Campaign start date:  February 28th, 2011
Campaign launch date:  April 1st, 2011
Website:  http://www.hickslandscape.com
Services invested in:  Social Media Marketing (Facebook), Custom CMS solution to manage entries and voting

Customer Profile

Hicks Landscaping is a North Carolina landscaping company offering landscape design, irrigation, lighting, drainage, hardscape, and lawn maintenance services across Wake County and Central North Carolina. Hicks Landscaping is fully insured and has been providing residential and commercial customers with beautiful new landscaping projects since 1996.

Business Challenge

Hicks Landscaping was unhappy with their current level of Facebook interaction, fan base, and user interaction. Hicks also sought to increase their current level of local brand awareness on a wider scale, specifically via social media marketing efforts. Hicks Landscaping then came to TriMark Solutions seeking marketing advice on how to increase their social media interaction and brand visibility, specifically on Facebook.com.

Solution

TriMark suggested a contest to give away a yard makeover. Hicks Landscaping ran with this idea and decided on a $10,000 budget for their yard makeover contest. TriMark incorporated existing Hicks PPC campaigns (using both Google & Facebook ads) to generate interested traffic to the Hicks Landscaping website. An application was then developed to allow visitors to upload a photo and story to www.hickslandscape.com about their yard, and explain why their yard should be chosen to win.

http://www.trimarksolutions.com/images/case-studies/hicks-landscaping-fb-custom-tab.jpg

After all entries were accepted, the contestants and their friends were encouraged to vote on hickslandscape.com for the yard they believed deserved the yard makeover. Entries were then narrowed down to 5, and those 5 were then added to a custom created Facebook "Tab" which allowed for further voting on the social website. To place a vote, users were required to "Like" the Hicks Landscaping Facebook page. To vote for an individual contest winner, Users were then able to "Like" photos of the 5 contestants. The yard photo holding the most "Likes" at the end of the contest would win the $10,000 yard makeover.

Results

Due to the increased attention and social media awareness generated by the yard makeover contest:

* Organic Search engine rank improved by 2-3 positions for their top 5 search terms
* March Facebook Fan Likes increased by 700% over monthly averages
* Over 1100 unique page views to the Hicks Landscaping Facebook page in just one day
* Facebook user interaction (Likes, Comments, etc) increased by 1700% during the contest