Local Print Campaign fails Expectations
In my latest experiment with a Lean Startup Accelerator my assumptions were crap. This is turning out to be true more often than not.
I believed if we got a story an AD in the local newspaper that we would sell 10 Fundraising packages at $100 and get 20 reservations for Hillbilly Golf or Extreme Croquet (see more about my hypothesis here). In the 5 days since the story and AD ran on April 12th, we have sold zero of anything.
Today April 17th, I went into our local Post Office to put a flyer and a clipping of the newspaper story on the bulletin board. While doing so, a lady came up and asking me if I put up anything good, I told her “I hope so” and pointed to the flyer and newspaper story.
She asked me more about Hillbilly Golf and if Bossy Acres Club would be a good place to bring kids. She also asked if the story was in the Town Crier, and when I told her yes she said she must have missed it.
She tore one of the tags off the bottom of the flyer and said she would like to bring her grand kids to visit. After the conversation I began thinking more about my assumptions about the print campaign in our local paper.
Even though the paper reaches 5000 homes in our area and 1800 copies are delivered to business for patrons to read, I was wondering how many people actually saw our story and AD. I had assumed that since the Town Crier is the source for the most local news in our area that more people paid attention to it.
Here are the website visitor metrics for the Date Range (12-Apr-2017–17-Apr-2017). Visitors from the newspaper would be direct traffic.
The direct traffic is people typing the URL bossyacres.club into their browser. Visits during the date range show a spike after the newspaper story and AD, but didn’t equal into any conversions yet.
Other variable I was measuring during this same time was a Facebook campaign using the same image that was used for the 2x3 AD in the newspaper. The image was flagged by Facebook for having too much text on it. I was told it wouldn’t get good exposure if it ran at all, but I wanted to see what happened so I submitted it any way.
I targeted those within 25 miles of us with kids. My assumption was that at this early stage people who live close by would be the most willing to help us startup.
It is to early to really tell, but it seems that might not be the case. Since the only person to fill out a form on the website came from the Portland Oregon area, 60 miles south.
Overall during the date range of April 12th to the 17th, eighteen visitors came to BossyAcres.club website from Facebook. And 1 of those filled out a form on the website to visit the farm. But they have not finished converting by pre-paying and scheduling their visit.
Based on these learning's right now I would have to say Facebook ADs are going to be more effective at finding customers. And that our potential early supporters are not going to be as local as I thought.
I just boosted another Facebook post targeting within 25 miles of Vancouver WA, again focusing one people with children to see if City folks are more in need of some farm fun then our neighbors.
And to test a more local area and personal campaign, on April 21st and 22nd we will have a table at Country Chicks Spring Market to try and connect with people in person about making a reservation to visit Bossy Acres Club.
I will share the results from these experiments before the end of April. If you want help testing your ideas, message me @boonebergsma and I will help you get your hypothesis posted to the inclusive community giving mentorship and funding!
