On the flip side, someone has to pick up the tab; when paying for the free ‘swag’ companies often find it difficult to see the value in giving things away for free (rightfully so). In the past, we could only assume that our message would get out there to increase brand awareness and visibility. What if you were able to measure the number of impressions you gained to truly gauge the value of the campaign? With the addition of online forums, social venues and blogs, it’s now easier than ever to measure success and ROI even when you’re giving it away for free.

An insightful article from Event Marketer: “The ROI of Free” http://www.eventmarketer.com/article/roi-free, points out a few examples of companies who were able to get a tangible return from their “free campaign.”

You remember Denny’s Grand Slam give-away during the Super Bowl, right? Last year they gave away 2 million Grand Slam breakfasts in 8 hours, and in return they received “$50 million in news coverage, 47 million hits on their website and thousands of emails.” Little Debbie gave away one million cupcakes and in three weeks their fan base on Facebook grew from 5,000 to 50,000!

Before you just start handing stuff out, there are a couple things you need to do first:

• Define your overall goal of the campaign as well as what will make it a success
• Make sure the appropriate channels (website, social, etc.) are set up and monitor and track the numbers!

Now, anyone know of any good freebies out there? Post them in comments!

jill

As part of our digital strategy for the National Heritage Academy, we had the opportunity to help them spread their message through the use of some inspirational video clips to be posted on their social channels. As they have a desire to better entice and inform prospective teachers to come and work at their organization, we’ve been helping them develop these pieces. We recently had the opportunity to begin production on the first of a three part series highlighting personal stories from the NHA landscape. Beginning in Saginaw, Michigan, we were tasked to tell the story of how the North Saginaw Charter Academy helped a young family have their personal, educational and emotional needs met from the moment they entered their children in the program.

By spending the day there with a small film crew, we documented the children in their daily activities and gained a wonderful understanding of how effective the National Heritage Academies’ teaching methodologies can be. Through interaction with the teachers and students we began to understand what a valuable gift the academy has to offer. At the conclusion of the day we interviewed our family to provide the narrative of the video. It was truly a wonderful and emotional experience to hear real people divulge the struggles they’ve had with their educational experience and we were glad to be a part of it and capture it on film.

We look forward to finalizing the project in the editing suite and have already begun the process. Stay tuned to the NHA’s and Steketee Greiner & Company’s website to find out how the project turned out.

-Steve

It’s a multi-dimensional world out there. The relational database is so yester-year.

In order to create effective communications, you must always lead with the data.