Digital Mktg Campaigns for Startup Liquor Lifestyle Brand
- Advertising
- $10,000 to $49,999
- Apr. 2020 - Ongoing
- Quality
- 5.0
- Schedule
- 5.0
- Cost
- 5.0
- Willing to Refer
- 5.0
"I would highly recommend them."
- Food & Beverages
- Chicago, Illinois
- 1-10 Employees
- Phone Interview
- Verified
Taktical Digital performs digital marketing campaigns for a liquor startup. They continually test out content and write copies for the client's ads. Currently, they help with the client's sweepstakes campaign.
Taktical Digital has doubled the company's social engagement within three months. They've also reduced the cost per lead (CPL), and the latest campaign has collected massive impressions and unique landing page views. Above all, they have been communicative and they do work tailored for the client.
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
BACKGROUND
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I am a brand manager at Stolen Spirits, a startup liquor company. We have a whiskey product that’s available in 750 ml bottles and also 100 ml mini-cans. We’re also very much beyond our main liquor product, we’re a lifestyle brand.
OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE
What challenge were you trying to address with Taktical Digital?
We had actually engaged Tacktical Digital prior to the pandemic in March. My boss and I had kicked everything off at the end of February. It was right before everyone had to work from home. At that time, we were hoping to engage them to begin paid media from an advertising perspective. We had been boosting on social media, but it just wasn’t giving us the results that I knew we could really use to amplify the brand and get the brand awareness where it needed to be.
We planned to start in March–April timeframe, but then the pandemic hit. As a result, we were on hold for a couple of weeks. We identified that the one way that we would be able to definitely reach our consumers was through digital and social media. One key point was that our brand heavily relied on being able to go to bars and party with people and to buy them shots and get them to taste our product. We could no longer do that anymore, so that’s where Taktical Digital came in.
SOLUTION
What was the scope of their involvement?
We went all-in with them on building out audiences that are appropriate to target the markets that we are available in. It is also important to note that we are still a small brand and our distributions aren’t fully national yet. We’re not like the big players and competitors where people can walk into any store and find us — our company is still building our footprint.
The team defined our audiences based on locations as well as interests. We also worked with them to test our content. I’ve run programs like this in the past where you can create content and put it out and pay for people to see it via impression. However, unless they’re engaging and doing something, it’s not really valuable. Instead of doing that, Taktical Digital posts our content, tests the content, and gives us detailed feedback. They explain why it is successful and why it’s not — they give really strong insights to really build our learnings. As a result, we can swap our content to make it more effective.
We still run most of our social internally, but the value they added to us is running our advertising campaigns on all of Facebook’s platforms. Our budgets are small and we already have strong traction on Instagram, so we just wanted to push it a little further. They came in and set up all the campaigns on the backend, run them, manage them, and get back to us to say what’s working and what’s not.
We also work with a social agency, a small content shop in Chicago where two people create content for us. They also create all the imagery, and then we hand it over to Taktical Digital. We let the team know that we love what the content shop created for us and we ask for their opinion about the images they want to use. Taktical Digital then write copy specific to the ads because we only have a designer on our internal team. They also help to establish our brand tone and brand ethos. Currently, we’re running a sweepstakes campaign.
What is the team composition?
We work with Natalie (Paid Social Account Manager) — she’s our main contact.
How did you come to work with Taktical Digital?
We asked our content team to find a company that could help us because they’re very strictly just content production. They don’t really dive into the media or strategy behind producing the content or any of that. As a result, they reached out to a contact and they had a Facebook and he recommended Taktical Digital. They also recommended another company, but we gravitated towards Taktical Digital because they are a small shop and it attracted us because we are a small brand as well.
We also didn’t have the massive budgets that other companies have. Knowing that we’re working with partners that are smaller and understand needing to be flexible convinced us to partner with them. We were also aware that they could be a little innovative with how we spend which was also super attractive for a brand like us.
How much have you invested with them?
By the end of the year, we’ll spend around $30,000.
What is the status of this engagement?
We officially started in April 2020, and we are still working with them.
RESULTS & FEEDBACK
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
It has been a collaborative effort and a great experience. I did a poll between April–June. Then, I compared it to the metrics from January–March. In that time, social engagement nearly doubled while the cost per engagement decreased by 35% — they have been able to produce exactly what I have been looking for. I wanted to get more people to engage with my content through commenting, sharing, and clicks while reducing the cost per lead — they’ve delivered on that perfectly.
For our ongoing sweepstakes campaign, we have a small budget to work with, but they did a great job of taking in the content and writing copies that have been relevant. So far, it has generated 5,000 entries. For social ad hits, there have been 645,000 impressions and nearly 6,000 unique landing page views over two weeks' time. They have been doing a fantastic job because we’ve never had anything with that high engagement. Of course, we also know that sweepstakes have a higher incentive, but at least we know what kind of content our consumers are also interested in, so that’s a learning for us.
How did Taktical Digital perform from a project management standpoint?
We mostly communicate with them via email. Our company just recently adopted Slack, so we are still getting used to that internally. As far as email communication is concerned, it has been simple and direct. Then, when approvals are needed, they will just send us links to all the Facebook previews so we don’t have to go in the backend of Facebook to get them out. As a result, we’ve been able to put those links, review them, and let them know of any changes or if things are approved.
Moreover, our account manager is super communicative and sends us weekly summaries. She does a great job at summarizing information. We do weekly report check-ins, so we hop on a call with them. Whenever we have questions, they’re ready to answer. In cases where they don’t know the answer, they get back to us very quickly.
What did you find most impressive about them?
I just want to highlight that they are a smaller shop and that is important for us because we are a smaller brand and they understand the position we are in. At the same time, we also understand their position. Their work has been more tailored to us because they’re not spread too thin and they can really customize based on our needs and feedback.
Are there any areas they could improve?
Honestly, I don’t think they have any areas they could improve. Our initial reporting was a little hard to follow, but they've already improved on that. We now get PDF reports that are super easy and succinct.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
I would highly recommend them.
RATINGS
-
Quality
5.0Service & Deliverables
-
Schedule
5.0On time / deadlines
-
Cost
5.0Value / within estimates
-
Willing to Refer
5.0NPS