West Palm Beach Downtown Development Authority
Challenge
Identifying and Selecting the Right Influencers
West Palm Beach is an ideally located community separated from its famous Palm Beach barrier island neighbor by the LakeWorth Lagoon in southeastern Florida. The population counts 110,000, and thousands of people with a median age of 38 live within three miles of downtown. The city has seen a downtown resurgence in the entertainment and shopping district recently, with fine dining joining plenty of opportunities for entertainment and the arts. The challenge for the DDA now is to promote this lively and vibrant community, attracting visitors in the area while staying in touch with their residents.
Marketing Director Tiffany Faublas says that West Palm Beach DDA was searching for a tool that could direct and manage their communication efforts effectively from the moment their day begins. They wanted the ability to promote the many new campaigns they were creating and targeting at West Palm Beach's various communities. They wanted a win-win for everyone, in which residents can enjoy their downtown, merchants make more sales, and the arts receive new patrons. Achieving all of these, they surmised, would be made possible with the help of social media and its heavy hitters. Connecting with social media influencers active in various categories became a high priority.
"Typically when you don't know the influencers, especially when you're trying to engage a new demographic, choosing the right people can be difficult. The main attraction of Meltwater's Social Influencers Platform is that it puts a wealth of social influencers right at my fingertips."
Tiffany Faublas, Marketing Director, West Palm Beach DDA
Solution
Using Influencer Segmentation When Doing Targeting
Tiffany Faublas reports that early in their evaluation, DDA found exactly what they were looking for in Meltwater. Hesitant to select the wrong influencers and compound the error by trying to make everything work, DDA was delighted to learn that Meltwater's Social Influencers Platform includes tools to easily segment prospective influencers. This eliminated the possibility that DDA would waste time writing to the wrong contacts. Additional Meltwater platform tools that make the marketing team's job easier include media monitoring, analytics, newsletters, and impact reports.
DDA's marketing director begins her workday by firing up Meltwater to catch up on overnight developments and share any links or reports with her staff or board. A major recent focus has been a big influx of visitors from Fort Lauderdale and Miami, a result of the new intercity rail service that commenced in May of last year. Meltwater quickly revealed the communities and influencers that DDA should engage or initiate contact with.
Faublas says, "Today we're tracking more of the communications around the Brightline rail system .We're using Meltwater to reach out to our southern neighbors and generate more interest on their part in visiting West Palm Beach."
"The first thing I do is open my browser to Meltwater and look at our alerts. This lets me see everything that's happening. and being said."
Tiffany Faublas, Marketing Director, West Palm Beach DDA
Summary
Meltwater Helps West Palm Beach DDA
Form partnerships with new influencers with a great deal of confidence
"The fact that Meltwater offers segmentation is brilliant. Partnering with people can leave you open to mistakes, so it was great to see that the tool segments the influencers for us. Meltwater's organization and level of detail provides us with the knowledge to spend way less time finding the right contacts."
Share alerts, links, and reports with others right from the platform
"Whenever there's anything I need to share, I can share it directly from the Meltwater platform. I can also run a quick report and send it either to our staff or the board members. If there is anything related that our followers need to know, then I?ll include content links so that they can see these as well."
Measure the impacts of their communication efforts more effectively
"The PR team is now using the platform to measure the impact of our press releases. This allows us to perform check-and-balance assessments and save time following up with members of the media.We want to make sure we target the appropriate contacts and have the right target focus. The result is more accountability."
— Tiffany Faublas Marketing Director, West Palm Beach DDA
