How a small animal shelter was able to expand their impact beyond city borders

The Client
A small non-profit cat shelter in California.
The Problem
This client had a stagnated social media presence. Previously volunteers had operated most of the social media with one paid staff member.
They had some success with social media donations and wanted to use social media to expand past their local borders to reach a new audience.
The Solution
This campaign ran from October 2019 to January 2020. The goal of the campaign was to raise awareness for the shelter, promote education about cats, and increase donations.
AUDIENCE IDENTIFICATION
The client had an existing audience of doners and a Facebook page of about 5k fans. However, business manager issues prevented the client from retargeting existing donors and fans.
We surveyed the existing audience to identify pain points and ran a test audience to a page fan lookalike and the pain point audience.
We kept ads local to about 100 miles around the physical location of the cat shelter.
SOCIAL STRATEGY
The existing Facebook page had been stagnated for about a year before we were taken on as consultants and Facebook page managers.
Our goal was to reengage the existing fan base, encouraging them to donate. We also wanted to expand the audience to bring awareness to the shelter outside of city limits.
We also wanted to bring awareness to donation campaigns and in-person events hosted by the shelter.

ENGAGEMENT
Once the audience was identified, we ran small engagement ads to grow the page. The client had a social media budget of $900 a month, of which we used about $400 a month on Facebook and Instagram ads.
We curated content that would resonate with cat owners. We balanced heartwarming stories with educational content and adoption/foster awareness.
One adoption post went viral, reaching over one and a half million people.
Numerous other posts reached more than 100,000 people each.
EDUCATIONAL VIDEOS
We worked with a video production company to create video content for the shelter. The video producer created a variety of educational content, showcasing the shelter’s mission, their ideas, how they do things, and videos on caring for cats.
ADOPTION VIDEOS
The video producer also produced numerous videos related to cat fostering and adoption that performed well on the page.
DONATION CONTENT
One of the key client goals was to increase social media donations. We were able to create numerous fundraising and donation videos and posts. We increased the engagement on donation content by 1200%.
DONATION VIDEOS
The videographer that we worked with created a series of donation-specific videos. Engagement on video donation content increased by over 100%.
EDUCATIONAL CONTENT
Once we reengaged the existing page fans and were reaching a new audience, we switched our focus to creating shareable educational content. We branded the new content with the shelter’s logo for additional awareness. Educational post engagement increased by 1200%.

The Results
Results from the campaign were dramatic.
PAGE RESULTS
Comparing the previous 3-month period with the 3-months that we were managing the page:

Page likes increased from just over 5000 to just under 9000. In the previous period, the cat shelter had just 29 total new likes.
Engagement on donation/adoption posts in the period before Heirloom Media took over page management: 3210
Engagement on donation/adoption posts in Heirloom Media’s 3-month period: 176,031 That’s an increase of 5483%!

Page reach jumped from 63,911 to 2,908,168. An increase of 4550%!
Page engagement rose from 8621 to 287,683. That’s the number of REAL people connecting with the shelter directly.
AD RESULTS

Engagement ad cost: 1 cent (FB average is around 8 cents)
Click ad cost: 36 cents (FB average is around 97 cents)
Video view cost: 4 cents (FB average is around 10 cents)
Want results like these for your non-profit or business?