Marketing spotlight 2021/22

Providing Aussies with Lawnspiration

Hort Innovation is responsible for investing the turf marketing levy into a range of activities to drive awareness and consideration. Here’s a quick look at some of the activities and achievements in 2021/22.

The turf marketing campaign was designed to inspire and educate consumers to choose, lay and maintain the right turf for their backyards, promoting a year-round supply and driving consumers to purchase. Core activities included creating a hero video to be disseminated across Turf Australia’s social media channels and updating the Lawnspiration website.

Hero video

A short video was created to drive awareness and get the target audience excited that “It’s time to turf.” The video played into the nostalgia and sensory experience of lawn care. It was able to effectively reach the target audience and bring new turf consumers into the market. This allowed the campaign’s social media advertising to be retargeted at people who had viewed the video, increasing the likelihood of viewers becoming consumers.

The video was shared on Facebook in April 2022 and had an impressive engagement rate:

• 9,000 ThruPlays (how many times the video was played until the end or at least 15 seconds)
• Reached 34,639 people
• Achieved 41,211 impressions (number of times the content was displayed)
• Engagement rate of 11 per cent and 18,723 engagements (including video views).

Social media

The ‘always-on’ approach to social media was designed to inspire and educate lawn lovers, homeowners, and those interested in turf to visit the Lawnspiration website and learn more about installing natural turf in their yards.

A mix of social media content was designed to appeal to the key audiences, including:

• Tips for seasonal lawn care
• Selection tips and the benefits of installing natural turf
• Funny memes
• User-generated content supplied by Lawnspiration Facebook users.

During the campaign, 51 posts were shared on the Turf Australia Facebook page. During March, there was a hiatus from posting due to adverse weather events impacting the Eastern seaboard and, consequently, several growers. The post with the highest engagement rate was from Lawnspiration consumer Nathan Hunter, who captured an image of his perfectly manicured front lawn. The post went viral and achieved a reach of over 3.5 million, with over 290,000 engagements, over 56,000 comments and over 8,800 shares.

Influencers

Using the influencer platform, Vamp, three influencers were engaged to create content that was designed to appeal to their audiences and spread the “It’s time to turf” message on Instagram and TikTok. This content was shared by the influencers on their own channels throughout June.

Competition

To increase followers and engagement with the platform, a competition was run on the Lawnspiration Facebook page that encouraged audiences to submit photos of their backyard renovations and lawns to win a $1,500 prize pack with a Toro Australia lawnmower and a Weber barbeque. The competition received 121 entries, and the post to advertise the competition generated over 3,400 likes and 167 comments.

During the campaign, from November until May, the Facebook page generated:

• Over 8 million impressions across Facebook (doubled the KPI of 4 million impressions)
• Over 500,000 engagements across Facebook, surpassing the KPI of 80,000
• An average engagement rate of four per cent on Facebook.

*The campaign wrapped on 30 June 2022. However, for this report’s purposes, the data reflects the campaign’s progress from 1 October 2021 to 31 May 2022.

Lawnspiration website

The Lawnspiration website (lawnspiration.com.au) was refreshed with a new home page and the integration of three new tools, seasonal maintenance infographics and a turf variety finder quiz. This was created to help address installation barriers for turf and respond to popular search terms.

In 2021/22 the Hort Innovation Marketing function underwent a significant shift in their approach to investing marketing levies. You can read more about this in the 2021/22 Hort Innovation Company Annual Report at www.horticulture.com.au/annual-report-portal.