From the Baltic to the Black Sea: social media for a global plumbing leader

Founded in 1918 in Lahti, Finland, Uponor today employs over 4,000 people and runs ten large production plants in 5 countries (Finland, Sweden, Germany and the United States). In the water installation industry Uponor is positioned as a dependable, high-quality premium brand.

Building a community, educating people about Uponor solutions, supporting sales by reaching the target groups. Building an engaged community around a brand that gathers mainly installers.

From Q2 2024 we take on 13 social channels in total plus Meta Ads campaigns for selected markets. In Poland we additionally revive a new distribution channel — TikTok.

We were put to the test on three Uponor ad accounts corresponding to the company’s 3 branches located on the Baltic. From July 2023 we were responsible for Poland, Lithuania and Estonia. The cooperation started with training on the company’s business and products, and we signed a six-month trial contract. We began with a thorough audit of the company’s advertising assets and the Meta Ads configuration, optimised how the profiles and ads worked, and then moved on to producing content and building the sales funnel.

Our task is to engage the community under the posts as strongly as possible and to send them to the website. We work at the early stages of the marketing funnel — awareness, recognition and interest.

Above all: diversifying the communication channels and zero… waffle.

Researching the personas and implementing a new communication strategy let us isolate the most desirable target group for social media. That forced us to learn about the competitive advantages of Uponor products, their technical innovations and their market positioning. And all of it in language that works for global communication, matches the company’s tone of voice, will not trigger a reputational crisis and, above all, pushes the performance of the advertising content to its maximum.

And most importantly — we managed to convince the client to come back to the newer social platforms. In building the company’s organic reach… that became the game changer of our cooperation. We are pleased to report that in the very first month TikTok generated 50,000 organic visits a month.

The ads were targeted primarily at men aged 25–55. In the campaigns we used graphics built from the client’s own materials, as well as films supplied to us. The most effective topics turned out to be underfloor heating and surface cooling.

Targeting such a specific group carries a certain “risk”. At times the posts attracted unflattering comments, which we moderated in a way that educated the audience as well as possible. Our aim is above all to explain the physics behind the solutions the client offers. Watching how the audience reacted to particular topics, we tried to select them more carefully, as we got to know the target group over several months.

It is understandable that some of these solutions are entirely new to the audience — you do not hear about surface cooling in the ceiling every day — which is why, always in agreement with the client, we try to explain how they work in simple terms.

… the main goal of the advertising was to build a community and drive traffic to the website.

We generated 9,345 link clicks (at PLN 0.46 per click) and reached 879 thousand people with our campaigns.

Over six months of cooperation we generated 23% more reach on Facebook than in the previous period. The Facebook page was visited by 24.9% more people, and we gained 751 new followers (an increase of 734.4%). The work aimed at attracting new followers was driven by the wish to “refresh” the existing target group with new people interested in Uponor systems.

With a smaller budget there is a noticeable difference in the number of link clicks compared with the period with a larger budget (which is when we stepped into the ads manager). The smaller budget also came with a higher cost per click (CPC).

Our work focused on driving traffic to the site (objective: traffic for cold audiences plus remarketing campaigns), but additional clicks were collected in engagement campaigns whenever a post carried a link to the landing page for the product in question. That gave the campaign a double function.

In the very first month of our work TikTok generated 50,000 organic visits a month. The numbers speak for themselves.

Besides running the channels, we produce reference films at sites where GF+ and Uponor systems are installed. On location we film the installation during and after assembly, interviews with the investor and the contractor, and drone footage. Editing and voice-over are done in house.

The films go to the sales department as reference material for designers and investors. We have produced them at thermal baths, a residential tower, housing estates, a medical facility and a prefabricated house, among others. From every shooting day we also prepare shorter formats for the social channels.