Local News Publisher Scores Big Campaign with Broadstreet

November 1, 2022

County10 Radio Client Says, “Best Advertising I’ve Ever Done!”

Doubled Foot Traffic	Established Authority	Drove Big Revenue
Campaign Helped Client Double their Summertime Foot Traffic	Sponsored Content & Photo Contest Helped Align Client as Grilling Authority	Summertime Campaign Secures Revenue from Existing Client

Local Fireplace and Stove Retailer Struggles with Summertime Sales

County10 radio group has been a Fremont County, WY staple since its foundation in 2011. Since then, we have served up relevant and important content for our local community.

This deep connection with the community has made our stations a perfect partner to local advertisers such as Porter’s Mountain View Supply Company – referred to locally as just Porter’s. Porter’s sells stoves, fireplace and hearth products, hot tubs, grills, outdoor furniture, and much more. Plus, they also provide the services customers need to support these products in the future. 

While business has been good, Porter’s struggles with the unbalanced seasonality of their sales cycles. Most of their annual sales come from their stove cleaning and maintenance services, but these services take place almost exclusively in the fall and winter. 

This left Porter’s with a challenge – how could they turn up the heat on their spring and summer sales?

Station Pitches Multi-Channel Grilling Campaign as Upsell Opportunity

Porter’s has worked with our advertising team at County10 since 2016. While the grill and outdoor supplies retailer has always been pleased with their results, Porter’s had recently been shifting their spending with us away from digital and back to our station’s more traditional advertising options. 

Using Broadstreet’s robust platform of digital advertising services, we knew we could create a campaign to convince Porter’s of the power of digital advertising. A successful digital campaign would be a great upsell opportunity and help us to expand our existing relationship with the client.

In January, we met with Porter’s team to learn more about their goals and discover which products and services were their top sellers in spring and summer. While the Porter’s team didn’t really know where to begin with campaign ideas, they said their main goal was to boost sales, and they shared that grilling-related products brought in the most sales during these months.

>>> Find out which questions you should ask in your next sales meeting. <<<

Our discussion led to a few other important pieces of information. Almost all of Porter’s sales come from their in-store foot traffic. And while they sell grills and grilling accessories, Porter’s wasn’t the first store that came to mind when our community needed these types of products. 

While Porter’s didn’t really know how they could link all of their goals together into a single blended campaign, we were confident that our team at County 10 could use Broadstreet’s reporting capabilities to tie all the different pieces together seamlessly. 

Based on our info-gathering sales meeting, our team pitched “BBQ Battle: What’s Grillin’?” – a campaign designed to engage the local community and set Porter’s up as the grilling expert of Fremont County. Using Broadstreet’s simple Ad Manager, we were quickly able to create the campaign marketing assets to show Porter’s our multi-channel campaign, including:

• Photo voting contest 📸
• Sponsored content 📰
• On-site events and giveaways 🎉

Porter’s was excited, and in March, we put the plan into action – starting with a custom logo created by our County10 team.

Photo Voting Contest Spurs Social Engagement with Local Community

We wanted to make the photo voting contest the foundation piece of our whole “BBQ Battle: What’s Grillin’?” campaign. Our County10 team used search engine optimization (SEO) research to determine the optimal timeline for grilling season in Fremont County, WY and decided the campaign should start in April and run through Father’s Day in June.

Porter’s asked people to enter the contest by sharing their grilling pictures on Facebook. When posting their photo, entrants needed to set the privacy setting of their Facebook photo to public, tag Porter’s Mountain View Supply Company, and use the hashtag #whatsgrillin. 

We knew that a long campaign like this could lose momentum. To keep the contest exciting and encourage participation, Porter’s posted several mini-photo challenges to help keep their audience grilling and posting all season long. 

Photo contests can flop without enough promotion. We utilized Broadstreet to help create a robust advertising campaign, including social media ads, display ads, and various organic ads.

At the end of the contest, Porter’s would select their five favorite photos from the campaign. Their Facebook fans would then have a week to cast their vote – liking their favorite picture – on the ultimate “BBQ Battle: What’s Grillin’?” champion!

Porter’s supplied a top-of-the-line grill for the first-place winner. Then they secured prizes for the second-place and third-place winners (a YETI cooler, specialty barbecue seasonings, and a meat package for grilling) from other local businesses. 

Sponsored Content Helps Align Business as Local Grilling Authority

While the photo contest would help drive engagement, we also wanted to deliver on our goal of making Porter’s a Fremont County, WY grill authority. Our County10 team used SEO research through Broadstreet to determine the grilling-related topics most relevant to our market. 

Our team created a robust content calendar filled with grilling-related posts around recipes, cleaning tips, and holiday ideas. We also added blog-style posts featuring Porter’s products, highlighting their expertise, and introducing their team. 

>>> Do you know how to price sponsored content? <<<

We hosted all of these sponsored content posts on our County10 website to help boost the content’s reach with our local audience. When it came time to start promoting the content pieces, we used Broadstreet to orchestrate sharing the content through Porter’s Facebook page, our own County10 social pages, and targeted advertising spots. 

Many of the content pieces directed people to Porter’s website to learn more about their products and services; however, all of our blog posts redirected users back to our photo contest. 

Utilizing the reporting capabilities within Broadstreet, our team could easily track which posts were delivering the best results for our campaign. Our team could leverage this information to quickly adjust the ads accordingly, such as changing the ad frequency or updating the location targeting and demographics.

On-Site Events and Giveaways Directly Lead to Boost in Foot Traffic

Since the majority of Porter’s business comes from their brick-and-mortar store sales, we wanted a way to encourage people to come in more frequently. 

The Porter’s team announced special grilling events at their store. Sometimes this meant cooking up special recipes or trying out new grilling equipment – whatever they thought would help entice locals to stop by. 

We also used our “BBQ Battle: What’s Grillin’?” logo to make t-shirts, magnets, and stickers. People who came by the store had the chance to win some of this exclusive promotional merchandise. Plus, anyone who participated in Porter’s Facebook contests had to come into the store to pick up their prize.

“This is the Best Advertising I’ve Ever Done!” 

Porter’s was delighted by the results of the campaign. To quote our contact at Porter’s, “This is the best advertising I’ve ever done!”

We stayed in close contact with Porter’s throughout the campaign providing detailed, easy-to-read campaign reports we generated through Broadstreet. Plus, we provided Porter’s with their own Broadstreet advertiser login so they could check on the progress of their campaign whenever they pleased. 

With the ability to track everything – including content, display ads, and in-store traffic – we could show Porter’s exactly which posts delivered the most engagement with our audience and which content pieces drove the most action into the store. 

By the end of the “BBQ Battle: What’s Grillin’?” campaign, Porter’s Mountain View Supply Company: 

• Doubled their normal summertime foot traffic 🦶
• Added many new regular clients 🤝
• Drove a big increase in revenue – about 30% 💰
• Balanced their revenue seasonality issue 💸
• Considered the ‘grilling authority’ of our community 🔥

We love making our clients happy. But we love it even more when a campaign drives positive results for us too. This campaign generated $15,000 in incremental revenue over Porter’s typical annual spend with County10. 

>>> Do you know how much you should charge for ads? <<<

The engagement throughout the campaign was excellent. And while we were pleased with the photo voting contest bringing in about 100 entrants, we were more excited about how it kept the community talking about Porter’s – both on social media and in person. 

This campaign also presented a number of learning experiences for us which were valuable in their own right. For instance, while we thought hosting the photo contest on Facebook would be our simplest option, we realized it actually overcomplicated the process with the privacy settings and tagging requirements. Additionally, the on-site events did a lot for boosting sales – next time we plan to put a bigger emphasis on these types of physical events. 

On top of all that, this campaign helped our station become a finalist in the 2022 Sweetwater Awards. This award recognizes publishers who provide outstanding advertising services and expertise to their clients. 

We are excited to continue our advertising partnership with Porter’s and use Broadstreet’s toolset and the techniques from this campaign to help support other clients in the future.