In August 2020, Acadian Plant Health (APH) approached McD to expand their entire social media presence, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter. APH had been on social media for quite some time before this partnership. However, the responsibility to tell an engaging story and share beautiful crop photos fell on the marketing team alone. APH wanted to create a social presence through which their global brand would be truly reflected, and followers would obtain answers about products and the industry from a trustworthy community.
As a successful agricultural input company, APH had plenty of global opportunities to capture beautiful photos, tell engaging stories and show side-by-side product comparisons. However, the global sales team had not been involved, and frankly, the social presence of APH was small and inconsistent.
So, there was a gap in our plan — we wondered how we could get relevant, real-time photos that reflected the agricultural business from those who had office jobs. We also had to come up with growth strategies for each platform individually as they all perform differently with unique qualities and purposes.
With these challenges in mind, McD stressed the importance of getting “foot soldiers” involved to help deliver relevant social content to the APH marketing team. Those foot soldiers — better known as the global sales team — started sharing photos with the marketing team that made for great social content.
McD helped APH organize by building out a content calendar for the entire year. This content calendar held all the details: crop calendars for the different geographies represented by the business, national holidays in each region and location, budget, topic, and language details for each post.
McD and APH met weekly to discuss the coming week’s posts and ideas. These meetings helped both parties stay ahead of schedule and get posts scheduled in advance. These brainstorming sessions gave the McD team time to connect with one another on any new photos that came in from the sales team and discuss whether to shift the content calendar to make room for certain high priority posts that week. The McD and APH partnership officially started on Sept. 11, 2020, when the first post went live on all platforms!
McD found Tuesdays and Thursdays were the best days to post on social based on follower insights. McD also implemented a call to action in most of the posts’ copy to drive engagement. Then, McD initiated a brand-new strategy — Instagram Stories and IGTV opportunities. The McD team made sure all small details were done as well, setting up geolocations on posts, using the most relevant hashtags and creating Instagram Story Highlights categorized by continent.
The new face of APH on social came with measurable growth and opportunities. APH had distributors reach out and share posts while McD received direct message inquiries from followers sharing how they love their APH products. Additionally, new prospects asked where they could purchase APH products. Product orders were also placed as a direct result of one specific social post seen by the right audience.
The best part? This entire plan was affordable for the client. McD showed APH how $10-30 could reach tens of thousands of users within their global target audience.
And the results? INCREDIBLE! On Facebook, the number of followers on the APH page grew to 1,590 total followers — an increase of over 1,000 from the year before. Furthermore, the page’s reach increased by 2,365% from the previous year and the number of engaged users grew by — brace yourself here — 39,000% from the year before!
Meanwhile, the APH Instagram channel grew from around 30 followers a year ago to 963 today. In fact, the following on the APH Instagram has grown in the last three months by 36%. Finally, on LinkedIn, the APH engagement rate grew to 4.66% — up from 2.02% the previous year. Additionally, over 1,000 new followers followed the APH LinkedIn page, growing the total number of followers to 3,600.
It’s exciting to see how our social media platforms have been growing this past year. This shows great team effort for sure from Mcdaniels and Acadian Plant Health to transform our platforms into living organisms. Excited to see what will happen next for APH.
Gina Aburto - Global Digital Marketing Manager, Acadian Plant Health
Does your business need assistance when it comes to being consistent and creative on social media? Let McD help “boost” your social media game. Contact us today.
Check out the Acadian Plant Health social platforms today to be amazed:
