Thomas Edison didn’t know it at the time (otherwise he might’ve felt a great sense of accomplishment!), but he helped paraphrase this month’s case study when he charismatically said, “I have not failed 10,000 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”

And although his quote might be a little severe in this case, it still describes our thoughts about staying positive and resilient, looking for results, and not being afraid to admit when something is not working.

Let’s Break This One Down

The Client: Visit Saint Paul

Saint Paul is a destination of charismatic contradictions. The city embodies history and modernity, charm and unconventionality, and art and corporate sophistication. During our meetings marketing strategy and our visit to the city, we discovered a vibrant, authentic and Hipstorical destination — one for which we couldn’t wait to start developing our promotion and campaign.

The 2017 Meetings Campaign: February – August

Digital Edge wrote, designed and optimized a lead generation landing page, created banner ads for multiple platforms and planned out an integrated marketing campaign that included email marketing, social media marketing and digital media.

The Goals: Meeting Leads

The goals of the campaign were to generate sales leads, create interest among meeting planners, gather e-mail address for further correspondence and create future planner conversions among the complementing marketing efforts throughout the campaign.

The Landing Page

From contrasting buttons and form encapsulation to content optimization and design congruence, we had created a vibrant landing page that would surely convert!

The Creative

Then Came February and March…

Total Leads: 5

Pump the brakes! Never mind. The campaign didn’t seem to be getting enough momentum to necessitate a brake pump. What went wrong? What was not working?
In April we dove right into the analytics and the creative ads across all of the marketing channels. We began A/B testing with different ad sets — both with altered ad copy and imagery. We also stepped back to take a broad look at the campaign as whole and optimized the clarity and consistency across all of the marketing channels.

It became evident that the initial creative for the ads, while very appealing and hip, did not appeal to meeting planners as well as the ad that used Saint Paul’s River Centre image. The ad message was also tweaked to provide clarity to interested planners.

In addition, LinkedIn was added to Saint Paul’s social strategy. This increased reach to targeted meeting planners and grew even more awareness for Saint Paul’s assets. Organic and sponsored posts drove leads to the promotional landing page.

LinkedIN Sponsored Ads Campaign in May:April Showers Bring May Flowers

April Leads: 13
May Leads: 44

In just two months, Saint Paul’s sales team received 39 additional leads, creating a 780% increase! The results validated our assumptions that there was another way to get the number of leads we were expecting.

March VS May Display

To keep ads fresh, we rotated creative for the months to follow, keeping the overall design and content message clear and consistent.