Summary
Intuit UK is part of a global enterprise providing financial management software for small businesses. They actively engage with a vibrant online SME community, initiating discussions on key issues.
Besides their Small Business Matters blog and Small Business Britain site, they use social media to engage customers, prospects and influencers, who increasingly use social platforms for support and advice.
They wanted to test a social media campaign in a vertical segment consisting of natural networkers. Hence their choice of the charity sector.
The objective of the ‘Intuit charity challenge’ was to raise awareness in that sector of how Intuit QuickBooks could address its ‘pain points’.
The campaign was highly interactive, marshalling charities and their networks and exposing the Intuit brand and solutions beyond the core market.
Social media was the prime driver, encouraging participants to get involved and share with their networks.
Success was judged on awareness, measured by traffic to the site and engagement, measured by participation through entries and votes.
The results roundly surpassed expectations, exceeding targets by 7 times.
About Intuit
Intuit was founded in 1983. Today, they are one of the world’s leading creators of small business software, with more than four million customers worldwide.
They started small in 1983 and nearly three decades later, their global revenue tops $3 billion. They’re publicly traded on the Nasdaq Stock Market and recognised as America’s most-admired software company and one of the best places in the country to work.
Intuit‟s solutions are based on the simple principle of ease-of-use, backed by the highest levels of service and support. Their flagship product, QuickBooks, is designed to help small businesses by saving them time – time they can use to run and grow their businesses.
Intuit UK is a subsidiary of Intuit Inc. They employ around 40 people at their head office in Maidenhead.
They have recently launched Intuit QuickBooks Online, a cloud-based financial management system, reflecting the rapidly-accelerating shift to online for core business applications.
Strategy- Broader issues facing Intuit
With the move to cloud-based technology, more brands are entering the market – so while the potential market is growing, the competition is getting fiercer.
Intuit UK is undismayed by this expansion, regarding it as an opportunity to increase their customer base and indeed to become leaders in a rapidly developing market.
Understandably, keeping on top of their finances is absolutely critical for small business owners. Accordingly, switching to a new system demands a great deal of careful consideration and a high level of trust in the chosen brand.
Since Intuit already had a strong presence and capability within the social web, it was decided to use this to raise their profile.
They decided to choose an appropriate vertical market – the charity sector – and to use this as a test bed for some engaging, interactive activity. A campaign was duly created to engage and inform a new audience about Intuit’s products and ethos.
Campaign objectives
1. To increase awareness of Intuit as a brand and the solutions it can offer to the charity sector and beyond, using the viral networking power of social media and word of mouth.
2. To use the activity as a test for driving new traffic to the Intuit website – a test which, if successful, could be applied to other vertical markets.
Target audience
Small UK charities including their employees, volunteers and associates along with their friends and families.
There are 16,916 registered charities in the UK with around 60,000 unregistered (often because they are too small).
In recent years, there has been a proliferation of demands upon the generosity of the public, because of the global penetration of the news media and the availability of affordable digital media.
In this competitive landscape, charities face increasing pressure on budgets and funding, often leading to greatly-reduced administration teams. At the same time they have to be financially accountable to the Charity Commission and to the taxman.
Media channels or techniques
The campaign was kick-started with a microsite on Intuit‟s Small Business Britain site and an email
approach to around 1900 smaller charities and NGOs. We invited these charities to compete in four
fortnightly ‘challenges’ in which they tapped into their word of mouth and network activity to get votes for who should receive a £500 award to spend on their operation, a complimentary copy of Intuit
QuickBooks Pro and a year‟s worth of free telephone support.
However, the real power of the technique derived from its viral character. Intuit used Facebook and Twitter to drive buzz and release updates about the campaign – and also allowed direct links to the charities‟ submission showing their logo, photo and a brief description of how they would use their winnings, thereby enabling a sharing and viral exposure of the campaign. The ‘Charity challenge’
campaign was shared among the participating charities on their own blogs and Facebook groups. This
allowed them to promote themselves and direct visitors to vote for their charity.
Optimising the site made the ‘Charity challenge’ easy to find on search engines, and thus hugely increased the importance of word-of-mouth in promoting the activity.
In this way, the campaign was elevated from passive communication to engaging, interactive activity, driving prospects to the Intuit website and increasing overall awareness of the brand and its products among a new audience.
Results
The objectives were to create lots of word of mouth and buzz within the target segment and as a result high levels of participation and engagement with the campaign.
• The target for unique visits was beaten by 460%
• The target for charity entries was beaten by 530%
• The target for votes cast was beaten by 660%
Client testimonial
“Intuit is a customer-first organisation, so leveraging social media to help support customers while reaching our commercial goals makes a lot of sense. We wanted to test how we could focus our targeting whilst reaching the widest possible audience, exploiting the cost efficiencies of word-of-mouth. The ‘Charity challenge’ campaign successfully showed how this is possible, further convincing the business of the importance of social media in creating a great story while allowing your target audience to tell it for you.” Melanie Vala, senior marketing manager, Intuit UK
