Ryan Ruud // Portfolio

Digital Strategy Marketing PR

FanTools Acquisition Strategy

Situation

• New SaaS offering from Minneapolis software company, Four51

• Social media-publishing suite for small businesses

• Being marketed and sold with inside and outside sales activity  

Goal

• Board of Directors set a goal for FanTools to acquire 1,000+ users

Methodology

• Keyword research, primary research captured from sales force and

user experience testing

FanTools Acquisition Strategy

FanTools Acquisition Strategy

Key findings:

• Small business owners preferred to discover and engage a social media tool

online.

• Sign up and online experience frustrating/confusing.

• Plenty of affordable online channels to leverage in campaigns.

• SMBs were put off by words like platform, seemed like work and still didn’t

entirely understand what the benefit.

FanTools Acquisition Strategy

The Strategy

• Refocus sales & marketing strategy to online lead/acquisition. • Simplify website and sign up process.

• Multichannel paid, owned, earned and shared approach.

• Change positioning from “Social Promotion Platform” to “Your Social Media Guide”.

• Campaign core around a new mascot, “Joe the Pizza Guy”, to introduce product.

• http://bit.ly/VTKPKM

FanTools Acquisition Strategy

WebUpdate from flash enabled, no CTA, unclear message difficult user experience and hard to update to new site with CMS, Strong CTA, Customer reinforcement, Clear message

FanTools Acquisition Strategy

Media

Take “Your Social Media Guide” theme into a multichannel, paid, owned, earned

and shared media effort.

Strategy

Focus on industry verticals ( ex. hospitality, retail, restaurant) and functional

areas ( ex. management, monitoring, promotions) to align messaging and

content for all media to industry or function for relevance.

PPC targeted by verticals and function via Facebook and Google in U.S., Canada and U.K.

More than a dozen earned media opportunities during the campaign including:

• Social Media Explorer

• Ragan Communications

• Business2Community

• Business Journals

• SmallBizTrends

Dozens of owned media, keyword rich, posts to drive organic growth to domain and capture leads/users.

Focus social media on engaging in conversations to provide helpful social media marketing content and humanizing the software and FanTools team.

FanTools Acquisition Strategy

Results

45 days after launching, exceeded the goal of achieving 1,000 sign ups.

Prior to, cost of acquisition ~ $250 per sign up.

Following campaign:• SEM CPA: $53.97• Facebook: CPA: $72.71

Blended CPA: $54.55

Campaign generated more than 63,000,000 digital media impressions at a nominal cost to the traditional sales channel

About Ryan Ruud

Ryan Ruud is a Minneapolis, MN based digital strategy, marketing and PR business leader and consultant.

For more visit http://ryanruud.com