Success Stories

How Spring Meadow Nursery Used Hulu Ad Manager to Drive Growth

Advertising effectively means you have to be where the people are, and people are using different media outlets today than they were 20—or even 10—years ago. Now, some of the best methods for reaching an audience come from social media and streaming platforms.

Joe Williams is the Digital Marketing Specialist for Spring Meadow Nursery, a wholesale nursery that provides Proven Winner’s Color Choice Shrubs you can find all over the country. Joe was drawn to sign up for Hulu Ad Manager to help solve for some of what was missing with Spring Meadow’s social media ad campaigns. In this interview, he tells us why he chose Hulu and shares how his experience has helped Spring Meadow increase both brand recognition and website traffic.

Hulu: Please give us some background on Spring Meadow Nursery and the audience you are trying to reach.

Joe: Spring Meadow Nursery is a wholesale nursery that provides our award winning shrubs to gardening centers like Home Depot, Lowe’s, and thousands more across the U.S. and Canada. You may recognize us with the Proven Winners Color’s Choice branded white pots. Because our plants are high quality, our target audience is homeowners who want the best plants for their garden and aren’t deterred by the higher prices.

Hulu: What challenges have you faced with your media mix that led you to try advertising on streaming TV?

Joe: We’ve tried a lot of advertising platforms, especially this year. Our biggest channel and our main focus is social media, with paid advertisements on Facebook and Instagram. However, we also advertise with traditional radio and streaming radio platforms as well as direct mailers. The primary goal of our marketing is to drive our audience to request more information about our plants and their garden’s potential.

For me, the biggest challenge was reaching different people. With social media advertising like Facebook, ads are easily skipped and most viewers don’t even have their sound on.

In contrast to ads on social media, Hulu makes it easy to ensure our audience experiences the entire ad—which makes all of our marketing more effective.

Hulu: What do you find attractive about streaming services vs. other platforms?

Joe: Targeting is big for us. Being able to set up filters and target our ideal audience based on the genre of shows or movies allows us to reach exactly who we want to reach. Plus, we want to branch out and reach people Spring Meadow Nursery wouldn’t touch otherwise, which is something you get on Hulu.

Hulu: Why did you choose Hulu to help tell your story?

Joe: I signed up for the Hulu Ad Manager beta as soon as I saw it. I wanted to try advertising with Hulu for a number of reasons.

REPUTATION

I’ve used Hulu in my personal life for forever. It’s a name and brand that everyone recognizes, whether or not they have an account. I was familiar with the quality of ads, and I thought it would be cool to see ads from companies that aren’t huge giants, so I wanted to give it a go to see if it would work for Spring Meadow.

AUDIENCE

Hulu’s audience is vast and varying. It’s where the people are, especially as users increased during the pandemic. We knew we could reach different people with Hulu than our social media campaigns or radio ads.

In current times, Hulu is just a good way to get in front of people—it’s where the people are.

METRICS

One of the biggest draws for me was the promise of detailed and accurate metrics. With Hulu, you’re able to see the results on things like how many people saw your ad, how long they watched it, and how many times the same person saw it. It is much less estimate-based than other traditional forms of advertising, such as radio. And these numbers are all easily accessed, on-demand, in your account.

With other channels that we’ve tested in the past—as well as a few we currently use—getting metrics like this can be challenging. And even when you do track them down, they don’t always tell you a whole lot. I really like that with Hulu I can get a pulse on how things are going quickly and easily.

EASY TO USE

Honestly, it didn’t take me very long to figure out how to use Hulu’s Ad Manager. It’s very user-friendly, and I loved being able to do it all myself! I can get it set up by myself and immediately see what’s going on.

The Hulu platform also made it easy to upload our videos. Other platforms aren’t super clear in terms of video requirements, but the Hulu Ad Manager platform made it easy to make sure the video looks great the first time it goes up.

Hulu: What results and success have you seen from your campaign on Hulu?

Joe: Beyond how many times we can get the ad in front of people, the metrics I like to see are what increases our brand recognition. Our ad pointed people back to a specific landing page, so it enabled us to track things like more people coming to the Spring Meadow Nursery website.

We saw upticks in people searching for us and asking about our plants. If someone has watched the full 30-second ad, we’re pretty happy; but if we can engage them further, that’s an extra win for us.

We got tremendous reach numbers based on value, especially compared to other channels. We just built the website the campaign pointed to this year, and we’ve seen great website data as customers were able to find information about the plants they want.

The projected impressions we received prior to running the ad were incredibly accurate, and I think it even over-delivered! Long-term, this will definitely be a part of our media marketing mix—I don’t see this going away any time soon.

Learn More About Hulu’s Self-Service Advertising Solution

Thank you so much for your time, Joe. We’re glad to hear that our ads have increased your website traffic and brand recognition! Brands like Spring Meadow Nursery are why we started our self-service advertising platform.

Looking to get your ad in front of your target audience? Learn how you can get started with Hulu Ad Manager, an affordable way to show our extensive viewer community what your company has to offer.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.