CFO South Africa is a leading online and offline networking platform for CFOs and finance professionals in South Africa. The organisation circulates industry insights, houses professional profiles, organises industry events and publishes a biannual magazine. The CFO SA website features articles on leadership, technology, governance and strategy, highlighting the work and achievements of CFOs. Key events include the CFO Awards and the Finance Indaba. The platform aims to support CFOs by providing knowledge, networking opportunities and career development.

CHRO South Africa is a premier platform for Chief Human Resources Officers and HR professionals in South Africa, offering similar resources and support in the human resources domain as CFO SA does for finance. Key events include the CHRO Awards and HR Indaba. The CHRO SA site provides news and articles about HR industry leaders, organisational practices and professional development opportunities, aiming to support HR professionals with knowledge, networking opportunities and career growth.

In the post-pandemic world, it has become increasingly difficult to market large in-person events. The task becomes more challenging with a niche audience, as CFO SA and CHRO SA found out in the marketing campaigns for their 2023 Indabas. The campaigns were underperforming and only three weeks remained before the event when Vetro Media was brought in to boost website traffic to the ticket sales pages. In this small window, we had to devise and implement an effective strategy to reach a niche audience and convince them of the value of attending the events.

Vetro Media implemented a highly targeted social media and Google ads campaign to generate awareness of the events and drive ticket sales. We employed precision targeting techniques to reach the desired audience with compelling, crafted ad content that highlighted the key benefits and unique value offered by the events. Our social media and Google teams monitored performance closely and continuously optimised the campaign to ensure maximum engagement and conversion rates.

In the period that we were responsible for the Finance Indaba campaign (run on LinkedIn), we reached 39 212 users within the target audience and garnered 135 424 impressions at a frequency rate of 3.45. We achieved 504 clicks at a cost-per-click (CPC) of only R17.90 on a platform where the average CPC is R50-R100. This is an especially remarkable achievement when one considers that CFO SA had never run ads on LinkedIn and that we had no existing traction to leverage for this campaign. The HR Indaba campaign ran on Facebook, where we increased the reach by 828.95% (from 11 976 to 111 252), the impressions by 750.72% (from 15 656 to 133 189) and the engagements by 278.57% (from 28 to 106).

The events were well attended, and our client was so satisfied that we have been recontracted to run the Indaba campaigns from the outset.