Recognizing Marketing’s Finest
Here, we present all of this year’s winning submissions, highlighting a different category each week.
DIGITAL / SOCIAL MEDIA /
Atlantic Coast Electric Supply
ACES Annual Counter Day
ACES hosts an annual traveling Tool Day, held on three separate days, creating an immersive experience for customers to explore tools and technologies while enjoying engaging activities and special offers.
“The event, now in its second year, kicked off on Nov. 28 in Greenville, S.C., and ended at [our] newest branch location in North Charleston, S.C., on Dec. 7 with a stop on Nov. 30 in Concord, N.C.” was written on the entry form.
Advertisement for the event included a content calendar outlining the posts leading up to the Tool Day events, visuals and graphics to accompany posts, consistent branding elements across all posts, and digital flyers on acesgoingplaces.com that promoted each branch event. Paid social media advertising, text messaging registration, postevent recaps, and analytics and evaluation rounded out the efforts.
The judges like how this was “promoted across a broad array of digital platforms” and noted that “the marketing emphasized the
types of things that would draw in the audiences: hands-on tool demonstrations, great deals, as well as food.”
Parrish-Hare
Digital Adoption Campaign
In 2022 Parrish-Hare developed a portal with single sign-on capabilities that enabled users to securely authenticate with multiple applications and websites by using just one set of credentials. While this feature offered advantages, it also came with challenges, including the fact that clients weren’t familiar with its benefits and no training materials were available.
“To understand and properly address the challenges faced by our accounts payable customers, we sat down with the head of our accounting department to learn about the difficulties our clients might encounter and what digital features would most ease their pain points” was written on the entry form. They also sat down with selected sales leads to better understand the customer sales journey, the needs of the purchasing departments, and the users that most likely would be interested in utilizing the digital tools.
Easily accessible PDF training guides, designed with the customer in mind, were then used to train Parrish-Hare’s accounting and sales team first, followed by the clients. The materials were promoted through newsletters, email blasts and campaigns, organic social media, and on-site training.
“I always appreciate when companies take the time to thoroughly understand their customers and their needs. Their customer segmentation is smart and effective,” said the judges, adding, “The visuals are appealing. The shopping cart loaded with Parrish-Hare boxes communicates volumes.”
Parrish-Hare
Web and Video Content Design & Branding Campaign
In 2022, Parrish-Hare spent 10 months redesigning its website with the latest digital technology available.
“Our website is now mobile responsive; our clients can view, manage, and pay invoices online, and we have 100,000-plus products with strong SEO and rich content hosted, among other significant upgrades. In 2023, we faced a new challenge: The ‘static’ content of our webpage for all our different departments, products, and services was outdated” was written on the entry form.
With a goal to redesign department web pages with valuable content that properly communicates the unique features and benefits of each department’s products and services and create a strategy to properly pass on this information to clients and show them how their business can benefit from it, the marketing team divided the effort into three parts: gathering information, creating content, and branding.
Promotion of the new content included organic social, paid social, a monthly newsletter, and a sales deck and sales one-sheets.
“The SEO keyword analysis is thorough and a smart way of aligning copy to target audiences,” noted the judges, adding the campaign “identified their company’s unique DNA, which is about providing elite customer service.”
Codale Electric Supply
Water/Wastewater LinkedIn Campaign
Rockwell Automation reached out to Codale Electric Supply, offering to do a co-marketing campaign directed toward specific prospects in the water/wastewater industry.
“We needed to establish our position as experts for water/wastewater solutions. Because the sales cycle can be very long, our goal was to focus on form fills and setting meetings with prospects” was written on the entry form.
The Codale team curated a list of 882 prospects in LinkedIn and built audience segments based on job titles, member groups, and industries. A landing page was created to direct clicks to Codale, and a subject matter expert from the company was assigned to take the lead on sending connection requests and InMail messages to prospects from the list while simultaneously running carousel ads to the same targets, driving users to purchase products/services for Rockwell Automated Water Systems.
“Highly targeted and highly effective” is how the judges described the campaign. “It’s a long-term strategy that will likely pay off in the long run. Very visionary and smart to work so closely with the suppliers.”
Van Meter Inc.
I Am Van Meter
With a mission to reach prospective employee-owners through social media and promote the culture, diversity, and other benefits of working for Van Meter, the marketing team began publishing a biweekly series of short-form video reels highlighting how the company helps people be their personal best.
“To maintain a workplace culture where all employee-owners feel comfortable being their true selves at work, having an all inclusive mindset is an important part of Van Meter’s core values. Being all inclusive means celebrating the unique experiences and backgrounds that make us different and creating an environment where everyone is empowered to be their personal best” was written on the entry form.
The process included brainstorming the benefits and cultural elements they wanted to highlight; connecting with HR to develop a diverse list of employee-owners from a variety of locations who represent the company’s culture and benefits; scheduling the reels; contacting employee-owners to gather photos, videos, and thoughts from their experiences; interviewing employee-owners; editing and producing 30-second reels; and posting the reels to social media channels and four accompanying articles to Van Meter’s blog.
“Using social media is a smart way of attracting more recruits,” noted the judges. “The personal stories can help everyone see that they would fit in and be welcomed.”
Intermatic
Intermatic Road Show
After years of tailoring its events strategy to accommodate COVID-19 restrictions and unpredictable show attendance, the Intermatic team saw an opportunity to put its stamp on local events with the creation of the Intermatic Road Show.
“To help raise awareness for this new initiative, the marketing team leaned on in-house social media experts to create a month-long campaign of highly targeted, event-based social content” was written on the entry form. Taking the adage “all news is local” to heart, the Intermatic social team began developing engaging copy and location-specific image assets to support dozens of social posts supporting the Road Show tour.
The team mixed local references and fun road-trip-related themes to create content on a daily basis that was personalized and fresh. Along with this, the social team coordinated with reps in the field to collect photos and videos from each event to reshare with the audience. This gave a sense of authenticity to the campaign and helped create a mix of preplanned informational posts/graphics and lighter real-time content.
Additionally, the social team amplified social posts and ads through paid promotion, and the campaign was capped off with a recap video and email communication to say thanks and highlight the success of the tour.
The judges admired the consistent branding, “even on the van, which is a nice touch,” and called it “well promoted, well branded, and well attended due to good promotion.”
Atkore
Atkore Defender Premium Strut Finish Awareness Campaign
Atkore Defender premium strut finish had been on the market for 10 years—and while it is a superior coating to traditional hot dipped galvanizing (HDG) in highly corrosive environments, sales were not increasing year over year. The challenge was to boost Defender sales while also not cannibalizing sales for the HDG finish.
“The focus was on creating awareness and educating direct influencers, decision makers, and distributor channels on the key features and benefits of specifying/choosing Atkore Unistrut Defender vs. traditional HDG or stainless steel strut” was written on the entry form.
A detailed campaign, set up to run from July through December, drove traffic to the Atkore Defender landing page. Campaign components included three primary messages that ran sequentially throughout it (Defend What’s Yours; Finally, a Product as Good as Your Design; and Design with the Right Product for the Job) and several media types (custom LinkedIn extension, custom emails, an e-newsletter, and targeted e-blasts).
“Love the action-oriented, strong headlines supported by video testimonials plus product-in-use visuals,” the judges said. “The repetitive nature of ‘Defend…’ reinforces how Atkore is there for its customers.”
DIGITAL / SOCIAL MEDIA – Honorable Mention
Summit Electric Supply
Digital Awareness Campaigns
Tagged with awards, Best of the Best