Introduction
Swagman, a bike rack manufacturer, faced a unique challenge: maintaining marketing and branding-building activities amid budget constraints due to supply chain challenges.
Problem
The company faced cash-flow challenges that had hampered marketing budgets. With limited resources, the challenge was to maintain brand visibility and engagement without tapping further into the marketing budget.
Objective
To sustain Swagman's brand-building efforts from previous seasons, the KPI focus was around content reach and maintaining brand visibility.
Solution
Capitalizing on a limited budget, I leveraged a strategic collaboration with the local tourism authority, Visit Penticton, to create a content series titled "Swagman's Backyard Ride Guide." This multimedia campaign showcased mountain biking routes in the region, with specific route recommendations, alongside local tourism-reliant business recommendations.
Execution
We pooled resources between Swagman, Visit Penticton, and five local breweries.
On behalf of Swagman, I coordinated and organized the photoshoots and written pieces. Visit Penticton supported the ad-spend through digital channels, amplifying the reach. Local breweries provided support to compensate models for their time, in addition to further amplifying the reach of the content pieces on social media once completed.
All this was done without straining Swagman's marketing budget.
Impact
Brand Visibility: the campaign's were featured across a variety of digital platforms, and benefited from a compounded audience through strategic partnerships
Audience Engagement: each feature of the series averaged around impressions of over 120,000, with an engagement rate ranging from 1.8-2.8%.
Strategic Foundations: Importantly, this content project helped lay the groundwork for further brand-building initiatives that grow from the grassroots level.
Conclusion
While the immediate goal was not ROI or sales, this case study is an excellent example of how intelligent, creative, collaborative marketing with high-quality content can bring value to a brand. By keeping Swagman active and visible without denting the limited budget, we've laid a strong foundation for Swagman to return to further comprehensive brand-building in the future.