During the 2017 legislative session, Priority Marketing developed a campaign to influence the outcome of Senate Bill 10 and House Bill 761. We are pleased to report the Florida legislature passes these bills and approved funding for an EAA reservoir that will reduce harmful Lake Okeechobee discharges into the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie Rivers!
The Client
For this campaign, Priority Marketing worked with a coalition of environmental groups, led by The Conservancy of Southwest Florida, which has been a client for more than ten years. The larger group also included The Everglades Coalition, which is an alliance of more than 60 local, state and national conservation and environmental organizations that are dedicated to the full restoration of the Greater Everglades Ecosystem, as well as The Everglades Foundation.
The Audience
While each of these environmental organizations had plans in place to mobilize their supporters, they recognized that they needed to reach beyond their membership to make a stronger impact on legislators. Furthermore, they had done research that showed a lack of awareness about harmful Lake Okeechobee discharges and the severe impact on the economy and the health of people in the area. Once aware, the study participants showed great concern about both the environmental impact and the economic and health impacts of the discharges. This pointed to the need for educating audiences outside of their current influence. Therefore, the target audience for Priority Marketing’s campaign included Floridians who do not necessarily consider themselves environmentalists but who care about the local economy, their health and Florida’s water and wildlife.
The Campaign
The purpose of the campaign was to encourage the public to contact their Florida legislators, asking them to pass a bill that would reduce harmful Lake Okeechobee discharges and send clean water south to replenish Florida Bay. This required educating the public about the issue and persuading concerned citizens to act. To accomplish this within the organizations’ limited budget, Priority Marketing created a PowerPoint presentation, a fact sheet, a video campaign and a website landing page. The creative campaign elements were executed with consistent brand messaging and design so that each organization could take the materials and share them with their own contacts to further the reach.
Three emotionally compelling testimonial videos were created. One focused on economic impacts with testimony from concerned small business owners. Another featured a lifeguard who suffered severe health impacts related to the discharges. The third featured a local child and his appeal for greater environmental consciousness and action. All three videos, which aired on broadcast television and digital channels, directed concerned citizens to the landing page, which included a mechanism for quickly and easily contacting legislators.
The fact sheet was provided in digital and printable formats on the landing page and on member websites to be easily shared by supporters with any audience. The PowerPoint was disseminated to the environmental organizations to support their efforts to reach, educate and mobilize new audiences. Additionally, guest opinions were developed and published in target media outlets to further influence the call to action.
The Results
The campaign was successful in raising awareness and generating action. During the first two months of the campaign, the landing page saw 4.4K page views, with 92.4% new visits, demonstrating the message is reaching a new audience and interested parties. During this same period, the Google AdWords Search program generated 623 clicks to the website with a click-through-rate of 1.87%, with text ads appearing in searched 33.3K times. Display banners were seen 577K times, preroll 120K times, and mobile app ads 127K times.
Upon completion of the campaign, all efforts generated 5.4K visits to the website, with the top acquisition of traffic sourcing from three Preroll video testimonials, that can be seen below.
The Send Clean Water South keywords have appeared in searches 49K times, and generated a total of 992 clicks to the website for a click-through-rate of 2.01%. Display banners were seen 1.2M times, and generated 1.6K website clicks for a click-through-rate of .14% (2x the industry average of .06%). Mobile Ads were seen a total of 275K times and generated 1.8K clicks, for a click-through-rate of .69% (6x higher than industry average for preroll video of .50%)
Online Display and Mobile App campaign generated 28% of website traffic, and Google AdWords Search program generated 15% of traffic.
The digital campaign overall generated 1.76M impressions and a click-through-rate of .35%, successfully driving traffic to the website for users to take action.
