Pivoting Social Media Product Focus Unlocked New Growth for Maui Nui

The Challenge

Maui Nui Venison is a company founded in Hawaii with a mission that extends well beyond turning profits. The company aims to help control the invasive Axis Deer population in Maui for the good of the environment, the community, and the food systems on the island, and they take a careful and sustainable approach to harvesting. But because Maui Nui’s mission drives everything that it does, that can mean their product inventory is dictated more by ecological need than business factors.

In the past, their social media marketing had been primarily directed towards one of their two core offerings: butcher box subscriptions. But when Maui Nui partnered with ADM, demand for boxes was outstripping supply, so our agency was challenged to diversify their social advertising approach to help Maui Nui grow despite the complexity of its operation. 

Our Solution

Maui Nui knew that the other offering in their portfolio—venison snacks—would need to take more precedence while butcher box inventory was low. ADM was tasked with putting that vision into action. While the client had adequate snack inventory, it hadn’t invested in advertising those products to the same extent as it had butcher boxes. Because of that, our first step was to create new demand on social media.

We began by researching the individual audiences that may be interested in Maui Nui’s snack offerings and identifying key value propositions that each would be interested in. Maui Nui’s snacks are ethically harvested, protein-packed, and convenient on the go. That led us to develop three audience concepts who would be receptive to these traits:

• Healthy Eaters
• Active Lifestyle
• Parents/Caretakers 

From there, we scoured the client’s existing reviews for examples that fell under each of these categories to see how existing customers who reflected those categories had praised the product. We drew from a wealth of positive testimonials about Maui Nui’s snack products to build ad copy and creative intended for each of the three distinct audience categories we had identified.

With our ad copy and imagery in hand, we could build campaigns. For prospecting, we built segmented ad sets based on the interest groups, along with general versions for broad and lookalike targeting. We also launched retargeting campaigns for Add To Carts, Previous Purchasers, and users who have engaged with the brand on Social Media.