Let me introduce you to one of our very first clients: I20 Animal Medical Center in Arlington, Texas. Now, let me introduce you to how we increased their Facebook likes by almost 900%, daily views of I20 “stories” by almost 5500%, and directed over 2500 people straight to their fanpage!
You might think running a vet clinic would be easy, right? Ya know, ‘cause in 2006 there were 72 million dogs and 82 million cats across the US of A. But that didn’t really matter to I20; they were already high on the totem pole (being the 3rd largest animal clinic in the country). The entire organization had an entrepreneurial drive to simply compete. What mattered was beating the competition…queue Guerilla Consulting Group.
I20 had big plans for their virtual presence, mostly because they had a simple USP that they could not ignore. I20 is open 24 hours a day… 7 days a week… 365 days a year! They’re open for pet boarding, veterinary services, and, most importantly, emergencies.
The obvious choice for a vet clinic is focusing on the pets, right? Turns out that I20 really wanted to do something to give back to their community. That something became an initiative to provide disaster relief for pets across the central Texas area. I looked at I20 and heard a dreamy voice saying, “We need a way to increase our social media presence, get more clients into the clinic, and fundraise.” So I tell dreamy voice, “Look, a Facebook cutest pet competition would not only boost your page likes, it would also give you the cutest pets to put in a Calendar that can be sold for fundraising!”
In the end, the I20 Animal Medical Center Cutest Pet Contest brought incredible publicity to the clinic and drew in over 150 cute pets from across the area. More than 2500 unique visitors from across the country flocked to our contest to check out cute pet pictures and vote for their favorite. Our contest boosted their likes nearly 900% over the campaign, giving I20 900% more people to immediately reach through a simple status update! We could not be more proud!
Oh wait, yes we could! This one campaign brought the clinic even more opportunities. They are currently re-building their website and have raised their online marketing budget. We plan to focus our energies on Google advertisements for fundraising and even a new cutest pet contest, spearheaded by one of the former contestants.
All of this really just goes to show that even the most unlikely of places can benefit greatly from this whole web 2.0 philosophy. Who’da thunk that a vet clinic would actually increase sales through Facebook? I leave you with the winners of our contest and a minor plug: don’t you want to become the 800lb gorilla?
