Texas Longleaf Taskforce: Landowner Longleaf Challenge

texas longleaf taskforce: landowner longleaf challenge A case study to review the use of digital media to build a resilient outreach program for private forestry landowners in east Texas.

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THE case study

TABLE OF CONTENTS background

The Texas A&M Natural Resources Institute (NRI) has an existing cooperative agreement (CA) with the Gulf Coast Prairie LCC. With all previous projects under the CA completed, and no new projects in the books, a portion of the budget remained under the agreement with an expiration date of December 2019.

As both the Gulf Coast Prairie LCC and NRI support the Texas Longleaf Implementation Team (TLIT), we explored project ideas that could benefit the Texas LIT’s communications and outreach efforts to private forestry landowners.

An informal conference call was held with a few key members of the TLIT to discuss ideas for further exploration.

4/ 8/ 5/ 10/ 6/ 12/ Reviewing the Opportunity: Overview and Challenge

Phase Two: Launch and Monitoring Target Audience and Documenting

Reviewing the Opportunity: Solution, Results and Timeline

Phase Two: Launch and Monitoring Public Relations and Media Kit

Phase One: Creative Build Advertisement, Targeting and Survey

Phase Three: Reporting and Analytics Rundown, Surveys and Lessons

Beginning as a small idea, this campaign was rooted in modern outreach by digitally sowing seeds and pruning back the many opportunities that come with social media as a means to identify the critical factor in this race against time to reverse the longleaf ecosystem decline, private forestry landowners.

FIRST DEMO PRESENTATION TO STAKEHOLDERS MARCH 7, 2019

KICK OFF CALL JANUARY 2019

LAUNCHED MEDIA KIT MAY 2019

PUBLISHED FIRST EDITORIAL FEATURE APRIL 4, 2019

REPORTING

ADVERTISEMENT BUILD

FIRST AD TARGET ADJUSTMENT APRIL 15, 2019

DEFINED METRICS FOR SUCCESS FEBRUARY 2019

CAMPAIGN LAUNCH MARCH 22, 2019

OVERVIEW Historically, longleaf pine ecosystems were the dominant forest type across the southeastern United States. Changes in land use catalysed by economic and population growth, an increase in demand for rural land and the subsequent incentive to subdivide or sell created this process for fragmentation and land conversion leaving us with less than five percent of the once sprawling legacy of longleaf stands.

CHALLENGE We are now tasked with—or rather endeavor to—restore the awe of the powerfully cascading forests that provided habitat for wildlife, clean air and water for surrounding communities, economic opportunities for landowners and land infrastructure for military readiness near testing and training facilities.

One of the most common challenges for scientists is also our largest responsibility—going beyond producing sound, applied research conclusions to developing thoughtful, adaptable outreach strategies to keep landowners informed, policy actions effective and to continue acquiring critical funding.

As a part of the Gulf Coast Prairie LCC cooperative agreement in support of the Texas Longleaf Implementation Team, NRI proposed a two-pronged approach to increase awareness of the initiative while also

Packaged as a Facebook Lead Generation Advertisement campaign, NRI built a thoughtfully targeted online experience under the direction of the Texas Longleaf Taskforce.

Exploring existing digital platforms in new ways required thorough experimentation prior to launch including two stakeholder previews and a testing period where we were able to define who the exact audience profile looked like on Facebook. In deployment, NRI followed a threephase system from creating the visual

CAMPAIGN END AUGUST 1, 2019

TLIT CAMPAIGN PRESENTATION AND SPECIALIST CHECK-IN JULY 2019

RESULT

SOLUTION building the team’s comprehensive landowner contact and outreach list through leads generation tactics.

The objective was to strengthen relationships and build a network of well-informed forestry landowners to create a more resilient outreach program. Developing a platform to engage with these landowners who are not already covered by an agency or receiving assistance is the key to solving the longleaf ecosystem decline.

PUBLISHED SECOND EDITORIAL FEATURE JULY 9, 2019

experience and forestry landowner survey to launching the campaign and developing a reporting module.

The desired outcomes of this five-month campaign included: •

acquiring previously unengaged landowner connections

•

capturing website traffic to txlongleaf.org

•

enhancing awareness of technical and financial assistance available to east Texas forestry landowners to restore or maintain longleaf pine

•

increasing landowner inquiries and applications for technical and financial assistance

As we analyzed the data during the campaign, we acknowledged that not all connections will lead to more acres restored, but we could not understate the potential of the 625 interactions over 133 days between our team, natural resource specialists and previously unengaged private landowners as a direct result of the Facebook advertisement. This was work outliving the myth that forest landowners are lacking resources and contacts to guide them through the process to longleaf restoration.

Between the launch and the final day of the campaign, 90% of the Texas Longleaf Taskforce website visitors had never previously used the website, bringing in 1,615 new people from Facebook to learn about assistance programs.

By the final day of the campaign, the Texas Longleaf Taskforce reached 95,897 targeted landowners and residents in eastern Texas who showed interest in land management and longleaf restoration, and collected 67 leads directly from forestry landowners alone through Facebook.

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THE opportunity

Through a partnership between the Texas A&M Natural Resources Institute (NRI) and the Texas Longleaf Taskforce, a counterpart of the America’s Longleaf Restoration Initiative (ALRI) working to restore longleaf pine ecosystems on private and public forestlands in Texas, the Landowner Longleaf Challenge launched in March of 2019.

The user has the option to engage with the ad by liking, commenting, or clicking to Learn More about longleaf, cost-share programs, technical assistance and partnering opportunities.

Above is the advertisement as it appeared on Facebook to target audiences.

The interactivity of this ad experience allowed viewers to choose how they consumed the information, whether they scrolled through a carousel of nostalgic longleaf photographs, watched a

landowner interview or hopped to the website.

Each action our viewers took could be tracked through the ad and gave our target audiences—potential east Texas forestry landowners— an inside look at what technical and financial assistance could look like for them without having to leave their Facebook feed.

Our viewers spent an average of 65 seconds on the ad with each viewing, compared to the industry average of 31 seconds for our target demographic.

At the end of the Facebook advertisement experience, each viewer had the option to participate in a survey, otherwise known as a lead form. This form asked general land information and if the landowner would be interested in any of the six programs from the natural resource specialists chosen by the Texas Longleaf Taskforce.

These surveys were then encrypted and made accessible to NRI. Once a survey was submitted, NRI collected the data and sent the information to the

designated program liaison.

These sets of information were broken down by county and program interest giving the information a route to the right contact.

The journey of these leads were individualized to the landowner requesting more information. Some led to phone calls, others to site visits.

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In Phase One, NRI developed the campaign creative, or advertising experience, the targeting demographics and the private landowner survey that appeared in the ad for each viewer.

SURVEY NOTES.

After the user hovers over the ad, the content will become a full screen experience the same way that a video may auto-play as you scroll through the Facebook feed.

CREATIVE NOTES.

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01

PHASE ONE CREATIVE BUILD

An important part of monitoring and community management included watching the target profiles who were responding to the advertisement. After the campaign ran for a month, we made adjustments to narrow our target demographic to specific east Texas areas.

We focused our efforts along east Texas and targeted individuals between the ages 21-65+ who were also interested in one or more of the following examples of predetermined Facebook groups: • • • • • •

Conservation and conservation biology Land and natural resource management Ranching and farm operations, cattle Tractor and skid steer equipment Pine trees, forestry Hunting, wildlife management

LAUNCH NOTES. In Phase Two, we launched the Facebook advertisement and prepared for community management where we actively engaged with the landowners who were commenting, sharing or asking questions about the advertisement.

Our goal was to help facilitate organic conversation between landowners because we already knew that the people that were exposed to the advertisement had many things in common. When technical or project-oriented questions arose from our audiences, we immediately deferred to the experts and worked with the Texas Longleaf Taskforce team to craft a timely, informative response.

One of the outcomes that we did not anticipate was the overflow of comments we received from landowners who had stories and memories associated with longleaf pine.

We saved every one of them.

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PHASE TWO LAUNCH AND MONITORING

TARGET AUDIENCE.

LAUNCH NOTES CONT. While the advertisement campaign was running and awareness in the landowner community was on the rise with each comment, share and survey response, we also deployed a public relations strategy that led us to two editorial features and a media kit built for partners.

You can see one of the features to the right. We are grateful for our partners in Texas who helped spread the word about the assistance programs, of which landowners can and should take advantage.

The Partner Media Kit was built over the course of a month and included packaged messages, photos and other snippets for our natural resource partners to share with their networks.

The impact of this message coming from other reputable sources compounded our efforts by duplication.

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02

PHASE TWO LAUNCH AND MONITORING

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PHASE THREE REPORTING AND ANALYTICS

rundown. SURVEYS. LESSONS IN THE LOOP. Once the campaign was launched, we began documenting progress every month in addition to the quarterly reports required with the Cooperative Agreement. Each month, we reviewed: • • • • • • •

website traffic advertisement spend to date relevancy score compared to the target audience click through rate to website overall reach engagements survey collections

The most helpful form of collecting data was to separate the metrics monthover-month, rather than combining the numbers from launch to date with previous month’s numbers.

This allowed us to track trends as they were happening in real time.

Before the launch of the Facebook ad, with a potential conversion rate of 13.58%, we projected to receive about 40 submissions. In reality, we received 67 landowner forms, making the ad itself more successful than anticipated.

For the campaign, this did not, however, include the number of leads that came through from the Texas Longleaf Taskforce website Contact page—one of the destinations a viewer could have chosen directly from the ad. This was especially important to consider when calculating the overall margin of error in evaluating the success of the ad.

With future projects, we may consider adding additional resources to each survey and a projected timeline for when to expect outreach materials or contact from a specialist.

The most prominent lesson learned during the final phase of the campaign was in the time after collecting a form and handing the lead to the local natural resource specialist.

While the concept of this process was easy to track, it was not always obvious the outcome of each landowner contact.

Without the program liaison, we may not have ever known if the landowner was contacted, or if there were next steps after the initial contact.

This is partly for the protection of the landowner depending on the service or assistance they were interested in.

The challenge for the campaign is in determining the tangible return on investment of dollars and hours to landowner assistance applications.

Building and strengthening relationships with a network of wellinformed landowners is the foundation to a more resilient outreach program and to longleaf restoration efforts. Furthermore, this initiative cultivated a community of forest landowners looking to preserve heritage, working land forests, wildlife habitat and biodiversity within the longleaf pine ecosystem— landing on a win-win.

people reached

609

ad interactions

89

comments and stories shared

54

ad bookmarks

65

seconds in average view

1,615

visitors from Facebook ad

67

landowner leads collected

625

campaign interactions

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IN BRIEF

95,897