Targeting Nonprofit Social Media Campaigns by Personas

Persona driven recruitment to promote organic farming

The 10,000ft View:

We deployed a targeted, persona-based nonprofit social media campaign to gain the attention of youthful change-makers, impact-seekers, and experience-cravers and draw them into the purpose-driven world of organic farming.

The Story + Strategy:

Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) came to us to help build a recruitment campaign that would increase their awareness, and conversion rate, with purpose-minded young adults looking to gain hands-on experience in sustainable living while giving something back to the communities around them.

The campaign needed to raise awareness of the unique opportunities WWOOF provides – giving WWOOFers (program participants) the ability to work half days on organic farms in exchange for room and board during their visit, connect with the heart of American agrarian culture, and expand their perspective on our country and its natural resources. But as unique as the programs’ opportunities are, we realized that potential WWOOFers’ motivations for wanting to join were just as diverse.

We began by conducting audience research to better understand their varied interests, barriers, mindsets, needs, and wants. Then, we identified like-minded groups with similar characteristics, allowing us to craft targeted personas that would let us address each groups’ specific needs and connect with them how, where, and when they’ll be most compelled to take action.

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Persona development

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Nonprofit social media campaigns

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Landing page creation

After diving into the audience research, we identified four buckets WWOOFers fell into:

*Serious Green Thumb
*Aspiring Artisan
*International Backpacker
*U.S. Vagabond

With each of these personas, and their more detailed characteristics and motivations in mind, we wrote and designed a series of nonprofit social media campaigns that spoke to directly to the four separate personas. The visuals of the ads showcased individuals or groups that best represented the personas, and used verbiage that resonated with their motivations to either see the world, create from scratch, or deepen their knowledge.

Those ads directed to clean, easy to use landing pages that drove visitors to register for the program. Our pilot campaign brought in over 3,000 prospective WWOOFer leads over 4 months. We identified the Serious Green Thumb and Aspiring Artisan personas as the most efficient and engaged audience segments, being 2.5-3x more likely to convert on landing pages.

  • Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms

Advocacy + Campaigns, Communications Strategy, Creative, Landing Page Design, Research & Insights, Social Media, Visual Design.

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