Groundswell Award 2008: Energizing


Intuit’s Just Start Campaign:

With a focus on customer acquisition, Intuit’s Just Start campaign energized people to start or rally behind others who aspire to start their own business. The campaign engaged new and aspiring entrepreneurs, Intuit QuickBooks, TurboTax and Quicken customers and bloggers to support people in taking the next steps to Just Start.

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Seventy-two percent of Americans dream of starting their own business. Intuit’s Just Start campaign was designed to spark a wave of change and ignite a nationwide entrepreneurial revolution by inspiring, empowering and guiding Americans to achieve this dream.

Four million small businesses use Intuit’s QuickBooks. Many aspiring and new entrepreneurs -- Intuit’s prospective customers -- are unaware of the need for financial software. Along with providing inspiration and guidance, the Just Start campaign was created to educate people on the importance of financial management and distribute copies of Intuit’s free entry-level QuickBooks Simple Start accounting software.

Intuit, working with its PR and marketing agencies, Access Communications and Grow Marketing, developed the Just Start campaign with multiple, integrated components that facilitated participant and customer-driven word of mouth. These included a series of in-market Just Start events at major commuter hubs, a national online contest to win a $50,000 small business grant and a variety of online communities.

Campaign Components

  • National contest to win $50,000 small business grant: Intuit launched an interactive website, www.IWillJustStart.com, where the public could enter the Just Start contest, get how-to business tips, join an online community of entrepreneurs and download QuickBooks Simple Start. For the contest, entrants submitted letters or videos describing their business dream, what they needed to stop doing, or resign from, to achieve it, and how they’d use the grant. For people not ready to enter the contest, they could simply make an online pledge to start their new business.

























  • Online Communities: As part of the Just Start contest, entrants also joined JumpUp.com, Intuit’s online community of entrepreneurs and resource site. Here, anyone who aspires to start or already owns a business can come together to encourage and support each other as well as share tried and true business advice. To complement this community, Intuit also created a pre-entrepreneurship Just Start community on Facebook.

  • In-market events: With Grow Marketing, Intuit launched a series of interactive Just Start events in four busy commuter hubs across the country such as Grand Central Terminal in New York. At each event, budding entrepreneurs drew inspiration from local entrepreneurs and QuickBooks users. For expert advice, business experts from the local Small Business Development Centers and QuickBooks ProAdvisor accountant customers were also available. At the same time, attendees received free copies of Simple Start for themselves and anyone they knew who wanted to start their own business. While at the event, attendees could enter the Just Start contest by sharing their business dreams via video with an onsite videographer who uploaded their entry to www.IWillJustStart.com.

Energizing Prospective and Current Customers:

IWillJustStart.com = Viral
  • The Just Start campaigned was designed to be viral and energize Just Start participants and Intuit customers to spread the word. On the IWillJustStart.com site, people could easily scroll over a wall of entries to rate, post comments and send entries directly from the site to family and friends. The site also connected with Intuit’s JumpUp community for new businesses, providing additional resources to help people get started.

Just Start Contest Calls Public to Judge
  • For the contest, three well-known small business bloggers were chosen as judges to determine the top five finalists. Once the finalists were selected, Intuit invited the public to vote on the grand winner during a three-week voting period.

QuickBooks Customers as Mentors
  • QuickBooks customers and accountants were invited to attend each local event to share their insights on running a successful small business. They gave people personal advice and tips on starting a business and talked about the importance of managing their finances early on with QuickBooks software.

Finalists Use Word-of-Mouth Marketing Kit & Widget
  • Intuit created a Word-of-Mouth Marketing Kit to help the five finalists leverage and expand their networks to get votes. The kit contained a variety of ideas such as creating a Website or blog about their contest entry, commenting on small business blogs about their entry and even setting up voting stations at their park or mall. At the same time, Intuit provided them with a Just Start widget featuring their contest entry so that they could highlight it on their Website, blog or favorite social network. 

Facebook Community Spreads Quiz
  • Intuit created a Just Start pre-entrepreneurship community on Facebook and, in partnership with the third-party developers who created the Quizzes application, sponsored a popular “What Kind of Entrepreneur Are You?” quiz. The quiz was meant to be fun and tongue-in-cheek with avatar outcomes like “Natural Born CEO,” “Trend Setter,” or “Free Thinker” that people could post to their Facebook profiles.

Execution:

Phase One – Ignite the Fire:
  • To launch the Just Start campaign, the PR team with Access Communications, secured an exclusive with USA Today, leveraging an Intuit commissioned survey that found that 72 percent of Americans dream of someday owning their own business as a hard news hook.

  • On Oct. 15, Intuit officially announced the campaign and the IWillJustStart.com site, immediately drawing an influx of people entering the contest and enquiring about the events.

Phase Two – Fanning the Flames:
  • The PR team launched a national media relations blitz about the contest and events. It included PR 2.0 tactics including extensive outreach to bloggers and distribution of social media releases.

  • To increase the momentum, the marketing team kicked off extensive promotions via online media, a  Facebook quiz and community and Intuit-wide (QuickBooks, TurboTax, Quicken, internal employees) cross promotion that encouraged word of mouth.

  • Offline, the team created and encouraged buzz via small business groups within Meetup and Small Business Development Centers. The event truck was also wrapped in the Just Start logo and URL as it crossed the country.

Phase Three –Taking Off Like Wildfire:
  • After the launch, the team, with Grow Marketing at the helm, took to the streets. They hosted four in-market events in key small business growth cities through October and November. Local radio, media and street teams spread the word.

  • To maximize word-of-mouth for the contest, the public was called to vote for the grand winner choosing among five finalists who were selected by a panel of business bloggers. To help the finalists solicit votes, they were given a Just Start online widget and a Word-of-Mouth Marketing Kit.

Results

The Just Start campaign was successful in establishing Intuit/QuickBooks as a small business advocate and driving new users to the QuickBooks franchise. The campaign met and in many cases surpassed measurable business objectives for the campaign:

  • Received 2500 contest entries and pledges with 22,000 votes cast by the public.
  • Distributed over 300,000 CDs and downloads of QuickBooks Simple Start.
  • Increased the online community membership by 333 percent.
  • Implementation of Word of Mouth Marketing Kit by finalists drove 2nd and 3rd highest weeks of traffic to contest Website.
  • Engaged over 120,000 people on Facebook with the “What Kind of Entrepreneur Are You?” quiz.
  • Touched over 130,000 people at the in-market events.
  • Obtained over 280 pieces of media coverage; 80 of which were blog postings.
  • Garnered 34 million marketing impressions via Just Start truck (billboard) and marketing promotions.

Qualitatively, the campaign fostered positive emotional connections between the Intuit/QuickBooks brand and consumers and helped spread word of mouth. A few examples of this success at the in-market events include:

Boston – An herbal healer collected tips on everything from attracting clients to accepting credit cards.  She stayed for an hour talking to the different experts and learning how to use QuickBooks Simple Start.

Seattle – A Peruvian musician and band leader talked with a local business expert on how to decide if he should incorporate this business. He also took several copies of QuickBooks Simple Start to start managing his finances on his computer and to give to other Peruvian musicians who played at restaurants in the Seattle area.