Inbound Marketing Insights

Agricen is a plant health technology company delivering products and solutions to promote sustainability, enhance fertilizer performance, and improve plant performance. Prism Global Marketing Solutions has been working with Agricen for seven years. One of Agricen’s goals in 2020 was to find more digital ways to reach their potential audience due to COVID. Their business model is based on face-to-face interaction given their primary audience, who are farmers.

However, the pandemic did not allow face-to-face meetings and events. We, therefore, turned to digital channels, specifically social media, to connect with existing farmers who are using Agricen’s products, new farmers who are unfamiliar with their brand, and distributors who could promote Agricen’s products on their behalf. The following shows the total traction from the 2020 marketing efforts of Agricen. This case study is not centered around a specific campaign but shows how strategic and integrated efforts on social media across platforms, leveraging both organic and paid social, and many types of content and media, can drive significant results. 

Objectives and Goals: 

The primary goal was to increase the visibility of their products, continue to engage their existing and new audience, and drive new business during the pandemic. The main  elements of their social campaigns were to: 

• Increase audience size 
• Increase the number of website visits from social media
• Increase the number of leads from social media 
• Increase overall social engagement 
• Contribute to revenue with social media efforts 
  
  

Strategy, Tactics & Results: 

Agricen’s social media channels saw significantly more activity in 2020 compared to 2019.  We posted a combination of: 

• Grower stories
• Case studies
• Video content
• Interviews with growers (filmed with cell phones or by Zoom)
• Industry booklets
• Webinars
• Weekly blogs

In addition, we started a cadence of social ads to ensure the message was getting in front of the right audience. This included: 

• Weekly boosted blog posts on Facebook
• Monthly lead ads to generate leads and build the top-of-the-funnel
• Promoted ads for relevant holidays to boost interactions and engagement. Some of the holidays we focused on were: National Farmers Day, National Agriculture Day, July 4^th, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other major holidays. 
  
  

New Contacts from Social Media: 

Agricen saw a 692% increase in new contacts (leads) from social media between both organic social and paid social efforts. 

Website Sessions from Social Media: 

Agricen saw a 78% increase in website sessions from social media between organic social and paid social efforts.

Interactions from Social Media: 

Agricen saw a 164% increase in interactions in 2020 compared to 2019. You can see that the majority of the growth was from Facebook. Agricen saw a great deal of engagement on Facebook, specifically from the boosted posts and ads mentioned above.

The following is an example of the top post in 2020 for interactions, impressions, and shares (more detailed share data is listed later in the document). This was for one of their holiday posts to drive interactions and follower engagement.

Clicks from Social Media: 

Agricen saw a 46.3% increase in clicks back to the website from social media as well.  As with interactions, most of these were from Facebook because of the boosted ads and promoted posts to their audience. In addition, for many of the larger lead-generating campaigns such as webinars and case studies, those were also promoted on LinkedIn,  which is where you will see the second-highest number of clicks across all channels. 

The following is an example of the top post in 2020 for clicks back to the website. This was for a live webinar driving people to the page to click and register.

Overall Activity from Social Media: 

With social media being a primary mode of communication in 2020 during the  pandemic, the overall social activity increased, with a 50% increase in published posts compared to the same timeframe. 

Shares on Social Media: 

Across their main company pages, Agricen also saw a significant increase of 162.8% in shares of their content. A majority of this was from Facebook, and we saw this centered around their downloadable content and their holiday posts.

Audience Size on Social Media: 

Across their main company pages, Agricen saw an almost 6% increase in social audience. In addition, Agricen saw an increase in their social groups (not pictured in the chart below because those groups are managed outside of their social publishing platform). Agricen utilizes groups to continue the conversation around their grower stories, case studies, and to promote product discussion, which resulted in a:

• 93% increase in Facebook group members 
• 27% increase in LinkedIn group members

YouTube Growth: 

YouTube also saw significant growth in 2020. With more video content than ever before, including interviews, grower stories, short case studies, and recorded webinars,  their 2020 growth encompassed:

• 758% increase in YouTube subscribers
• 200% increase in videos published
• 300% increase in comments
• 20% increase in average view duration
• 12% increase in video interactions
• 11.5% increase in video views
  
  

What was the revenue impact?

Agricen saw a 20% increase in revenue when comparing 2019 to 2020 revenue numbers. 2020 was the best revenue year that Agricen has had to date! 🎉

Agricen saw tremendous growth from social media in 2020, and that has continued into 2021. This shows how strategic and integrated efforts on social media across platforms,  leveraging both organic and paid social, and many types of content and media, can drive significant results.

With this consistent approach to their social media strategy, Agricen continues to see significant increases in sessions and new contacts. If you are looking to drive similar results across your social media channels, we invite you to click here, or the button below, to schedule a discovery session with one of our inbound marketing experts today.