Article Highlights:
Adobe partnered with Stoke to manage the social campaign strategy for Adobe Summit 2018. Read on to discover:
- How Stoke added value to Adobe Summit’s existing social reach
- How extensive testing helped Stoke determine the best social strategy that resonated with the Summit audience
- Why unique Adobe site visitors increased by 80%
Adobe has a broad audience, so when they came to Stoke for help managing their social campaign strategy for Adobe Summit 2018, we had to be deliberate on how we would add value to their existing reach.
“Our number one goal for the Summit Social campaign is to reach audiences that haven’t been tapped by Adobe’s email and customer lists,” says Debbie Brannelly, Stoke account manager. “The measurement of that goal is how many new, unique visitors we can drive to the Summit landing page.” And the numbers don’t lie. As of late February, the number of unique visitors to the site is up 80 percent compared to last year.
Pushing for results
In order to really achieve these types of goals, it is important to consider both content and conversion. Social platforms including Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter meant that there was a significant amount of content. Creating the right content was a collaboration of using assets and guidelines from Adobe Studio, and then building concepts with Stoke’s in-house creative design team. We made sure to highlight the Summit conference, celebrity speakers, Adobe products, and experts on related subjects in our social content.
“Our strategy has been to constantly test to determine which type of content best resonates with social media audiences,” says Debbie. “Different content performs better on different social platforms.” Once something valuable was learned about how content performed on each platform, the team would adjust to maximize engagement and conversion.
They also monitored the number of unique visitors week by week, and increased from the previous year as much as 1,300 percent.
Some unique challenges
Social media is a constantly changing landscape, and Facebook recently rocked the boat, by famously announcing a change in its algorithm in late January that would give preference to non-commercial posts. This is great for friendships, but not so great for ads like the ones we managed for Adobe. Facebook also deleted bot accounts — many of which follow business accounts, and therefore, those accounts lost thousands of followers in one day.
Another hurdle that hit during the Summit campaign was Facebook’s new ad manager. This ad manager changes the way admins build, upload, and monitor paid ads.
“Put all of these things together — unreliable metrics, a new algorithm to decipher, fewer followers — and you have some serious challenges to overcome,” says Erin McBride, social media manager at Stoke. “But we adjusted our sails multiple times, made tons of minute fixes along the way, and we produced a very successful campaign. And, quite frankly, that is a big deal. A lot of social media experts are still struggling to figure out this crazy new algorithm and setup. But we aren’t!”
The campaign ran for three months; so far, they’ve seen an 80% increase in number of unique visitors and fully expect to double their numbers from last year by campaign’s end.
They’re currently in the final push, with Summit 2018 beginning on March 27, 2018.
See how Stoke can help with your content marketing and design on social and other channels.