Initial Brief
Dunham Massey Farm Ice Cream got brilliant engagement when they posted, but they were busy with the day-to-day running of the farm, so social media often became an after thought or forgotten altogether.
Their brief was simple; to improve consistency, promote their upcoming events and reduce confusion over other establishments and events in the area,
Ice Cream and Events
We knew from both previous activity and from the subject matter (who doesn’t love ice cream!) that just improving the consistency would improve social media engagement.
Dunham Massey Ice Cream farm also put on events thoughout the year such as Pumpkin Picking and a Sunflower Trail. There was confusion with other venues in the area such as The National Trust prperty Dunham Hall & Gardens, so it was important to gain extra visibilty but also educate people as to how to find us.
We developed a website FAQ and reinforced our location details when posting, using postcodes and what3words.
User Generated Content
Using user generated content is great for events. It shows other people enjoying the experience which is more genuine and authentic than content we create ourselves and creates a really sense of FOMO (fear of missing out)
The farm where already good at this, displaying their social media handles in the areas that were designed for photo opportunities.
They also encouraged sharing by offering ice cream vouchers for the best images that they were tagged into.
The only thing we did to enhance this was to share a lot more of this content. This not only encouraged more people to share but allowed us to ensure the events appealed to different audiences (families with young children, couples, dog owners, etc…)
Building Excitement
Building excitement was a key part of the strategy for the promotion of the events.
If it was an event that centred around things that grow eg. Pumpkins and Sunflowers, then we would document them at each stage from the planting all the way through to when they were ready for the event.
This would intensify as the event got closer with more regular social media activity around the particular event.
Right before launch we would take lots of photos and videos so people knew what to expect. These posts tended to do really well being shared far and wide and with people tagging in people suggesting they go to the event together.
Whilst we don’t focus on group activity, these posts would also be shared by us to key local groups to improve the visibility.
Building a Relevant Audience
When we launched the Sunflower event in 2022 we saw a big increase in followers, almost 3,000 in a short period of time.
This type of growth is not always what we are looking for, we usually prefer slower growth of really engaged followers, but we were confident in this case that the people who had followed us as a result of the sunflower activity would be a really relevant audience for future events.
Thos proved to be the case with a hugely successful pumpkin event (despite a wet October) and a newly launched Christmas event that sold out with 12 hours of launch. This lead to more days and sessions be opened.
The audience worked well again when a second brand new event was launched for Easter 2023.
Reinforcing Key Points
With confusion over other events in the area, a key part of the strategy was to reinforce information that was unique to the ice cream farm.
We did this strategically at key points in the event season ensuring not to overload people with information.
We used the comments, direct messages and emails we received to devise what information was important and where any confusion lied.
We also created a comprehensive FAQ section on the website.
We used what3words to ensure people could find us before their visit.
Results
We saw substantial growth and fast growth on both Facebook and Instagram which is not always ideal, but we quickly realised that this was a very relevant audience, who would react positively to future events.
As well as growth on the social media channels, the events sold out or saw year on year increases. Two more successful events where added to the calendar.
We also often go back to our audience to ask for ideas on seasonal ice cream flavours and new events.
