The UK Energy Regulator Ofgem required a paid social campaign to target the Energy Regulator audience worldwide during COP26
REQUIREMENT: To plan, create, execute and report on a paid social media ad campaign during COP26 to promote the Green, Fair Future Campaign by OFGEM to a highly defined regulator audience during a national energy crisis.
Scope
To leverage the platform’s targeting capabilities to identify a niche audience during a locally-hosted global event, identify the most useful content for this audience in sharing OFGEM’s positioning authentically during a time of great national upheaval in the energy market. The website sign-up page for energy regulators globally was still a holding page that the time so an Engagement Objective was chosen to bring attention to the initiative and encourage sharing within the niche community .
Process
- Create the campaign messaging matrix and paid social plan.
- Brief and manage the video editors on the video content and a freelance creative designer on the static content.
- Set up, manage, optimise and report on the paid campaign across two platforms with last minute difficulties thrown up by Facebook designating the content a ‘social issue’ and restricting the reach to the UK only. I adjusted the budget towards LinkedIn and across the ad sets.
- Each platform had budget spread equally across audiences and formats to ensure learnings were gained on who we were able to reach and what content was the most effective. We also tested Facebook (FB) against LinkedIn (LI).
RESULTS: After adjusting for spend, LI sent double the projected engagements (primary metric) and double the traffic sent to the blog (secondary metric) showing that, although more expensive, LI delivered a better qualified audience for this campaign and for future retargeting. FB figures started well but quickly dropped off showing less compatibility between the audience and the content journey.
TESTING INSIGHTS: Testing audiences and content showed that LI worked best to find the traditional energy regulator employee audience using a full list of regulator companies for targeting criteria. The popular content showed LI responds to leadership content from Ofgem and partnership content from founders.
FB worked best to find the community leaders who can drive the energy transition, like mayors and housing corporations. This was shown by the educational identifiers working best to identify the audience on FB and the most effective content was about lifestyle and community benefits.
LINKEDIN INSIGHTS: The white statics/carousels took five of the top eight for most engagements and for driving website traffic. Always add in multiple formats of your ads to give the platforms options to reach your objective. CEO and partner founder content proved popular with the LinkedIn audience. As did the topic of Hydrogen. Create more content in these areas for future campaigns to this regulator audience. (Overall LinkedIn drove the highest quality of traffic to the website – secondary objective.)
FACEBOOK INSIGHTS: One video dominated all key metrics on FB, the GB EV plan video. The white static did not perform well within the platform but it did send the most traffic to the website from FB. Same point as for LI, mix up your formats within your ad sets. City planning topics were popular from a community level, focus on developing content for local leaders with community focused content.
