Challenge: Ruiz Foods seeks to cost-effectively build and engage community around two flagship brands on Facebook.
Ruiz Foods CEO Bryce Ruiz didn't have a Facebook account in the summer of 2009. After a serendipitous introduction to the platform, Ruiz recognized an opportunity to build an engaged community around his two flagship brands – El Monterey frozen Mexican food and Tornados snacks.
For a family-owned business lacking the deep pockets of marketing juggernauts like Starbucks and Coca-Cola, Facebook offered a cost-effective platform for amassing an audience of existing fans and reaching out to new consumers. But Ruiz needed an experienced third party to help deliver his vision.
"When we started in social media, most of our leadership and marketing teams weren't even on Facebook," Ruiz said. "I actually set up our fan page after my wife introduced me to Facebook. It didn't take long to realize that social media could be a cost-efficient, but effective, strategic differentiator for our company."
Solution: Ruiz Foods and Bulbstorm leverage compelling promotions focused on fans' ideas to drive efficient (and often explosive) growth and engagement.
Through a strategic partnership with Bulbstorm, Ruiz Foods forged early leadership by leveraging engaging content to drive efficiencies in ad spend and, ultimately, fan base growth. In August 2009, Ruiz Foods was recognized as a pioneer in the space when Facebook featured the El Monterey brand as a model case study for quality content and advertising efficiency in its "Facebook Ads for CPG" report.
As larger brands flooded the platform in the second half of 2009, Ruiz Foods and Bulbstorm innovated once more. The companies developed an approach that focused on engagement around fans' ideas for the brands.
In the span of eight months, the company launched a series of nine contests and sweepstakes. Each promotion centered around the sharing and rating of user-generated content – usually ideas in the form of text, photos, and videos – using Bulbstorm's Idea Challenges application for Facebook promotions.
The tactics for driving traffic varied from blogger outreach and traditional PR to Facebook ads and viral elements within the apps themselves. But the strategic approach remained constant. Leverage compelling content and engaging promotions to drive efficient (and often explosive) growth while remembering that engagement not growth is king.
Results: Ruiz Foods connects with 250,000 consumers while driving 2.3 million active interactions around user content submitted in Bulbstorm applications.
The idea-centric approach to Facebook marketing paid off as El Monterey and Tornados surged past the 250,000-fan plateau in summer 2010.
The impact extended well beyond Facebook. For example, one promotion that began with over 400,000 engagements on Facebook ended with a family's Tornados-branded van driving 1,500 miles to park prominently in the infield during a NASCAR race at Daytona International Speedway. The road trip was covered by NASCAR.com, Yahoo! Sports, Sirius NASCAR Radio, and more.
And industry publications including Inside Facebook and Social Times have taken note of the eye-popping growth and engagement numbers for a mid-sized CPG business. As influential social media blogger Jay Baer wrote, "Tornados (isn't) exactly Mountain Dew ... Tornados (has achieved) a success level that's pretty astounding."
"We've experienced tremendous success on Facebook thanks in large part to the technology and expertise of Bulbstorm," Ruiz said. "We will continue to leverage innovative approaches on Facebook to fuel fan page growth and genuinely and meaningfully engage and interact with our fans."
