I led a major, quick turnaround campaign to launch our support system for small businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Our initial launch announced a slew of free resources and $200,000 in grants. Then, we launched “Keep Going” stories, featuring real customers who 'conquered the chaos'. This extension of the campaign inspired entrepreneurs and helped grow Keap's brand awareness.

Moving fast

In 8 working days, my Creative team launched a new campaign video and landing page for all of our “Keep Going” initiatives.

It’s more than PR.

Keap’s purpose is to help small businesses succeed. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit America in March 2020, it felt personal. It affected everyone. Customers lost all event-based business for 2020. Their revenue was dropping by 60 or 70%. Keapers had spouses on furlough (my husband was, too) or suddenly without jobs.

Keap stepped up to show genuine care and launched a grant program and a bunch of free resources:

• daily webinars with our Co-founders—open to all (non-customers welcome)

• resources to pivot in-person business to digital

• extra coaching for customers

• $200,000 in grants—$50,000 earmarked for BIPOC-owned businesses

No time to shoot? Use what you’ve got.

To spin up this video, I revisited some ads we’d shot with Jonny Ashcroft of Superconductor. We had lots of extra material to play with that hadn’t already saturated the broad market.

🔥

I worked through a script with copy, a storyboard with video, and a landing page outline with design on Dropbox Paper.

A couple rough cuts later, we created marketing assets and I got signoff from Executives, PR, and other stakeholders who were part of the review process. We also saw this as an opportunity to A/B test messaging and visuals. So, we created two sets of campaign visuals and launched them as competing campaigns that would send people to the landing page.

A/B testing on WeTransfer

Partnering with Junction 37, we launched two versions of the campaign and tested a new placement: WeTransfer—a site commonly used by small business owners to send files. We also tested it on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

Our ads did very well and results were at or above benchmarks across all channels.

In the end, Concept B surprised us and won.

We thought a person-focused image would win, but it didn’t—likely due to over-saturation of similar imagery during the COVID-19 pandemic.

1,500+ applicants

The hardest part was not being able to give everyone cash—but for those we helped, it meant everything.

Traffic from our “Keep Going” campaign distribution was sent to this landing page, where we saw over 1000 entries for the first round of grants, and over 500 entries for the next round of grants.

In the first 30 days…

🧪 Over 640+ people completed our Sales & Marketing Assessment lead magnet

🔺 Prospecting funnels increased

🚀 Organic social reach was 69,325 with 1,435 engagements and 94% positive sentiment

We turned a one-time event into a “Keep Going” initiative

My team and I interviewed grant recipients.

I oversaw storytelling and video output alongside Product Marketing. We stayed scrappy and interviewed everyone over Zoom. This was our first time doing so, and we learned a ton. Here’s one of our winners’ stories—Tracey West Irresistible Pound Cakes:

Results

On top of the growth already mentioned…

💻 Earned media in Small Biz Trends

🎉 Highest prospect/suspect counts for social all year—one Instagram post alone had over 47,000 reach

💖 A morale boost for the team. Everyone loved working on this.