Senior Living Smart Holiday Art Contest: A Facebook Marketing Success!

Have you ever participated in a photo contest on Facebook?

Our client, Senior Living Smart (SLS), came to us with a fun project back before the holiday season and we jumped right in! The project was a holiday art contest aimed at senior living residents. The medium? Facebook. We thought this was a story worth sharing with our B2B audience, so here’s the scoop.

First, a little bit about the client: SLS is a membership-based community offering best-in-class resources to help executives and other key decision makers in senior living organizations improve their business operations.

Now, more about the project: The premise of the project was to have residents at senior living centers submit a piece of original artwork by uploading it via the Senior Living Smart Facebook page. The artwork was displayed for Facebook visitors to vote for their favorites over a 30-day period. The five winners received a packet of printed holiday cards (50 total) featuring their winning design. Plus these individuals would be proclaimed the winners on the client’s Facebook page (aka “bragging rights”). :)

Researching Facebook Photo Contest Apps

So, how did we go about tackling this project?

Our first task was to find a Facebook photo contest app that aligned with our particular needs. We first determined that the most important factors for us to sign on with a particular vendor would be:

• Ease of use
• Reliable customer support
• Statistics
• Cost

We narrowed our search to three Facebook photo contest apps:

PageModo, Woobox and Votigo. The pricing for these three apps ranged from $11.97 per month to $250 per month. Support, statistics and ease of use also varied.

After comparing all of the features of each app, we decided WooBox was the app that best fit our needs.

App Page Creation, Lead Generation and Email Campaign Efforts

We then designed and created a visual image for the contest (social media is so much about visual aids, after all). It was also important to determine with the client the types of information they wanted to collect from the submissions (form fields for lead generation). In most instances, the artwork was uploaded by a senior living residence director or event manager (the client’s target buyer persona).

Once we had the app installed, tested it and felt confident that it was ready, it was time to promote the contest. We crafted an email campaign utilizing the client’s robust mailing list – and tailored the messaging to the client’s audience.

Of course, what would a social campaign be without the social? We, of course, communicated about the contest via all available social channels before, during and after the campaign.

The Results

Here’s what you’re likely most interested in! The artwork slowly started to trickle onto the client’s Facebook page for the first week or two. By week 3, we were getting dozens and dozens of submissions per week (sometimes per day!). We learned that many senior living residences devoted their art class lesson plan to our contest. The art itself was truly beautiful, amazing and inspiring. Each piece told a story, and it was wonderful to see the enthusiasm of the participants come to life.

During a period of two months, Senior Living Smart received:

• 369 uploaded art entries
• 2,682 votes in the contest
• 6,702 views to their Facebook page

Plus, SLS also gained:

• 20% increase in total website traffic
• 40% increase in website traffic coming from social media channels during the campaign

Below are just a handful of comments the contest garnered from the 369 submissions:

"This piece of holiday art was created by one of our incredible male artists who is living with Alzheimer's disease. He hummed along while he created the piece and was very proud of the finished art."

“My career was in journalism, and I never dreamed I had any artistic talent until I was 65 and tried watercolors. Everyone should try something new!”

"I learned to oil paint, and I am so glad I did!”

“This beautiful tree was a combined effort from several residents that said they couldn't paint. When part of a ‘family’ they were shown that anything is possible.”

“My hand may not be so steady anymore, but my love of Christmas continues to grow."

"Just reminds me of a tree I used to lay by at my parents’ house.”

“This painting is from one of our Memory Care residents who is thinking of her favorite part of Christmas Time.”

“I am 95 years old and I still love to paint. It has been a passion of mine for many years.”

"I can't wait for the next oil painting class!"

“A Musical Winter Wonderland was created by one of our female residents who is living with Alzheimer's disease in our Moments of Memory art class.”

“Makes me think of the falling leafs and raking them up and jumping in them as a child.”

“A group of residents visited the beach and then returned home to paint the scene.”

And of course, some examples of the submitted artwork:

We would be remiss if we allowed you to read this entire blog post about an extremely heartwarming marketing project without sharing with you some of the great artwork that was submitted by many talented seniors. Here are just a few of the submissions our client received during this Facebook contest. Enjoy!

If you're interested in learning more about this process, post a question on our Ask the Experts page, leave a comment below, or simply contact us here. Thanks for reading!