How marketing made sure ‘Just Walk’ became THE walking event to attend in Sussex

As Just Walk’s partner in marketing, we were entrusted to ensure the annual walking event Just Walk became one of the biggest charitable walking events in the UK calendar for 2017 and 2018.

The challenge was set to increase their awareness and grow registration numbers by 50% and over the last two years, we have worked hard to achieve that. We devised a marketing strategy to create a clear, effective and consistent message. It needed to resonate across our target audiences and be adaptable for use across various marketing channels.

How we helped Just Walk become even more ROARsome…

To meet Just Walk’s objectives of building up momentum and excitement, reaching new audiences and ultimately increase registrations, we used a variety of methods:

• Reviewed the brand messaging
  We reviewed the brand and introduced a new strapline ‘Walk the distance, make a difference’ to ensure we had a consistent message and tone of voice across all platforms.
  All of the Just Walk marketing collateral was revised, from websites to information packs, e-newsletters to social media posts, which then allowed us to include and send out relevant content in a timely fashion.
• Identified target audiences
  Due to the nature of the event, we knew we would be talking to a wide range of people, so we had to identify and create specific audience groups/customer personas that would allow us to communicate with them in a clear, relevant and targeted way. This involved segmenting Just Walk’s existing customer database as well as creating and adding new target audiences that we identified along the way. From businesses to scouting groups, walking groups to charities – everyone had a specific message as to why they should join the Just Walk challenge.
• Helped raise the online profile of the Just Walk website 
  We completed a full assessment of the website focusing on usability; user experience (UX), how the content flowed and where it featured, as well as increasing our search engine optimisation (SEO). New content was created concentrating on specific keywords to increase Google rankings, as well as providing relevant and useful information to our audiences. Once these amends were made we saw fewer people leaving the website and more conversions, and we were then able to promote it in a more proactive manner through dedicated e-shots and across Just Walk’s social media platforms.
• Utilised social media effectively to extend their audience reach
  We created a detailed social media plan which included reviewing all of the social media platforms from bio’s to tone of voice and messaging. A mixture of organic and paid-for adverts ensured Just Walk had a strong social media presence that not only raised awareness for the event but also increased their SEO; which in turn enabled the audience reach to increase. A variety of engaging scheduled posts on various topics were then added each month to build up excitement, entice bookings and generate conversation among our new and existing ‘Just Walkers’.
• Involved and engaged charity partners
  As part of our work with Just Walk, we were tasked with working together with various charities to ensure they were advertising the event across all of their relevant channels in a continuous manner that built momentum in line with our campaign. We created dedicated charity information packs, full of useful and relevant assets that charities could add directly to their website, newsletters and across their social media.

Just Walk marketing successes:

• 130% increase in registrations from 2016 to 2018
• Acquired two main charity partners
• Increased Just Walk’s Google ranking for main keywords by 65%
• Page one position 1 for 3 main keywords / phrase
• Facebook followers have grown by 35%
• Increased Facebook reach by over 72% from the start of the campaign
• Reached over 850k people on Facebook throughout the campaign

The stats speak for themselves and we have loved working with Kate, Gemma and the Just Walk team over the last 2 years. Through hard work, great collaboration and regular communication our growing partnership has exceeded all our expectations leaving us with a huge sense of pride and job satisfaction made all the more special by this fantastic testimonial from the Just Walk team.

“We are over the moon with the work Tiger Marketing have carried out promoting our annual event, Just Walk. They understood our requirements, needs and vision from our initial meeting through to the event day. Great communication, ideas and most importantly results; they have really invested their time in us. We have formed a great relationship with them, which has allowed for free flow conversations and a seamless working partnership. Every team member has been a pleasure to work with, and they all now feel like they are part of the Just Walk family.

They have achieved huge successes in contributing to more than doubling of our registration numbers, being found easily online, we’ve seen huge interactions on social media and enquires and they have really made a difference creating the Just Walk voice and friendly tone for our brand across all of our marketing channels. Like us, they may be a small team, but they always see the big picture – they have been the perfect fit for our brand, we are so pleased to have found them – in fact, we even recommended them to our sister company ‘World Extreme Medicine‘, and they have now been working together for the last 18 months.”

Kate Cahn, Events Co-ordinator, Just Walk