Social media supports Shepard season

The Australian Avocados always on social media activity continued in February, with the aim to keep avocados top of mind. In February, we reached more than 950K Australians and had more than 1.3 million engagements.

The top-performing post for February was the ‘Avocado! My Favourite!’ post (11/02/2018). It reached more than 340,000 people and had an engagement rate of 46%. This means that nearly half the people who saw the content had some engagement with the post, whether that be a ‘like’, comment or share. This is encouraging as it means our target market is loving the content. The post was particularly popular due to its reference to Valentine’s Day, with many users commenting that they would love to get avocados for Valentine’s Day.

Another top performing post was the ‘Guess who’s ripe? Shepards ripe, ripe again!’ post (06/02/2018). It reached more than 310K users and had an engagement rate of 43.9%. Falling under the ‘Avopedia’ content pillar, this post aimed to inform the Facebook community that the Shepard variety of avocados was ripe in a cheeky, fun way.

Shepard fans were out in force, telling of their love for this variety. Facebook is a great avenue for getting information quickly to a large number of people, such as the start of a season.

20,000 website visitors in February

The Australian Avocados website is regularly updated with new recipes, and remains an important vehicle for both recipes and other key messages, such as health benefits and ripening tips. In February alone there were nearly 20,000 visits to the website. Popular recipe trends for February were Guacamole, Dips & Smoothies, but the website also saw an increase in traffic for ‘how to ripen’ tips.
Guacamole recipe ads on Google continue to drive the highest volume of traffic to the website. With more than 22 million avocado recipe search results on Google, the search engine advertising allows the Australian Avocado website to be at the top of the first page of Google, increasing the number of consumers who use this as the source for recipes.

About the marketing program

See the latest marketing activity that’s helping Aussie consumers connect with (and eat!) Australian avocados. The industry’s marketing is managed by Hort Innovation and funded by the avocado marketing levy. Hort Innovation develops consumer-focused promotions using a variety of mediums including social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and YouTube as well as targeted partnerships with consumer-related publications and platforms.

This update was provided by Hort Innovation for Guacamole 16 March 2018.