Social media case study – Freedman International

Company Profile

Freedman International implements marketing campaigns worldwide for leading consumer brands, specialising in bringing new levels of efficiency and innovation to the global marcomms process. Headquartered in London, they employ over 150 staff with overseas offices in New York, Singapore and Atlanta, working for well known global brands including Electronic Arts, InterContinental Hotels Group and Philips.

The Challenge

Disillusioned by previous PR experiences that had delivered piecemeal coverage and failed to prove value and with an international marketing customer base that had no clear media routes to it, Freedman were unconvinced that a PR solution could work for them at all.

What they needed, if it indeed existed, was a PR campaign that could cross international borders and convey a complex, but compelling narrative of their work direct to global marketers, encouraging engagement, raising profile and reputation and ultimately generating new leads.

Following an article on online pr, that Freedman CEO Kevin Freedman had read in a Furlong PR email newsletter, he invited in the company to discuss online pr strategies.

The Solution

Furlong PR proposed reaching prospects and customers direct, based around a new search engine optimised blog platform and utilising social media channels best suited to B2B marketing, primarily Twitter & LinkedIn.

A compelling editorial programme was devised made up of a mix of news and opinion pieces that would appeal to international marketers, keyword optimised for SEO with links to product and service pages on the main Freedman website. Furlong appointed an experienced marketing journalist to create the content.

The news and opinion content was then marketed through LinkedIn, placed in relevant discussion areas linked to the profile of CEO Kevin Freedman. LinkedIn’s WordPress application allowed the blog content to be uploaded to the LinkedIn profiles of all Freedman International employees.

A Twitter account was set up under Kevin Freedman’s name and daily blog content was tweeted, mixed in with Kevin’s own tweets.

The Results

In the six months from Dec 2009 to May 2010, visitors to the website increased by 34.5%. Approximately 45% of visitors clicked through from articles onto Freedman services pages, spending an average time of 2.10 minutes on the site. 72% of the additional visitors were arriving for the first time.

Kevin Freedman said of the online pr campaign “To be honest we’d given up on traditional pr until we met Furlong, who were able to develop a bespoke programme that has helped extend our reach and reputation in international marketing communities. They’ve combined editorial strategy with social media and SEO to great effect and best of all, it’s all measurable.”

Freedman has now invested further to extend the online pr programme in its second year.

Links

http://blog.freedmaninternational.com/