Our client, a leading brand in the recreational vehicle space, had a unique, new product launching and needed to leverage the best performing high-awareness channels they could to bring their product to market. This leading manufacturer started from humble beginnings, but their product portfolio now includes a variety of motorcycles, dirt bikes, watercraft, ATVs, and side-by-sides. They also rely on and heavily support their dealer network through a variety of localized efforts, including automatic organic social media posting of their brand’s high-quality digital assets through ThumbStopper’s Brand Manager platform. When their team was preparing for the product launch of their newest side-by-side, they turned to ThumbStopper to go the extra mile and drive low-cost leads to their dealer network to support their launch.
When their team was preparing for the product launch of their newest side-by-side, they turned to ThumbStopper to go the extra mile and drive low-cost leads to their dealer network to support their launch.
Their strategy included dealer-level localized Facebook Ad campaigns promoting a “$1,000 off” factory incentive for the new recreational vehicle. To provide scale and expertise, our client collaborated with ThumbStopper’s social experts to develop a co-op supported campaign for interested dealers. This meant that they would allow dealers access to co-op marketing dollars to subsidize the cost and provide scale. The campaign included comprehensive Facebook Ads for each participating dealer, to kick off at the end of 2019. The ThumbStopper team facilitated the enrollment and growth of the campaign for the manufacturer by reaching out and configuring their dealers who chose to participate. When the campaign started, 279 total dealers elected to take advantage of this win-win co-op advertising opportunity.
First, to boost awareness, the brand created product-focused videos to attract people who were not specifically familiar with the newer product model. In collaboration with their creative team, the video was optimized for social with strategic guidance from the social experts at ThumbStopper. Second, to increase reach, ThumbStopper worked together with the manufacturer to prepare the ad audience and targeting strategy. To ensure a localized audience per location, location targeting was adjusted based on the population density in the surrounding area of each participating dealership, targeting individuals in a radius ranging from 25 to 50 miles per location. From a demographic perspective, there were some site-specific variations applied to each dealership to drive the most successful leads, but 90% of the targeted demographics fell into this range:
In terms of the conversion elements of the campaign, ThumbStopper utilized the Facebook Lead Ad unit, allowing for an in-app or on-site conversions for interested consumers. The Lead Ad unit allows consumers to stay within the native Facebook environment to convert, ensuring maximum conversions per dealership. In all, six separate creatives were prepared for testing for the campaign. By choosing to leverage the inherent algorithms of the Facebook Ad platform, the ad unit’s spend was optimized by Facebook, which determines the ad that is most effective at generating leads by audience, then adjusts spend to allocate budgets towards the most effective ads. The multiple ads also helped to curb ad fatigue, minimizing lead attrition.
The ad creatives were geared towards enticing people to take the next step to purchase. They featured stylized shots of the vehicles traversing rugged landscapes, plus messaging about rebates and pricing. Each Lead Ad used the “Learn More” call-to-action button; when clicked, it opened a contact form pre-filled with information from the consumer’s Facebook profile, including name, email address, and phone number. The brand automatically integrated the leads into its internal CRM so the marketing team could track which leads (and eventually sales) came from the Facebook Ads. The participating dealers saw better-than-anticipated results from their campaign. Generating over 6,300 leads from 279 participating dealers, ThumbStopper measured the results from their campaign against Facebook data on industry averages, which revealed:
The best performing ad, featuring the Recreational Vehicle’s suspension action, delivering a Return on Ad Spend of 4.09, or $1.81MM. Not bad for an off-road dream machine that comes well-equipped for around $20,000.