Well it’s the 1st big Marketing event of the year and it seems absolutely everybody who has a business big or small is getting on the Valentines Bandwagon be it for to increase sales or show the loving side of your brand as we did on Twitter and Bord Gais also did very well.

 

 

When we looked at our previous Valentine campaigns they tended to be very much the same from year to year looking something like this :

Nothing at all wrong with this but now with Social media, brand building , engagement and sharing been the buzz words we wondered could we try something new for 2015.

So we could a very simple sign in corri board cost €7.50 and placed at a few strategic locations around Claremorris.
Following this sign we decided to place a few names to add some mystery, suspense and excitement.
First of all we picked the names Jack and Aoife just because they seem to be popular names.
Cue the comments and calls what are they for ? , why did we pick the names and could we use certain names . I kid you not.

Next we put the names on Facebook with an invitation to tag yourself or your friend if you had the name Jack & Aoife though we have to say Aoife did wipe the floor with the number of posts compared to poor Jack.

Anyway there you go an amazing response and a great organic reach with no payment at all to boost.
Also interesting to note that the breakdown of people who viewed the post was 70;30 Non Fans to Fans respectively.
That was on the 4th of February and with over a week to go why not extend the campaign by going for different names.
Oh by the way there was a prize of a Dinner for 2 in John Grays Restaurant but that did not seem to matter, it was all about tagging your friends and begging to see your name there.
Next up were Emer and James again With Emer soundly beating James by a reach of 10k to 3k ,
Followed by Mary and Patrick where Male honour was restored as Patrick had a reach of 6k compared to Marys 5k.
Even when we announced winners posts were getting a reach of 5k.

Added in a radio ad also for good measure
Listen here: https://soundcloud.com/mcwilliam-park-hotel/9737c1-1
Interesting to see the radio ads post got a very poor reach

To encourage more interaction we decided to let our fans suggest their names and maybe we would pick them
Within 1 hour we had 149 comments which shows fans watched our page to see what was next.

Michal and Caroline both got reaches of 5k
As this competition was always only going to be for a few days we decided to give the fans the opportunity to say would we run for 1 more day.

Therefore decided to give it a go.
Now its over and we have been astounded at the interest and level of comments

Total reach

 

While we don’t want to mention other pages it is safe to say it topped all comparisions on all metrics for last 11 days.
So we have learnt maybe again the less sales the better in your posts.
We have 10 winners who each get a Dinner for 2 in our Restaurant but as they are not from local areas we feel they will use it for an over night stay which means rooms sales & new customers.

This campaign was thought up very quickly so therefore there was no big strategic plan and overall cost and time spent was minimal

We have learnt so much on how to engage fans and we think we can lever it as tool for further promotions
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Thanks for reading and sharing is caring