At Wheeler, we take the utmost pride in every campaign we run and every partnership we’re privileged to have. But as we close out another year, our team put their heads together and we did our best to narrow down 5 campaigns that really stood out. Whether it was the extreme response the advertiser saw, creatives that were especially compelling, or just the unique challenge of something we’d never tried before, these campaigns deserve a shout-out and will hopefully help you when planning for your digital marketing success in 2025!
1. Wall Residences
Wall Residences provides support to individuals who experience developmental disabilities and/or a long term mental health diagnosis to live a meaningful life in both home and community settings. They do this through a full suite of services that connects these individuals with the help they need, especially qualified and compassionate providers to open their homes to those individuals to provide long-term care.
Wall and Wheeler started talking about ways that they could both recruit indiviudals with the right experience and interest to be ideal provider candidates for this program, and how to more specifically target Community Service Board Coordinators, the government workers who are often the first step in connecting disabled individuals with the services they need.
Wheeler came up with two customized campaigns to address both of these issues:
· One targeting people with backgrounds in relevant careers like Nursing, Special Education, Family Members with Caregiving Experience, Ex-Military and more! This campaign highlighted the benefits and the emotional fulfillment that comes along with being a family care provider.
· And the other specifically targeting CSB Coordinators and workers at Community Services Boards and Social Workers in key areas to highlight all of the different services that Wall provides. These educational messages ensure that when a person or family in need goes to a CSB for help, those employees will think of Wall Residences and make that connection.
Wall has seen extremely high engagement and growth from both of these campaigns and is continuing them in the new year!
2. The Salem Fair
Though we’ve had the opportunity to do the digital marketing for the Salem Fair for several years now, Wheeler doesn’t believe in just doing the same thing over and over again. Salem Tourism was hoping to build on the record numbers they’ve seen since returning post-COVID, and they paired their research on foot-traffic data and our strategic targeting to do something pretty cool!
This campaign was also two-pronged in its focus:
· One focusing on the immediate Roanoke/Salem and surrounding areas, letting people know of the new dates and all the exciting new and returning attractions from rides, foods, contests and more!
· Salem Tourism’s data indicated that a huge majority of Fair attendance came from people traveling from out-of-market and combining their Fair days with a mini-Salem vacation, lodging, shopping and dining locally for a full experience. So a second campaign was designed to both inform people about the Fair and to encourage those out-of-towners to plan a mini-vacay to explore all the cool activities our region has to offer!
Initial data indicates that the Fair was, once again, a record-smasher, and that much of their attendance came from the key markets that we targeted.
3. UVA Community Credit Union – Rebrand
While Wheeler works with many credit unions across the country, we had a unique opportunity this year with UVA Community Credit Union. Proudly serving their communities since 1954, UVA Credit Union has continued to grow and thrive for 70 years, and even though they now serve over 80,000 members there was still a lingering perception in the community that you had to be associated with the University in some way to become a member. Pairing that challenge with the need for a new user-friendly website and an updated, modern look, UVA Credit Union rolled out a new website, logo, brand and more in 2024.
Wheeler Digital helped to not only communicate this exciting news to those in the community that weren’t yet members, but also unveiled this exciting new look to their current membership, along with messaging that assured that the new look still came with the same customer-focused service that they’d come to express. Since their brand relaunch in Q4 of this year, the credit union has seen a big boost in memberships, loans, deposits and more! And they’re currently strategizing a bunch of new initiatives with Wheeler for 2025.
4. Roanoke Area Ministries – Myths About Homelessness
2024 was a landmark year for RAM House. They finally secured a new facility that, when ready next year, will further allow the nonprofit to combat the growing issues of homelessness in our community, helping those who currently struggle with it to get back on their feet, and preventing those who are at risk of homelessness from ever getting there. You can read all about the expanded services that will be offered at the new facility here. But in order to raise funding to allow the RAM House to secure their new building and to fund these additional resources, they teamed up with Wheeler to create a series of videos that were all about combatting harmful and incorrect myths about homelessness and what causes people to end up there. These videos humanized those clients that the RAM House helps and proved to unsure viewers that their donations truly make a difference and help people who really deserve it!
As they move into their new facility, Wheeler Digital looks forward to further campaigns with RAM House to raise awareness and fundraising, so they can keep being the family that these people need.
5. Virginia Tech Dining Services
Of the many departments of Virginia Tech we’ve gotten to partner with over the years, one of them where we’ve consistently seen success has been their Dining Services. Specifically, we focus on targeted campaigns for recruiting workers for their multiple dining halls on campus. This can often mean a combination of targeting students on campus who are looking for part-time, flexible work that is nearby, or targeting others in the community with experience in the Food Service industry and other related fields who would love working in the VT family.
And while we’ve done these campaigns for a few years now, 2024 was a banner year for VT Dining as they constructed their new state-of-the art Perry Place dining facility at Hitt Hall. With this new, exciting hall came the need to hire an unprecedented number of dedicated workers to make sure Perry Place had a huge opening.
We’re excited to say that the campaign worked! Tons of applications and successful hires came from the award-winning creative that was featured in the campaign and Perry Place is the popular, new hangout that students at Tech deserve. We look forward to another exciting year helping their Dining Services keep the ovens burning and the students well fed!
Cheers to 2025!
Even if it didn’t make this list, Wheeler Digital got to partner with over a hundred businesses in 2024 to develop customized campaigns that helped them meet their marketing objectives. We are deeply grateful for each one of those opportunities. And if you weren’t on that list of partners from this year, the good news is that 2025 is going to be even better! We’d love to talk with you about your marketing needs for next year, and maybe 12 months from now your company’s campaign will be on this list. Cheers to 205 and all the success it will bring!
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