Company: Give n’ Gobble
Social Marketing Team: Ryan Lewis, Lisa Peyton; Bonfire Social Media
Campaign Length: 2 months
Results: 50% increase in donations and 25% increase in registered runners
SoMe Award Best ROI Winner 2010

Bonfire Vice President, Lisa Peyton, is all smiles after completing Give n Gobble.

Give n’ Gobble is a Portland-based Thanksgiving Day run benefiting Helping Hands, a local affiliate of The Oregon Food Bank. Bonfire Social Media was approached by Give n’ Gobble race director, Cindy Aggson, who was looking for a Portland social media agency that might be willing to assist even though funding was very limited. Every dollar spent on marketing meant less resources making their way to the families that needed them most.

Bonfire’s team of Ryan Lewis and Lisa Peyton decided to donate their time and put together an effective campaign on a shoestring budget.

The campaign goals included increasing overall donations, increasing the number of registered runners, increasing the number of volunteers and expanding awareness in the Portland metro area.

The Challenge

Besides the lack of budget, the campaign was also short on time. With barely 2 months until Thanksgiving, a strategy needed to be implemented that would get immediate results.

After some preliminary research, it was determined that Give n’ Gobble’s one-page website wasn’t getting any visibility in the search engines for important keywords. This meant that the run was difficult to find online.

Give n’ Gobble was also up against some competition. The Turkey Trot was a a firmly established Thanksgiving Day run that had been taking place in Portland for many years.

We needed our campaign to reach those who weren’t aware of the ‘run for food’ program and include runners already looking for a Thanksgiving Day run.

The Solution

Bonfire’s social media strategy consisted of creating an optimized blog, Twitter and Facebook accounts as well as formulating an optimized press release to kick things off.

The Blog

The Give n’ Gobble website was outdated and wasn’t effectively being indexed by search engines. This meant that the non-profit was missing out on the bulk of Portlanders already looking for a Thanksgiving Day activity. The site also didn’t allow any community interaction. We knew a blog would solve both these issues.

Bonfire installed a simple WordPress blog on the Give n’ Gobble website. The blog served as a platform for race news, interviews, photos and easy race registration. We also highlighted why Portlanders might want to choose Give n’ Gobble over the Turkey Trot.

Keyword research was performed and the blog was optimized to ensure indexing for relevant keywords in Google and other search engines.

Facebook and Twitter

Once the Give n’ Gobble message was centralized via the blog, Facebook and Twitter profiles were created to expand message distribution.

A simple Facebook Fan Page was used to build a community among past runners with those that had recently discovered the program. Fans were encouraged to post photos from last year’s run and share information about the event.

Twitter was also used to recruit more runners and build Give n’ Gobble awareness among Portland’s Twitter community.

Igniting the fire

Once the foundation of the campaign had been developed, a spark was needed to set the campaign ablaze. Bonfire used BusinessWire to submit an optimized press release, announcing the run and the effective use of social media to get the word out.

Within hours of release, Give n’ Gobble was getting exposure on Google and dozens of people had Tweeted and Re-tweeted the link to the press release.  Both the Fan page and the Twitter account quickly increased their numbers by 100%.

The Results

Both Bonfire and Give n’ Gobble race director Cindy Aggson were extremely pleased with the campaign results. With minimal resources, GiveNGobble was able to increase participation, build community awareness and donate more food to Oregon’s neediest families.

Cindy reported that she spent $500 less on promoting the event and despite the day’s awful weather had over 25% more runners!

The best news was that this year participants donated nearly 8,000 lbs of food and raised over $15,000 for the food bank. This is enough to cover expenses for the entire year and feed thousands of hungry families.

Result Details

• Increased cash donations by almost 50% – $16,000 vs. $11,000 in 2008
• Increased runners by over 25%
• Increased volunteers by 100%
• Increased web traffic by 76% compared to Oct/Nov 2008
• Increased search engine traffic by 150%
• Facebook and Twitter referred over 5% of all website traffic during the 2 month campaign
• Press Release had over 1200 pageviews

Search Engine Results

Within weeks, the Give n’ Gobble blog pages were showing on the first page of Google’s search results for the following keywords:

turkey Trot Portland
Thanksgiving Runs Oregon
Thanksgiving Day  Walk
Thanksgiving Day Run
Thanksgiving Day Race
Thanksgiving Day 10K
Portland Turkey Trot
Oregon Thanksgiving Run