Island Institute
CHALLENGE
Island Institute–a community development non-profit–sought to amplify its reach and connect with individuals who share their desire to support and develop Maine’s coastal communities.
To accomplish this, they wished to expand their digital footprint and reach a wider demographic–while still engaging their current audience of supporters. Further, they needed to be able to measure and understand this outreach to make data-driven decisions about their marketing, advertising, and online presence.
SOLUTION
To reach this expanded audience, we developed a social media advertising plan that met their target demographics at every stage in the journey:
- Top of Funnel: Engaging with social content
- Middle of Funnel: Visiting tailored landing pages
- Bottom of Funnel: Subscribing to their email newsletter
We also created a series of custom graphic templates that can be updated with messaging and images to meet the needs of different campaigns and audience segments.
To grow their reach on Instagram & Facebook we set up custom cold audiences using demographic and interest targeting as well as retargeting audiences using in-platform data, website users, and first-party subscriber lists.
Simultaneously, we optimized their Google Analytics 4, Meta Pixel, and Google Tag Manager to collect relevant data on user behavior. We met monthly to hone in on different user journeys on the website and build a custom Looker Studio report where Island Institute team members could find visually striking and actionable insights into the performance of their ads and website. Our in-depth reporting enabled us to forecast not only results from ad campaigns but also future additions to their donor database and their predicted value.
In addition to the direct results of increased social engagement, web traffic, and email subscribers, Island Institute also gained a repeatable campaign structure that can be tailored to different objectives and core messaging in the future.
Project Highlights
11,998 post engagements in 8 months
8,955 users to the website
280% higher CTR than the industry average
63% more email subscriptions than forecasted
20% decrease in CPA