Varga’s Methodology Outperforms Top Competitor, Wins Verizon Business

April 12, 2011 - PRLog -- LAKE FOREST, California –  A senior planner on the Verizon Fios account at GlobalHue, a leading agency in culture-based marketing, reported that a Hispanic targeted door hanger campaign completed by Varga Media Solutions, Inc. yielded results exceeding their client’s cost-per-call goal by more than 15%. The partnership with Varga began as a last effort in determining whether door hangers were a financially viable media for Verizon Fios who had been working with a different door hanger vendor and experiencing declining results.

“After several months of diminishing response rates, we were ready to call it quits,” said Evie Escano, Senior Media Planner at GlobalHue for the Verizon Fios account. “The initial response we saw from the first door hangers we dropped was good, but after that we weren’t getting enough back.”

Escano was unsure that the jobs were being completed as promised by their current vendor. Her client had set a cost per call goal with an expected return, but over time the responses were not supporting the financial viability of the campaigns. Performance had become so poor that they were almost ready to give up on door hangers as a medium. The planning team decided to switch vendors and test Varga’s services for their last door hanger effort.

“Internally, the first campaign we did with Varga was a huge initiative,” said Escano. “We were considering excluding door hangers from the Fios media mix and this campaign was the proverbial last straw. It was under the microscope—we paid very close attention to every detail in order to discover whether the weaknesses were with the medium itself or the vendor we had been using.” Varga immediately recognized two major components that had not been adequately handled by the previous vendor.

First, the message on the door hanger was uniquely tailored for a Hispanic target audience. It was imperative that only the right households within each service area receive the advertisement.

“Varga was very thorough and willing to go back and forth with us to fine tune the targeting,” explained Escano. “Our previous vendor was using outdated census data that was inflating the household counts and it was not as precise and detailed as what Varga provided.”

When it came to targeting the right households, Varga consumer behavior specialists identified economically-active consumers with actionable Hispanic demographics within each market. And since the data Varga uses is updated every 90 days, the target households were as current and accurate as possible.

Second, Verizon Fios is one of the nation’s largest fiber-optic networks offered to consumers but it has limited availability. Service areas, referred to as footprints, also serve as advertising borders. Advertising outside of a footprint would not only result in a waste of resources but also misrepresentation to households where Fios doesn’t reach. In order for the campaign to remain cost effective and to maintain the Fios brand image, all media must remain inside of the footprints.

Utilizing their real-time GPS distribution model, Varga Auditors were in-field monitoring the distribution during the entire process. Each walker was equipped with a GPS unit that reported it’s location to the auditor every 3 minutes. If any walker went outside of a designated footprint, the auditor was notified by the system and addressed the misstep in-person to get them back on track.

Varga’s superior targeting and thorough distribution methodology resulted in major success for GlobalHue and their client Verizon Fios.

“With Varga we saw a huge spike in call volume and reached our goal, in fact, we did at least 15% better than the original goal that the client set and the conversion rate went up noticeably,” explained Escano. “We attribute the success to these main differences: Varga’s targeting is more accurate and they really do have auditors in the field monitoring the distribution to make sure you are getting what you ask for.”


Media Contact:
Kendall DeWitt
kdewitt@vargainc.com
(949) 768-1500

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Varga Media Solutions, Inc. is a team of front door marketing experts and consumer targeting specialists who develop and distribute breakthrough, direct-to-consumer advertising campaigns. For more information, visit www.vargainc.com. To learn more about advertising opportunities with Varga Media Solutions, please call 949-768-1500. Follow us on twitter @vargainc