Project:
Social media and PR-led marketing to raise brand awareness and direct web traffic
Services:
Marketing planning, social media, public relations, content marketing
Results:
Rapidly increased web traffic across two brand platforms, consistent PR coverage raising brand awareness in the right publications
Codelocks designs and manufactures a range of digital locks for doors, lockers and cabinets. The company has offices in the UK and North America, and sells to a variety of distributors and OEMs worldwide. Digital locks are a modern, more convenient alternative to old-fashioned locks and keys. They enable facilities and estate managers to restrict access in large public buildings such as hospitals and universities, without having to managing large numbers of keys, fobs or cards. Access through the door is achieved by entering a numeric code on the keypad.
Codelocks operates in a highly competitive growth market. It wanted us to establish multiple Internet platforms to give the company a competitive advantage, boost traffic to the UK website and raise its brand awareness with locksmiths. Using social media and public relations we were able to meet these objectives.
We created a blog at: http://digitallocks.com/, a ‘go to’ resource for digital lock application advice, installation tips and technical support. We wrote weekly blog posts encompassing relevant search terms that we identified for each Codelocks product.
We set up two Twitter accounts: one for Codelocks door locks and the other for KitLock – Codelocks’ brand of cabinet and locker locks. We tweeted about the website, blog and industry events, directing audiences to interesting articles and company news.
We encouraged locksmiths to leave product reviews and send in photos of locks they had installed. We also ran a competition at Easter to guess the contents of a locker, the winner received a chocolate rabbit and a free locker lock.
Within months the blog received over 1,000 hits per month, which quickly grew to over 1,500 hits per month. In total, 50 blog posts generated over 9,000 views – a figure that will continue to increase over time.
We targeted relevant followers on Twitter for both accounts, increasing the number of followers to over 1,500 for Codelocks and over 1,300 for KitLock. With regular retweets, interactions and requests we improved Codelocks’ and KitLocks’ Klout score – a tool used to measure Twitter influence – by 270% and 300% respectively.
We received regular retweets from trade magazines and locksmith forums. Locksmiths posted positive comments about Codelocks’ products, training and customer service.
Social media has become an important part of the marketing mix for many organisations. The Codelocks campaign complemented an on-going PR programme, which we had been running successfully for a couple of years. Our knowledge of the business and industry enabled us to generate a steady stream of content to support the social media campaign.
When you are thinking about what social media can do for your business, consider what it can do to complement your existing marketing strategy.