RE/MAX, LLC is a well-known, leading global real estate franchise. Headquartered in Denver, Colorado, since 1973, RE/MAX has over 120,000 agents in more than 100 countries and territories. Adam Contos became the company’s CEO in 2018.
Upon making the transition to CEO, Contos partnered with the Brand Viva Media team to launch his independent podcast: Start With A Win. The podcast—produced on a weekly basis by Brand Viva Media—invites industry leaders and entrepreneurs onto the show to speak with Adam about their business, success, and challenges they’ve faced and overcome. The show covers topics such as real estate, emotional intelligence, leadership styles, financial literacy, relationship-building, social media presence, and more.
In preparation for the show’s 100th episode, Brand Viva worked alongside RE/MAX’s internal Senior Social Media Manager to book a landmark guest and create a promotional plan. I developed a two-week campaign strategy to help highlight the podcast’s 100th episode milestone. I was responsible for campaign messaging, as well as content, email, and social media strategies. The campaign launched in August 2020 after announcing the special guest: Business and digital marketing expert, Gary Vaynerchuk.
Objective
I created a campaign strategy to promote the Start With A Win’s 100th episode—with the goal of driving social media audience engagement and reaching a total of 10,000 episode downloads from listeners by the end of August.
My Role
Campaign Launch Plan
Project Management
Email Content and Design
Social Media Strategy
Process & Solution
We began promoting the show’s 100th episode and teasing our secret guest on social media, via email, and during the episodes leading up to the release of Gary Vaynerchuk’s interview.
Vaynerchuk’s scheduled appearance was announced via social media two weeks before the episode aired. In addition to Brand Viva’s routine podcast production responsibilities, our team managed a campaign leading to the release of the 100th episode. The campaign consisted of content development, video production, social media promotion, email messaging, and SWAG design and giveaways.
Top 10 Episode Countdown Pull-Quote Series for Social
After announcing Vaynerchuk as the 100th guest, we began a countdown of the top 10 episodes, featuring the show’s most memorable moments.
Each countdown promoted a SWAG giveaway for Start With A Win apparel to increase audience engagement. Users were encouraged to participate and required to comment on each post to enter the contest. Winners were chosen at random.
Sample Social Copy
- The 100th Episode of Start With A Win airs on Wednesday, August 19 and we are thrilled to announce that Gary Vaynerchuk will be our special guest! Gary Vee is an expert in all things digital marketing, social media, and business—we can’t wait for you to hear his interview. In honor this milestone, we’re counting down our top 10 episodes on the road to #SWAW100 and holding daily swag giveaways, starting tomorrow!
#GaryVee #SWAW100 #SWAW #startwithawin #REMAX #remaxhustle #motivation #success
- Episode #8 in our top 10 countdown to #SWAW100 is “Building Trust and Empathy to Enhance Relationships” with Pamela Barnum. Barnum—a former undercover law enforcement agent—is an expert on body language, trust, deception, and human nature. Check out her interview here: https://share.transistor.fm/s/c4403ede
How do you start each day with a win? Comment below and tag a friend for your chance to win show swag.
#SWAW100 #SWAW #PamelaBarnum #startwithawin #REMAX #remaxhustle #motivation #success
Video Production
A week before the 100th episode aired, our team created a video sizzle reel conveying the “Road to 100 Episodes,” which consisted of quick recaps and a variety of guests from previous episodes. The video concluded with a call to action to listen to the 100th episode.
Email Marketing
See the full email here and additional emails from the campaign here and here.
Continued Promotion
The Brand Viva team continued promoting Gary Vaynerchuk’s interview via social media and email after its release date on August 19, 2020, in support of our goal to reach 10,000 monthly episode downloads.
Video clips, pull-quote graphics, and an additional email message (scheduled outside of the weekly message I send on behalf of RE/MAX) generated an extra boost in engagement.
Before releasing the content for the additional push, the podcast’s analytics depicted a little over 9,000 total episode downloads for August. My team’s efforts helped us surpass our goal of 10,000 total episode downloads.
Results
New and existing listeners tuned into the 100th episode as Vaynerchuk emphasized the impact of transparent leadership across all industries. The 100th episode produced the most traffic in August, reaping over 1,000 episode downloads less than a week and a half after it aired. Overall, more than 8,000 episode downloads alone converted directly from the Apple podcasts platform. Our final push strategy eliminated the streaming platform gap by directing additional promotions (social media and email messaging) to Apple podcasts only.
The email outreach promoting the 100th episode attained a 42.1% open rate, outpacing August’s average open rate of 37.7%.
In total, the podcast performance for August surpassed 10,000 episode downloads with a total of 10,848 downloads, establishing a new performance milestone for the Start With A Win podcast.
Audrey Keller 