All of a sudden, The Netherlands went into lockdown. The catering sector was closed for business, people stayed at home and various snack bars  were afraid to stay open on account of the unrest. Also Van Geloven, a Dutch company and market leader in frozen snacks, was severely affected. Due to the national measures, there was a lot of demand for help and support but the sales team was unable to physically respond to this. It quickly became clear that the only responsible way to communicate on a larger scale with your customers and business contacts would be online.

Introduction

Together with the marketing team within Van Geloven, Nemo was able to accelerate the implementation of the digital strategy in a short time scale, focusing first of all on content and communication. In the preceding 6 months, the digital strategy had already been worked out by Nemo and Carolien in collaboration with the Van Geloven steering group.

The challenge

Seeking contact with your target group without being able to come into physical contact. That calls for a wide-ranging communication approach focused only on the online channels. The short time scale in which this had to be implemented made it extra challenging. Van Geloven had to transform itself rapidly into a Do-It-Yourself Marketing organization to quickly assist entrepreneurs in need with uplifting, inspiring and helpful content.

The solution

The organization has been transformed into its own content agency, divided into smaller teams with a clear remit. Team Input looks after all the input needed to create the content, Team Copywriting writes and posts the content based on that input, and Team Analysis analyses and reports the results of the content to suggest optimizations. A weekly discussion is held into the insights into the market and the content results. In this way, we took care of a filled content calendar that could be implemented by anyone. Content is placed on its own website. As is the case within any organization, your own website must be your landing page, the place where all inbound marketing comes together. Based on the available knowledge and data from GROUP7 and Van Geloven, the correct other channels were selected. Links to website content were shared in posts on social channels LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram in order to attract readers to the website. Each month, the most relevant content was bundled into a newsletter and sent out to the e-mail addresses in Van Geloven’s database.

The result

In the period from 1 April to 1 September (5 months), total traffic to the Van Geloven website rose by 25%. Also the bounce rate fell by almost 30% (i.e. fewer people leave your website without an action). There was a distinct growth in followers on the social media platforms. The entire team learnt an enormous amount from this turnaround and is proud of the results achieved. From various sources, we have had positive reports from business users that they thought it a useful addition to read so many helpful pieces of content at Van Geloven.

Customer review

“I’m happy that despite the difficult times we still managed to find an effective way of being in touch with our customers. GROUP7 was a tremendous help in this and was the driving force behind organizing and implementing this digital acceleration. Not only have we fulfilled the mission but we did it together as a team. The knowledge about this therefore remains in-house!” – Leonie Caris, OOH Marketing Manager at Van Geloven.