Trust for Public Land
Bringing 50 Years of Public Lands into the Digital Age
Celebrating its 50th Anniversary, Trust for Public Land (TPL) realized it needed to engage more effectively with younger audiences to ensure another 50 years of Connecting Everyone to the Outdoors. GFM|CenterTable provided TPL with a strategic roadmap for digital engagement.
Project Overview
Trust for Public Land has been providing access to nature and protecting our public lands since 1972. And while the organization is well-known by its legacy donors, in order to continue their mission for the next 50 years they realized they needed a strategic approach to appeal to the next generation of supporters and donors. TPL does work in dozens of areas (from protecting large swaths of land in the West to turning parking lots into green spaces in urban areas) and has the ability to appeal to numerous interests (from hiking and mountain biking, to birding and fishing). The challenge was creating a solid strategy with focus, but without neglecting any of its service areas or potential audiences. As the saying goes, “If you try to be everything to everyone, you’ll be nothing to anyone.”
Approach
Utilizing existing audience personas, the GFM|CenterTable team provided an opportunity assessment of audiences, identifying the largest opportunities for digital engagement based on geography, demographics and subject matter interest. From there, a Platform POV™ digital strategy was developed to outline TPL’s purpose, voice, target audience, success metrics and recommended frequency of posting for all owned digital channels – from their website and social media platforms to email and text communications.
The Search Team at GFM also optimized TPL’s Google Ad Grant account and provided keyword research and recommendations for future paid search campaigns based on the terms identified as having the largest opportunities. All these elements were part of a larger digital communications strategy that GFM|CenterTable developed for TPL, including a donor journey map and ongoing content strategy that prioritized efforts in a phased manner to ensure all marketing and communications efforts would build upon the previous efforts.
Results
The Platform POV, donor journey map and ongoing content strategy has led to sustained engagement and organizational efficiencies within TPL. The preliminary two-week test of new content produced utilizing the overarching strategy led to increased audience engagement with a greater ROI, including:
30,000+
Views of 15+ seconds for a vertical video campaign at a cost of $0.18 per view
2,210
Engaged web sessions from the preliminary vertical video campaign
8
Direct donations in just two weeks
4,673
Unique visitors as a result of a two-week podcast campaign