Case Study

Sure To Grow

CASE STUDY – Sure To Grow

Table of Contents

Introduction to Sure To Grow.................................................2Social media – the ultimate “word of mouth”..........................3 YouTube traffic =website traffic.....4Search engineoptimization bringsqualified traffic.....5The road ahead.....6

The road ahead

Introduction to Sure To Grow

Sure To Grow

, a hydroponics media company based near Cleveland,Ohio, was the new kid on the block, trying to go head-to-head withestablished industry leaders.Sure To Grow had a superior product, but the hydroponics retailersthat they spoke to were afraid of change. The way to get the retailersto buy their product was for the customers to come into the retailstores and demand it.But how to you create a grassroots movement around a new product?Sure To Grow hired

WorkSmart Integrated Marketing

andchallenged them to engage hydroponics hobbyists to walk into theirlocal hydroponics retailer and demand Sure To Grow.

CASE STUDY – Sure To Grow

Social media – the ultimate “word of mouth”

Sure To Grow’s main competitors were not part of the onlinegeneration. They were old school companies that, like the retailers,were slow to change. They had been doing the same thing for yearsand weren’t about to try something different. Fortunately, as theunderdog, Sure To Grow was willing to follow

WorkSmart IntegratedMarketing’s

advice and build up a grassroots following online through

social media

.In January 2009,

WorkSmart IntegratedMarketing

began toproduce a series of

YouTube videos

featuringone of Sure To Grow’s teammembers, Matt Geschke.

WorkSmart IntegratedMarketing

created acustom channel on YouTubefor Sure To Grow and alsoperformed keywordresearch and tagging on thevideos to be certain Sure ToGrow’s target audiencewould come across thesevideos online.In the first half of 2009,

WorkSmart Integrated Marketing

and Sure To Grow produced and published 23 YouTube videos. During this time,viewership of these videos

doubled almost every month

, generatingtens of thousands of views. But WorkSmart didn’t just want Sure ToGrow to preach to people. They wanted them to

engage

with people.And they did.

Viewers were posting dozens of comments

. Mostof them were positive but some of them were negative. At first, Sure