How we increased aquaponic training leads by 6000%, using Facebook

In Jamaica, climate-related events are major threats to the agricultural sector, which represents about 7 percent of GDP and employs about 18 percent of the country’s population. Small agricultural enterprises are among the most vulnerable, because they lack the technology, knowledge and financing to implement adaptive measures.

As climate change threatens economic opportunities for the agricultural sector, it’s imperative to introduce new business models and technologies for 21st century producers to thrive. INMED offers Access to Climate- Smart Agriculture (IACA), a multi-yea program to provide small-scale producers and emerging entrepreneurs with sustainable income-generation opportunities through aquaponics.

Aquaponics is a climate-adaptive agriculture technique that combines aquaculture (fish farming) with hydroponics (soilless crop production) in a closed system that produces year-round crops at a rate roughly 10 times higher than traditionally farmed plots of equivalent size.

For INMED to perform training, individuals have to register their interest on their website as leads. From the beginning of the project INMED had an average of 3 leads per week, accumulating to 138. As the project period was coming to a close they needed an additional 162 leads.

McKenzie Williams was asked to help achieve INMED's goal for leads within a month. We reviewed their current digital strategy and proposed one that we believed would deliver on the campaign goals.

-The demographic profile for the target was adjusted to A,B & C personas as the previous personas did not have the disposable income to purchase an aquaponic system, after free training was completed

-McKenzie Williams led the direction on the advertising communications by focussing on the health and entrepreneurial benefits of having your own backyard aquaponic system

-Using the advertising communications, a Facebook lead generation campaign-with Facebook Messenger Artificial Intelligence chatbot integration-was built and executed for 6 days.

The user experience:

-The target audience saw the advertisement and clicked to respond

-The Facebook Messenger chatbot would ask qualifying questions. If the lead qualified the chatbot would capture their contact information and direct them to a landing page to register

After five days (versus thirty) of the campaign running we were able to increase the registrations by 6000% (from a weekly average of 2 to over 177 lead for the period)

The client also benefitted from:

-A 155% increase in engagement on social media

-User contact information for re-marketing purposes (name, email and phone number)