Landscape Management, September 2013

LANDSCAPEMANAGEMENT NET SEPTEMBER 2013 24 PHOTOS ISTOCK INTERNATIONAL INC FACEBOOK CONTESTS continued on page 26 continued from page 22 Its always a goal of ours to expand our social reach with our customer base Kanary says We hope that customers will share their knowledge of our company with friends Under Facebooks guidelines all contests must be run via a Facebook contest app a third party application that sits on a Facebook page and increases traffic to it As director of marketing Kanary manages all of Weed Pros contests and social media traffic He uses the Tabsite and Shortstack apps Tabsite includes drag and drop design pre made templates and like gate options Its price is based on the scope of the competition but theres a 10 a month option The average cost to run contests using Shortstack on the other hand is 30 a month The app includes drag and drop design templates widgets share features a mobile version videos and a like gate According to Kanary Weed Pros Facebook page gained 500 new fans after its first Facebook contest and an additional 300 after its second Weed Pro currently has 1067 Facebook followers In addition to one contest having a grand prize of throwing out the first pitch during a Lake Erie Crushers game as part of the Summertime Fun at the Crushers campaign four people were chosen to compete in on the field contests during a game The first contest was themed around our home perimeter pest spray that keeps bugs out of your home and featured a contest where the kids would throw plastic bugs into a box that had pictures of a house on it says Kanary The child that had the most bugs in the house won a 50 gift certificate to the Crushers store in the stadium The second game he said centered on the companys summer recovery fertilizing program Children raced around the bases picking up and putting on an article of the Weed Pro uniform At the last stop they picked up a fake bag of fertilizer and threw it into a spreader The winner also received a gift card to the team shop The promotion led to 250 registrants that were both current customers and Crushers fans who were in the market for Weed Pros services The contest in combination with other marketing efforts helped the campaign net nearly 6000 in sales Company Meyers Landscape Nursery Location Columbus Pike Ohio Facebook contest Ugliest lawn M eyers Landscape Nursery of Columbus Pike Ohio decided to award contestants for keeping their lawns ugly in its first Facebook contest last May Primarily a residential company Meyers had 14 contestants upload and share photos of their ugly lawns to try to attract likes and comments The photo with the most unique interactions between users along with the best story was the winner of yard cleanup services valued at 2000 This years winner got his ground leveled after having to dig up his land to install a gas line We just came up with the idea in February because we wanted to increase our followers and stir up engagement and dialogue with customers and followers says Sara Lorz Meyers marketing specialist The idea came from years of marketing experience Lorz first qualified contestants by determining whether they were in the companys defined geographic area The rest of the decision power was placed on the Facebook voters Our hope was that the people who entered their home would share the uploaded photo thereby increasing our Facebook visibility she says The target audience for the contest was homeowners between the ages of 27 and 65 who lived within a 30 mile radius of Meyers headquarters Facebook allows users to narrow their target advertising that way