I decided to make Facebook and Instagram ads for the company Spangler’s Candy raising engagement levels.
Spangler’s make candy canes, Dum-Dums, Bit-O-Honey, and Circus Peanuts. Spangler’s candy brands aren’t as well known as Hershey’s or Mars brands. Spangler’s exclusively targets those living in the United States.
They make over 6 million Dum-Dums every day compared to Mars which is an international brand making over 400 million M&M every day. They need to have an expanding social media presence to reach new markets.
The new markets would be expanding to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. If they could reach markets outside of the US, then the company could make higher revenue as well as decrease dependence on US markets.
Diversification has been the goal of Spanglers since the recent acquisition of Bit-O-Honey and NECCO. This could double sales and allow for new product integration.
Currently, with Dum-Dums, they can only produce 16 flavors at a time. This limits the variety and makes the company vulnerable to competition.
My target audience on the ads were for people who give away Dum-Dums for free. Dum-Dums sell to retailers. A teacher purchases Dum-Dums. The teacher gives Dum-Dums away to her students. I would target individuals who would buy Dum-Dums to give them away.
An ideal customer would be a business or individual that gives away Dum-Dums as a token of appreciation. This would be the key individual:
Interests: Helping others, teaching, learning, nurturing, growing
Demographics: middle age, female, any ethnicity, middle to upper class
The ads would be connected to people who had recently searched up about teachers, philanthropy hashtag, and giftofgiving hashtag. This includes the NTA (National Teachers Association) Instagrams page and other related sites.
Our goal for Instagram is to have 760K followers in 12 months. This number will be a goal because we could potentially target more customers and sell more products. Currently, we have 34.8K followers. If we gain 2,000 a day we will reach our goal in 12 months.
We would also try to increase conversion rates for our online store by 50%. If we have a conversion rate of 2.00%, we could grow the number of customers and have a larger leads list. If the followers increase we could direct more people to the store and click on links to buy products.
We would like engagement to increase by 30%. If engagement increases by 30%, we would gain likes, shares, and other social credit. This would allow the online store to increase sales and make the company’s products more visible.
1st ad
Our first ad would target teachers and students using Instagram. Its goal would be for teachers to give Dum-Dums for kids taking a final. This would help promote the products as well as give the product for free.
By making it relatable it would make the demographic more likely to engage. As more older teachers move out of the profession, the use of social media among teachers has become more prevalent. Teachers would be able to like and share the post allowing for social engagement.
At a cost of $20 per day for this ad, we would be able to reach a broad number of teachers and if interactions were at normal levels we would have over 200k views.
This is based on the ten percent flowing rule. Since we have 34K followers, we could have 340k views on our posts. This ad would also focus on improving social credit and lead generation by using hashtags to reach potential customers.
This ad would be successful because we are targeting a key audience with clear and tangible goals.
Ad-1 Instagram Post-Teachers Unite-ad for finals with teachers
Dum-Dums
Your students will ace all of their exams.
The stress of being a teacher in these times is to deal with.
If you remind your students of how lucky they are to have you, you will make a lasting impact on them.
Giving the gift of Dum-Dums will help them improve their scores and improve focus during tests.
Rock on teachers and students.
#teachers #dumdums #finals #yougotthis #candy #rockon
2nd ad
Ad-2 Instagram Story-flavor
This story with a poll on favorite flavor would be posted every day for two weeks. This question is posted on the Dum-Dums website, but they haven’t used it as an Instagram story yet. This would be a broad-based ad.
The ad would try to reach a variety of people by appealing as a general question. The ad would try to gather data and potentially learn about favorite/new flavors.
The company could launch a similar post on the story where they had a question with a place to answer. Which new flavor would you want to see? Then people would answer it. The Instagram page would create snappy replies to the story.
The ad would cost $10 per day. This ad would reach the 34K already following and reach those who know about the page but don’t follow. The number we want to reach is a total of 100k answers as the ad would be posted on the story every Monday for 15 weeks. This post would specifically target improving engagement and building social credit.
This would allow for a more engaging customer experience.
3rd Ad
In the third ad, the company would target Halloween as the theme. The company would work to make sure customers who give away Halloween candy to kids would give out Dum-Dums. I would start with posting it on October 29th. This would allow adequate time for the post to develop.
This ad would cost very little, “only $5 per day”. With very little time to post and a small window, this creates a unique opportunity to have sales for Halloween.
This would be a great ad for Facebook. Launching this ad would show the impact of Halloween and would draw in middle age people as they have Facebook.
This ad is targeting Facebook moms. This small ad would be perfect as it highlights Halloween as a fun and safe way to celebrate.
Ad-3 Dum-Dums Halloween Facebook post
Pick some of our candy for Halloween but look out for candy snatchers. #halloween
4th ad
In this ad, we would work with rabbis to promote kosher products. Being Kosher expands our audience and allows for many new customers to be a part of our family.
This would improve following and gain social credit as we get more interaction. Aside from this, the customer who has kosher products could have exposure to our Facebook page. This could draw in new customers as well as expand into new markets like Isreal.
The ad would be cost-effective only costing $2 per day. This would gain social credit as well as followers. Sales conversion ratios would improve and the products would be sold to new markets as well as expand existing markets.
We would also tag in the post the Orthodox Jews for Kosher. This would promote people in the Jewish community to follow our brand.
4th ad-We are officially Kosher
Dum-Dums
Dum-Dums We work with rabbis to ensure that we are up to kosher standards. We are OU certified in kosher. At Spangler’s candy company we work to ensure that products are inclusive and can fit many customers’ needs. By becoming kosher we can reach new customer bases and strengthen old bonds. Make Life Pop!
5th ad
In this ad, we would focus on targeting people who buy bulk candy. Bulk candy is not a large percentage of our sales so we would switch to make it a bigger part of sales.
This ad would be put as a Facebook cover for our Dum-Dums page. This would be to promote bulk options and show some of our large options with Dum-Dums.
Bulk options could be used for carnivals, parades, or other events. The bulk options would be targeted at people giving away candy for free.
We hope to increase the follower count by 300 people the day we show bulk candy. We would also increase the conversion ratio to be higher by at least 0.3%. The goal of the cover would be to increase knowledge about bulk candy options.
Updated their cover photo
How to build an Instagram/Facebook ad with Canva
These ads taught me the value of learning about the company and the ability to market within a department.
By launching a share your flavors story we reach more people than the one displayed on our website as we could organically grow views and reach more customers.
In a Gen Z era, we must work hard to improve social media presence to reach the young and their parents to encourage healthy lifestyles and sell our products.
Achieving this goal would improve customer experience and allow us to market our product using “new” technology.
By creating ads for Spangler, I was able to create meaningful work which could potentially bring new customers and improve engagement with posts.
Nathaniel Thiele 
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