home’s customer relationship manager (CRM) for tracking and future follow ups.

Once the campaign ends on Facebook, we chose two winners for each client, which we announced in our clients’ email newsletter. Then, we ordered and mailed the winners their candle holders on behalf of the funeral homes.

The best part of this all: the participating funeral homes received over 150 leads each in a single month and have to even lift a finger!

 

WHY DO IT

It’s easier to understand why we would promote doing a campaign such as, “Sign up to get free planning ahead emails” but one to just give away gifts? It seems strange to many. The reason it’s important to run engaging campaigns like this is simple: show off your brand and build trust and goodwill.

Whether you call it a brand, a team, or a company, your firm has a living breathing personality. You are part of your community, but being seen is a rising challenge. In order to open up communication with your community, it’s best to go to where they spend their free time – online! This campaign allows you to be seen, and shows off your caring brand. It develops trust and shows that you care for the families in your community. Each person who signed up or commented now feels a closer affinity with your brand, and is open, trusting, and eager to see your next messages.

 

CHALLENGES

Creating this campaign – deciding on what the giveaway will be, developing the different ads and images, tracking it’s progress on Facebook, writing the follow up newsletter, and finally sending the gifts – takes significant time. Let’s face it: your time is better served helping families in need than building, managing, and monitoring digital marketing campaigns. That’s why the Growth Engine is built from the ground up to make it easy and effortless to get real results online.

 

If you are interested in learning more about our campaigns within the Growth Engine, visit us at https://lb.funeralinnovations.com/home/growth-engine today.