We decided that being sponsors for the West Oxfordshire Business Awards (WOBA) was not enough, especially when there was so much work to do in raising awareness and encouraging local businesses to enter the #woba2013 awards.
So we decided to offer help to WOBA with their digital marketing and social media, with the aim to motivate others, celebrate their achievements, and open doors to their success.
As sponsors of this year’s Social Media Award, it was only fitting that we got creative with the medium with some interesting and eye-catching visuals and Vines.
We started off by splitting the campaign into three phases, organising the strategy around the key dates in the WOBA calendar. The central theme we came up with to wrap the entire campaign around was WOBA opens doors, which emphasises the advantages of entering WOBA. It also highlights that the winners of WOBA are not just those businesses with the trophy, but the benefits of entering open new doors for everyone.
In terms of execution, we used social media and email marketing to get the message across. The call for WOBA entries lasted two months, with emails and social media getting updated regularly with fresh content, raising awareness and driving entries. Here’s just one example of an email we sent out during this period. The time put into these communications really paid off as entries this year were up by 15% and Twitter followers were also up by 15%.
The WOBA team is delighted with the social media campaign that mark-making* devised to drive entries to the awards. Using stunningly simple images with targeted messages across Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook they have helped ensure that more people know about the awards and more businesses entered them. mark-making* has brought a serious strategy combined with real energy and passion to our social media!
Jo Sensecall – WOBA team