Backyard Discovery Microsite - Case Study

THE ASK

Bringing a new product to the market

Backyard Discovery is an outdoor furniture and play manufacturer of high-quality swing sets and patio structures. Their product launches are anchored in customer research and data insight. With market research completed, Backyard Discovery launched an entirely new product line—the Cabana Pergola collection. The product captures the coziness of a cabana with the roof of a pergola. Backyard Discovery needed a strategic partner to drive the launch of the product to the marketplace through a big splash and audience targeting.

We leveraged customer research surveys to understand customer needs and wants and why they buy outdoor furniture. The ideal customer aspired to the lifestyle of having a luxury backyard oasis. They value relaxing and entertaining in their outdoor space, and they desire high-quality outdoor furniture that adds value to their home. This insight guided the creative direction for the video, photography, and microsite.

THE PROBLEM

Connecting insights to customer activity

Backyard Discovery has decades of expertise in product development, but needed a partner to convey the value and excitement of the product to the target audience. Historically, products were launched through retail partners and in addition to the ecommerce shopping experience. However, with a brand new product line to both Backyard Discovery and the market, creating hype and educating the audience on the product value is essential. Further, the products were being launched at the onset of the pandemic and buyer behavior was unpredictable.

THE SOLUTION

LimeLight and Backyard Discovery got to work on setting the stage for a grand entrance of the product. We needed to create awareness of the product, and overlay an emotion to create desire. The goal was to communicate the unique features of this new line through photography, videography, and a new microsite.

LimeLight then delivered a marketing strategy to achieve the objectives of awareness and revenue stream through an omni-channel campaign. This campaign leveraged search marketing through SEM and SEO, email, paid & organic social, and video marketing.

THE WORK

Microsite

We created a microsite to give the Cabana Pergolas a dedicated web presence without the distractions of the other products available on the main brand site.
The microsite shares the aspirational creative direction of the videos and showcases product benefits with strong calls to action.

Creative Assets

We created original videos and photography to highlight the features of the new Cabana Pergola collection. The theme of “Rediscover your backyard” was used to encourage customers to imagine the possibilities of bringing this all-new option to their outdoor space.

Marketing activity

LimeLight needed to bring the collateral to the market through a strategic distribution strategy which maxmized the value and impact of the investment. The channel strategy included email, SEO, paid search, paid social and organic social media.

Public Relations: PR is the ultimzate awareness tool. LimeLight paired mass reach with targeted industry publication placement drove nearly 5 million impressions in 2 months. This created a trickle down effect to mid- and bottom-funnel channels to maximize conversions from the target audience.
Organic content: LimeLight set an objective to capture traffic searching for new and unique ways to enjoy their backyard. A variety of blog content was produced to live on the microsite.
Email: an incentivized list capture was set up to grow the list of marketing contacts interested specifically in cabana pergolas. Then, we sent an eblast to the BYD list of customers to introduce the product to brand fans. Backyard Discovery activated product review requests to purchasers.
Paid Media: LimeLight activated an SEM and paid social channel to cover the funnel and guide audience members to conversion on the site.
Organic Social Media: we performed a takeover of cabana pergola content on the social content calendar for two months. The social followers are previous brand fans, so the content placement was an opportunity for cross sell to brand fans.

THE RESULTS

Industry impact in one summer

4.8mm:

PR

impressions served

3x

email

open rate when compared to other BYD sends

$9

return

on Ad Spend

805%

INCREASE

in organic social post reach

What our clients say

“Limelight Marketing does an amazing job and have been a great partner for our product launch. From creative concepts to video to website design and development they are organized, fast, make recommendations and do fabulous work.”

PAT BARNETT

VP PRODUCT & MARKETING

BACKYARD DISCOVERY