Helping to Keep Northern Virginia’s Waterways Clean One Drop at a Time
80% Increase
in website traffic
More than 3.8 million
social media impressions
6% increase
in rain barrel usage after one year
Overview
Picking up after your pet, composting, and planting native. Did you know these are all tasks you can do to help reduce polluted stormwater runoff? Many northern Virginia residents didn’t know or realize that runoff is one of the biggest factors affecting the region’s water quality. That’s where the Northern Virginia Clean Water Partners came in.
Created to help educate residents on the effect polluted stormwater runoff has on their local waterways and to encourage them to change behaviors to help reduce it, the Northern Virginia Clean Water Partners is a coalition of county and city governments. Hatcher has been honored to work with the organization by developing and implementing a strategic digital campaign to amplify their message and enact behavioral change.
Challenge
Northern Virginia is part of the Chesapeake Bay watershed and has several different types of waterbodies throughout it. One of the biggest factors affecting the quality of these waterways is polluted stormwater runoff. Stormwater runoff can carry heavy loads of nutrients, bacteria, and other pollutants into streams and rivers via the stormwater drain network. To decrease this type of pollution, residents can participate in simple tasks, such as picking up litter, adding rain barrels to their yard, creating rain gardens, and more. However, many residents are unaware of what effects stormwater can have on our waterways and the easy ways we can prevent it from becoming pollution.
Solution
The client selected Hatcher to develop a strategic digital marketing campaign to educate residents on the issue. The campaign included digital advertising, digital engagement, and various creatives all working together to make stormwater management more approachable to their audience. The campaign tapped into Hatcher’s environmental, digital, and creative expertise allowing us to effectively inform, raise awareness, and encourage residents to take action against a rising environmental issue.
Educating Audiences With Eye-catching Visuals
As part of the campaign, our team collaborated with the coalition to create light-hearted graphics and two motion graphic videos (one of which won a Telly award) focused on seasonal issues as a way to make stormwater management tips more engaging and less daunting. We developed daily social media content to be paired with these creatives to highlight information residents needed to take action against stormwater pollution on their own.
From Clicks to Conversions
The client selected Hatcher to develop a strategic digital marketing campaign to educate residents on the issue. The campaign included digital advertising, digital engagement, and various creatives all working together to make stormwater management more approachable to their audience. The campaign tapped into Hatcher’s environmental, digital, and creative expertise allowing us to effectively inform, raise awareness, and encourage residents to take action against a rising environmental issue.
Impact
To ensure we were reaching an audience beyond their current social media following, we developed a comprehensive digital campaign. The tactics of this campaign included programmatic, social media traffic and lead generation ads, email campaigns, and search ads. We used the information we collected from the lead generation ads to send out quarterly newsletters to further engage residents and foster the behavioral change needed to reduce polluted stormwater runoff in northern Virginia.
Capabilities
Behavior change
Digital marketing
Email campaigns
Graphic design
Social media
Visual (video and photo)