Festival Foods – Promotion Blows Out on Mother’s Day

Content Marketing

iPhone with Festival Foods website

Festival Foods is a Wisconsin-based grocer that’s been providing exceptional value, quality products and an enjoyable shopping experience for more than 70 years.

With customers being treated as guests, they always go above and beyond to ensure they’re meeting expectations in-store and online.

The Challenge

Festival Foods holds an annual plant sale (read: Plant Blowout) aimed at selling various floral products ahead of Mother’s Day. In 2017 and the years leading up to it, their advertising budget was dominated by traditional media tactics. In 2018, they decided to shift their dollars heavily towards digital advertising tactics.

If digital advertising leads, can the desired ROI be achieved? Will it provide the same business impact Festival Foods has seen with traditional advertising leading? These questions drove our team to develop a strategic campaign plan.

Phone showing Plant Blowout ad that links to the landing page

The Solution

Being nimble, thoughtful and determined, we set out to promote Plant Blowout differently in order to have a bigger business impact.

With a similar budget, we added more digital advertising tactics into the mix, while maintaining traditional efforts. This allowed us to reach and connect with more people in various touchpoints throughout their journey.

2017 Plant Blowout Initiatives 2018 Plant Blowout Initiatives
Traditional
Newspaper
Radio
In-store Flyer
Digital
Facebook Advertising
Facebook Event Page
Instagram Advertising
Landing Page
Waze Advertising
Google Display Network
Google Search Network
Third Party Advertising (i.e. local news websites)
Email Marketing
Text Message Blasts
Spotify Advertising

The Result

Festival Foods nearly doubled their business impact in 2018. How did we do it?

With a similar budget, we hyper-targeted the audience based on consumer interest and intent with an omnichannel approach. Throughout the campaign, we continuously monitored performance to ensure the tactics were working (and if one wasn’t, we turned it off and allocated the dollars to a tactic that was). On top of that, we were able to eliminate waste in the advertising investment to truly maximize ROI.

2017 Plant Blowout Advertising
Budget Allocation

Pie chart showing digital taking up 1/8 of the chart and the rest being traditional

2018 Plant Blowout Advertising
Budget Allocation

Pie chart showing digital taking up 5/8ths of the chart and the other 3/8ths being traditional