Aims
We're helping B2B business RS Components, the world's largest distributor of electronic products, raise their profile as a credible presence within the Electronic Design Engineering (EDE) Community.
Activity
We developed a social media hub called DesignSpark – a global gateway to online resources and design support for engineers.
We developed and launched the community in four languages (English, German, Japanese and Simplified Chinese) to help target countries where design engineers already have a very established presence.
Our in-house social media mangagement team helped to seed, grow and develop the community. They also provide ongoing community management, as well as generating interesting, unique content to help build long-term engagement.
DesignSpark was created in different branding to that of RS Components to illustrate independence. As a result, the community is viewed as being a place to ask open questions, solve problems, and to talk and interact with other design engineers. The RS brand and its services are still promoted fully on the community however, with several links back to the main e-commerce site.
DesignSpark is also home to DesignSpark PCB – the world’s most fully featured free design tool.
Key results
- DesignSpark is the fastest growing community of its kind with 45,000 members in its first year.
- The DesignSpark PCB tool has been downloaded over 60,000 times, helping RS increase their presence within the EDE community.
- DesignSpark has become part of RS Components wider marketing and PR strategy and advertising campaigns have been rolled out across 40 different publications in Europe.
- DesignSpark is at the centre of a shareprice upgrade to the RS Components business (the upgrade is from £2.27 - £.290).