The Conversation: A successful digital campaign built on the fly
The Conversation is an independent news organisation with a mission to make informed and evidence-based content accessible to all. Their articles are written by expert academics and researchers, edited by professional journalists and free to read and republish.
The brief
In February, Little Village Creative was engaged to help The Conversation drive new email sign-ups in the lead up to their EOFY fundraising campaign.
Historically, The Conversation had found that email subscribers were more likely to donate on an ongoing basis. Building a bigger and more engaged subscription base presented an opportunity to encourage year-round donations.
That’s where we come in: our brief was to gain 20,000 new email subscribers by 1st July through smart digital targeting, flexible campaign management and impactful creative.
“Before working with Little Village Creative, we'd never attempted digital marketing and even the idea of spending money on 'online advertising' was daunting” explains Molly Glassey, digital editor at The Conversation. “LVC was excellent in stepping us through the entire process and looping us into all major decisions, especially around ad spends and creative.”
The campaign launch
Based on analysis of data provided by The Conversation, we started with a broad approach focusing on Google and Facebook post ads.
We reactivated The Conversation’s Google Ad Grant account (an excellent resource for not-for-profits) and rebuilt the account structure following best practice and research into potential keywords and themes. We also rebuilt the existing Facebook account and focused on creating and testing different types of campaigns.
Our goal at this stage was to find opportunities to bring quality, relevant traffic to The Conversation’s website and from there, increase newsletter sign-ups.
In March, we went live with our first creative theme, ‘Inbox IQ’ – a nod to the brand being a truly independent news organisation based on facts.
Enter COVID-19
Just days after launch, COVID-19 ramped up around the country and we had to think on our feet to adjust our strategy quickly.
That’s when we identified an opportunity to connect with The Conversation’s target audience around the newsworthiness of COVID-19.
We created Facebook ads to surface relevant articles from the website, and developed ‘Wash Your Hands’ and ‘New Normal’ creative that played on the news of the moment as well as The Conversation’s value proposition.
Shifting our strategy to focus on Facebook post ads meant we were able to keep our messaging as current as the news itself. We also ran a series of simple but effective video ads – stopping people in their tracks with moving images and smart copy.
The results
Our newsletter sign-ups campaign ran from 10 March until the end of June and drove 20,000+ newsletter sign-ups during that period.
The Conversation’s target audiences responded especially well to messaging around ‘washing hands’ and the ‘new normal’ – a testament to quickly adjusting our strategy to stay relevant.
“We were impressed by how quickly LVC worked, which meshed well with our own fast-paced, newsroom-esque work ethic.” says Molly. “The results from LVC's work were extremely impressive and their campaigns alone made a case internally for us to prioritise digital marketing long-term.”
Tapping into the collective psyche around COVID-19 with timely, thought-provoking creative proved to be an effective technique, and one that ultimately helped us achieve our campaign objective.
Need a hand with a campaign of your own? Let’s have a chat!