Citizens for SoldiersMET AD 737 Innovative Marketing Techniques

Professor Avanti Pandit December 6, 2015

presented by Robert Elic and Mark Semancik

Citizens for Soldiers – Background

Citizens for Soldiers is a newly formed company that helps service members, veterans and their families. The company was founded on a principal called “3 Ways to Serve” which are:• We Care© Packages: A care package for service members• Reverse We Care© Packages: Retail and online companies that we have

partnered with that coupon codes can be used for discounts• Volunteering: Citizens for Soldiers would like to encourage the general

public to volunteer to assist with organizations such as the USO, Blue Star Mothers and the Wounded Warrior Project.

Our Mission: To help service members, veterans and their families through the profits earned from We Care© and Reverse We Care© Package sales that allows our company to make donations that can make a difference. In addition, we would like to use our website to promote volunteerism to encourage the general public to get more involved with organizations that assist our service members, veterans and their families.Company Motto: C4S…helping those who serve!

Situation: Citizens for Soldiers has just started business operations. We have designed and launched a website, began an organic and paid marketing campaign, and distributed a newsletter to introduce our company and its message.

Citizens for Soldiers – Situation & Goals

Goals:• Inform the public about who we are and the mission

of our business• Use Social Media, Google AdWords, MailChimp

Email Marketing to accomplish this mission• Raise money to donate to charities that support

service members and veterans

Milestone 1 – Marketing Plan

• We selected a website theme that is easy to use and responsive, for mobile viewing• Large visible site map for ease of use with scrolling site map functionality• Viewing engagement and content is informative and use of stories and examples for

emotional content to entice the readers

Concept: Build a site that is easy to navigate, quick to load, and informative• Features: Facebook, Tweeter, Blogs, RSS Feeds• Goal: To increase website views through SEO Optimization, links, blogs, Google

AdWords, MailChimp Newsletter Campaign and Social Media

Milestone 2 – Website Creation & Design

Milestone 3 – Search Engine Optimization

• Keyword Selection: Geographic Specific, Long Tail Keywords (only)• All in One SEO Plugin: All 15 Pages optimized with title tags, meta tags and

description. Titles and descriptions: checked for visual continuity • SEO: Before Optimization, no page ranking. After Optimization, the page ranks were

#1 on Yahoo and end of page 5 on Google• Issues with SEO: Many other organizations have citizens for soldiers in their names or

pages

Milestone 4 – Social Media and Inbound Links

Goals: Increase website traffic to increase sales and provide ways for likeminded citizens to interact to our service members and veterans

Social Media Resources: • Facebook• Twitter• Blog on our website• Website Buttons for Social

Media

Result of Social Media Interactions• 40 Likes and shares on Facebook• 29 Followers on Twitter, 30

Followings and 14 Tweets

Milestone 5 – E-mail Marketing

MailChimp Campaign• Newsletter was sent on Nov.

28th, 2015 to 70 receipts with 100% successful deliveries

• 67.1 opens (8% industry avg.) with 14.3% (1.3% industry avg.) click rate

• Click Through Rate: 34.04% (47opens/16 unique clicks x 100) Industry Avg. under 15% (Source: Constant Contact)

• Bounce Rate : 0%• Spam (Abuse Reports) 0%• Unsubscribed: 1

Milestone 5 Cont. – Google AdWordsGoals:• Primary Goal: To steer people who are looking to purchase a Care

Package for a service person to our site. • Secondary goal: To inform people how to get involved with volunteering

AdWords Campaign• 1 Campaign, 2 Ad Groups, 3 Ads• Launched on November 24, 2015• Budget per Day: $6.00• Geotarget: United States• Keywords: 13 per ad group• Overall Stats (as of December 5, 2015)

• 165 Clicks, 12,252 Imp, 1.35% CTRQuality Score• Average Quality Score: 6/10 (default)• Top Keyword:

• Adopt a Soldier QS: 7/10 • 38 Clicks, 713 Imp, 5.33% CTR

Google Analytics

Goals:• To analyze how users are finding our website• Session goal of a bounce rate of under 50%

Results:• Visitors from 180 different cities

across the US and Asia• 165 clicks on AdWords contributed

to 66.2% of our user base.• Overall bounce rate of 66.03%

• Decreased 13% in one week!• Top visitors included paid

searches (51.83%) Low Social Media CTR (0.003%)

• 620 page views w/ 2 clicks• Desktop = 69.4% of users• Mobile = 30.6% of users

Conclusions

• Google organic page ranking was disappointing but Yahoo’s #1 rank was encouraging, which may indicate that keywords need to be adjusted for Google optimization.

• Update: Later Dec. 2015 Google, Bing pages ranked #1!• Google AdWords ad showed up on the first page and was easy

to see, plus relatively inexpensive• Social media was easy to implement, showing promising

amounts of followers, which should prove very valuable in the future

• MailChimp Newsletters was very effective, click through rate was twice the industry average, which showed the effectiveness of this type of marketing

Questions?

www.citizensforsoldiers.com