SMM Promotions Case Study: Instagram Promotions
for a Design Studio

December 16, 2019
Customer: NDA

How to find leads for an elite design studio for 10$

This case study demonstrates how our team brought in $1309200 of net profit with a 414% ROMI to a design studio through Instagram promotions.

1. Initial Task, Problem, and Goals

Our client was a design studio. The studio had its own website and accounts on Facebook and Instagram.

The client company specializes in interior design. Consequently, the main product is interior design development that includes layout creation, housing style planning, photorealistic renders, and a full package of necessary working drawings.

Client Geography: Russia, Belarus
Goal: Attract target request that cost as follows

Price per Lead
$5.00 Good
$6.50 Satisfactory
$8.00 Neutral
> $8.00 Unsatisfactory

Goals:

3 paid contracts of $300000 each (average)

Attract target followers to the client's Instagram profile

Like any customer, we care a lot about receiving a steady, high-quality influx of requests that can be converted into sales. High aims involve agency's having a due level of professionalism and expertise both in the field of digital generally and design. To me, as a project manager, the main thing is the team—the people who share our vision, our values, and our direction. Our mission is to change people's lives for the best. These are not mere words but a huge responsibility, and it is of critical importance that the agency dives into the project fully and is ready to not only implement the technical setup for the advertising campaigns but also be proactive and responsive to the new data from our side.

Adam Sadovski

Marketer

Target Audience

The real estate sector has four segments:

Economy
Comfort
Business
Premium

Our primary target was the business segment—more precisely, the owners of the apartments in newly-built business-class apartment complexes who have just moved in or were planning to move in a month or two. The target age was 25–55, and we aimed to attract married men and women.

Service Cost

Our client's interior design development services cost $150 per m², which is a little bit higher than the average market price. It is a bit too costly for the economy class but reasonable for the business class. As for the premium class, the clients from that segment choose contractors based on completely different criteria. Regarding the comfort class, it may be considered if we get good sales conversion within that segment.

Competitive Strengths

The market's pain point is that the interior design market has a big problem with unrealistic expectations. The desired interior design cannot be implemented in real-life conditions, even with the assistance of the best construction workers. The designers of such projects focus solely on how the interior will look, not on usability—that is, how the construction workers will work and what the apartment owners will face.

Focus on Real-Life Implementation

Our client is focused on the real-life implementation of all interior design projects. To technically implement all of their creative ideas, they consult with construction experts. Otherwise, the situation may be unpleasant: overbudget, broken terms, project reconstruction, and many other issues with the apartment redecoration that hardly make anyone happy. Therefore, our client's design projects contain all the necessary specifications, layouts, technical units, and detailed descriptions of constructive solutions.

2. Design Studio Instagram Promotion Steps

Realization started last year. Since then, we have tested all possible hypothesis, opting for the ideal combination for the project:

Competitor analysis

Full check and configuration of all platform analytics

Test advertising campaign on Facebook and Instagram

Full-scale ad campaign launch (2–3 months of work)

ROMI calculation

We paid special attention to a single point: targeted advertising adjustment. The target audience size wasn't large, and finding the right people in the City N wasn't easy. The cost of design of a square meter in High-end apartment complex significantly exceeded the local market average. Therefore it was important not to waste the advertising budget on the wrong audience.

We constantly kept in contact with the marketing and sales departments at the client's company to receive relevant information about the quality and quantity of requests and deals. It allowed us to maintain advertising efficiency throughout the year.

Lavrov Roman

Traffic Manager

Competitor Analysis

The test ad campaign for the design studio's Instagram promotions included an analysis of the client's competitors through the following parameters:

Content marketing
Request processing effectiveness
Offers (incoming traffic)
Top publications with comments
Most liked posts
Top watched videos

The criteria for this analysis are different for every client. Therefore, we will not delve into the details of the companies we analyzed or what we have found because it's all unique to each client.

Full Check and Configuration of All Platform Analytics

This step is a must-do for everyone before starting any traffic campaign and before even starting to develop the promotions strategy. We carefully analyzed all of the client's resources. "Why?" you may ask. Well, the traffic growth strategy was based on the client's resources and the way the client's sales department processes requests and applications.

We chose the following criteria for our client's analytics:
Google Analytics
Pixels on the website
Goals in Google Analytics and conversion
Retargeting bases
Depth of website viewing
Functionality and page loading speed, both for desktop and mobile
Sales department request-management spee
UTM-parameters placed on all the sources

Just like the competitor analysis, all the points here are checked and tailored individually for each client.

Social Network Page Settings and Online Report Connection

The first thing that we pay attention to when we start working with a client is their social media profile settings:

Quality of the published images
General style of social network profiles
Chosen corporate colors

Based on the results of the research, we decided that the client's social media management needed some adjustment and renovation. The published photos should be more natural, saturated, and sales-focused. We also needed to choose the right time to schedule daily posts in order to maximize organic outreach.

During the design studio's Instagram promotion campaign, we plugged in an online dashboard. We offer this feature to every client. The ad manager is synchronized with the online dashboard so that the client can see all the results of the ad campaign without logging in to the ad manager. That's awesome, right?

3. Test Advertising Campaign

Instagram Profile Conversion Traffic

We started with traffic settings aimed at finding the cheapest clicks and requests from the audience.

Traffic: Instagram profile conversions
Placement: Instagram newsfeed and Stories
Ad Format: A single image
Spent: $60000
Outreach: 1446560
Requests: 7800
Cost of One Request: $7,7 (successfully met client's KPI)

Instagram Profile Click Traffic

Traffic: Instagram profile clicks
Placement: Instagram newsfeed and Stories
Ad Format: A single image
Spent: $36000
Outreach: 1028030
Requests: 2000
Cost of One Request: $18 (did not meet client's KPI)

Since winter 2019, the initial inflow of requests about the project has come exclusively from digital channels. The results speak for themselves. Yes, SMM can be an effective channel for elite design studio sales, and most importantly, it's a unique channel not dependent on offline events. It's dynamic, brand new, and fresh, unlike offline channels.

Stanislav Levin

Project Manager

First Month Results

Spent: $120000
Outreach: 2955380
New Followers: 1849+
Requests: 9800
Cost of One Request: $11 (did not meet client's KPI)
19 requests from the Instagram profile, 35 requests from the conversion campaign
54 requests: 18 men and 36 women
Video creatives haven't worked well because they failed to catch the user's attention from the first second

JULY 2018

52,000 people

Viral coverage

1.94%

Average ER rate per month

12000+

Total followers

+171%

+312%

+190%

JULY 2019

89,000 people

Viral coverage

6.07%

Average ER rate per month

23000+

Total followers

Project statistics: audience's engagement

Second Month Results

LEADS AND SALES

Spent: $100,000
Outreach: 18,872,000
New Followers: 6260
Requests: 12800
Cost of One Request: $7.8 (met client's KPI)
54 requests from the website, 10 Instagram requests
Large-scale requests came from the real estate investment audience segment
Creatives with the furniture-as-a-gift offer performed worse than the previous ones

Further Recommendations for Ad

Campaign Management

Direct traffic from the real estate investment audience segment

Collect and test new audiences with similar interests to the real estate investment sector (budget: $1000)

Test another offer: calculate the cost and get an $800 certificate (the cost of the furniture)

Retarget website visitors; exclude those who made requests

Set up an auto-greeting for new Instagram followers and retarget Instagram profile visitors

Project statistics: Apartments sales

4. Profit and ROMI

The two-month design studio Instagram promotions campaign resulted in seven converted clients ($1625200 in total)

Let's have a look at the result of the design studio's Instagram promotions:

Spent (ad budget included): $316000

Profit: $1309200

ROMI: 414% (every dollar spent on promotion not only returned but also brought some green friends)

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