Tough Mudder - SMB Success Story
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Tough Mudder utilized Facebook as its main marketing channel to promote its obstacle course events, achieving a remarkable 24x increase in sales over two years. The company focused on enhancing brand awareness, driving event registrations, and building a community through targeted advertising and engaging content. Key strategies included utilizing Facebook ads for specific age and interest demographics and developing interactive features on their page to boost user engagement.
Tough Mudder - SMB Success Story
- 1. Case Study | ROI/Sales Tough Mudder uses Facebook as its primary channel to market its obstacle course challenges around the world. Facebook has helped Tough Mudder produce a 24X increase in sales in two years. Goals Tough Mudder is a challenge that features a 10-12 mile course packed with 25 obstacles Tough Mudder wanted to use Facebook to spread the word designed by British Special Forces to test about its series of obstacle course challenges that take place in your all-around strength, stamina, mental different cities around the world. Tough Mudder’s goals were grit and camaraderie. to: facebook.com/toughmudder Increase brand awareness on a global scale Drive more people to sign up for its events in specific cities in a way that was social and shareable Develop a community of individuals interested in participating in Tough Mudder Key Results Approach 24x increase in sales in just two years, Build Tough Mudder first created a Page in 2010 to increase its fan base and drive conversation around its events. The company: with Facebook being the primary advertising and engagement Chose its logo as its profile picture and a cover photo channel for the company featuring a rugged competitor overcoming one of the Tough Mudder obstacles Developed a tab called “Events” on its main Page view, allowing people to easily view locations and dates of 5-10x upcoming Tough Mudder challenges around the world Connect return on advertising spend on Facebook Tough Mudder also ran Facebook Ads to generate registrations for its events and increase awareness of its organization: Targeted individuals by location and age, such as people between the ages of 25 and 45 in Northern California Targeted Likes and Interests such as”ice hockey,” “extreme 5-8x higher click-through rate sports” and “MMA” to attract people who would be interested in obstacle course events Used provocative ad text such as “One arm. One leg. He’s now (CTR) for ad in news feed vs. a Tough Mudder. Now what’s your excuse?” to encourage traditional ad displays people to participate in events.
- 2. Case Study | ROI/Sales Engage Tough Mudder increased engagement on its Page in several ways: Posted pictures and stories of figures or characters who made the “Tough Mudder Hall of Fame” Sparked conversations about its events by posting fill-in-the- Build blank sentences, such as “The best part of Tough Mudder is “_______________” in addition to caption contests for photos Developed a custom tab called “Are You Mudder Ready?” that allowed users to take a quiz about how prepared they Connect were to take on the 12-mile course, and share the results with their networks Influence To continue to expand its reach and engagement on Facebook, Influence Engage Tough Mudder took part in Facebook advertising beta programs and routinely tested new ad units: Ran sponsored stories in the news feed that let people know “Facebook has been Tough Mudder’s primary when one of their friends had liked the Tough Mudder Page channel since our inception—our found- Leveraged the Facebook Exchange to show more relevant ads ers promoted the first event with $8,000 in to people who engaged with the Tough Mudder website Facebook ads, driving more than 5,000 total participants. It remains our primary channel, Experimented with video ads and sponsored stories to due to its immense scale, product innovation, increase brand awareness social context and efficiency. Facebook con- Tested “clusters” to show more relevant ads to past tinues to help us grow our business by intro- customers about upcoming Tough Mudder events ducing our brand to new markets and helping us maintain contact with past participants when we return to a market.” Results Peter Wylie, Media Director, Tough Mudder LLC 24X increase in sales in just two years, with Facebook being the primary advertising and engagement channel for the company 5-10X return on advertising spend on Facebook Tools Used High quality creative & publishing 5-8X higher click-through rate (CTR) for ads in news feed vs. Custom tab traditional ad displays Registrant submissions and fan acquisition cam- 12X increase in the fan base, from 200,000 to more than 2.5 paigns running across all Facebook placements million, attributed to Facebook Ads in just a year and a half Sponsored stories boosted with quality creative 20% of Tough Mudder participants say they were influenced Facebook Exchange to sign up through Facebook Ads, according to a survey Homepage placement: right-hand side and conducted by the brand news feed Testing with “Custom Audiences”