Lion Brand Yarn Social Media Marketing Case Study
Overview
Founded in 1878, Lion Brand Yarn has been a leading supplier of quality hand-knitting and crochet yarns ever since. The Company offers the Lion Brand Pattern Finder ®, an online tool that helps yarn crafters sort through one of the largest online libraries, featuring more than 2,700 patterns.
As one of America’s oldest and most beloved yarn brands, Lion Brand has a cult following among those who knit and crochet. With an award winning blog and podcast, they wanted to test the waters of external social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. They came to Anvil for a strategy on how best to engage and leverage their online community.
Objective
The overall objective of the social media strategy was to increase brand awareness, site traffic and online sales, as well as improve conversion rates, customer support, brand loyalty and customer insight.
Challenge
Lion Brand lacked a clear strategy to launch multiple social media profiles and the resources to keep on top of the latest tactics, technologies, and tools for each. They had a basic knowledge of the platforms but were unaware of how each would interact and provide value on its own.
Strategy
Step one was to get everyone talking and utilizing Facebook, which based on a survey of their customers, was an ideal fit. After following Anvil’s social media plan, Lion Brand set up a Facebook Fan Page and began posting interesting and engaging status updates to facilitate “likes” and commenting among fans. This interaction also aided brand awareness as each fan’s communication was broadcasted on their own profile page. Lion Brand also encouraged fans to post patterns, pictures and videos of their own to enhance the community aspects. The complementary Twitter strategy focused on providing answers to technical knitting question within the community. A dashboard was created to manage alerts whenever someone talked about knitting in Twitter.
Results
By following Anvil’s social media plan when configuring Facebook and Twitter accounts, Lion Brand experienced the following results:
- Improved customer interaction and accelerated word of mouth: over 1,000 interactions on Facebook per week
- Increased site traffic and sales from Facebook and Twitter
- Improved conversion rate: Facebook users convert at a rate that is 51% higher than the average referring site and 21% better than the site average
- Gained valuable customer insights: products and patterns that were “liked” and commented on
URL
Lion Brand Yarn
Lion Brand Facebook
Lion Brand Yarn Twitter
Lion Brand Yarn YouTube