Background
The longest greenway in Ireland, the Royal Canal Greenway stretches for 130km between Maynooth in Co Kildare and Cloondara in Co. Longford and opened in March 2021.
Waterways Ireland working in partnership with the four Local Authorities (Kildare, Meath, Westmeath and Longford) sought an experienced social media marketing company to promote RCG via social media platforms.
Some initial social media had been used, however, the activity had not been effective in growing followers and engaging audiences to promote RCG effectively.
Joint Submission – Turley PR lead Tenderer supported by Octave Digital was selected to manage social media marketing based on the following objectives:
- A meaningful increase in social media engagement and followings across key channels. Monitor and respond to queries twice weekly.
- Design and implement a highly productive social media advertising service to target specific audiences
Shortly following our appointment , we delivered a very significant improvement in the quality of the social media content, follower numbers and engagement with audiences and stakeholders. Detailed results are contained below.
Strategy
Our strategy work began where all proper marketing strategies should – with insightful, actionable market research to identify the best approach for reaching and connecting with the right audiences. Following our research, we created a strong strategy emphasising smart, effective use of modern digital marketing.
Delivery
Octave Digital developed a social media plan based on the overall marketing plan – outlining key improvements across content and tactics and much-improved use of Meta advertising.
Social Media Content – development of inspiring and attractive content designed to stand out in social media news feeds and encourage engagement. The content played to the strengths of the RCG – with a strong focus on the following creative ideas:
- RCG Scenes: posting beautiful photos – that captured the seasons mood (e.g winter frost and dawn break at the Greenway)
- User-Generated Content: encouraging creation of sharing of social media content (photos and reels) that we shared on out own channels
- Business profile: key bars, coffee docks and restaurants along the RCG
- Humour: April fools ‘Penguins on the Greenway’ post
- People profiles on business owners from across the Greenway – to provide a much greater focus on real people.
- Throwback Thursday – featuring old photos of the Greenway
- Activity features – encouraging people to explore the RCG, health benefits of walking etc
- Reels on the Greenway – featuring fun and attractive Reels content of key attractions along RCG
Management
Improvement the management of social media content through the designs of a social media calendar and planning of upcoming content. Regular monthly meetings to review and agree upcoming opportunities, and review results
Live site visits to the RCG to record authentic content – a mix of static content, Reels and Stories based on key attractive elements of the Greenway experience
This content was taken with a focus on UGC content, we aimed for wide-angle to very focused shots to take in the beautiful scenery of the canal along with the amazing restaurants, food, cafes and bars along with it.
Digital Marketing Campaigns and Management
Our activity was based around gaining a sizeable increase in new followers and engagement from target audiences, in addition to encouraging existing followers to re-engage.
Facebook advertising played a very significant part in the marketing activity. With the right creative, messaging and promotion, Facebook is a genuinely powerful marketing tool that allows businesses and organisations to micro-target audiences quickly and effectively. It also offers the most cost-effective advertising on the market.
The Facebook advertising activity was concentrated around a number of core products and events. There’s a snap-shot of some of the activity:
Social Media Advertising
Octave Digital significantly improved the results from social media advertising with a short timeframe. Our highly effective Ad campaigns were based on:
- Targeting: Much improved targeting of audiences across Facebook and Instagram
- Ads Variants: Developing a constant cycle of creatives – with optimising ad campaign results based on bets performing ads
- Retargeting: Using best-practice Meta advertising strategies by Re-targeting people who were interested and engaged in the initial Ads campaign.
- Reach: Together we gathered a target audience through research and statistics and created two avatars to target. This was then the basis of our campaigns along with the board targeting to gate her any interested traffic to the page and website.
- International Ads: Throughout the campaign we target international ads. This was through some consumer research as we visited the business around the canal to gain information on who the main types of visitors were.
Results
Our immediate impact across the quality of the social media content and the impact of the improved ads campaigns was commended by the client. We continue to build on the success of our work, which includes the following headline results include:
- Page Following: Significant increase in Facebook Page Likes by 300 from November 22 to Oct ’23. From 4752 to 12,644 Followers
- Engagement: Improving engagement (likes, positive comments and shares) by over 300% November 22 to March ’23
- Reach:Huge 800% increase in Facebook Post reach to 1,413,000. And, a 1600% increase in Instagram Reach to 542,000!!