The 90-Minute Miracle – Sylvan Lake’s Digital Labourforce Attraction Marketing Campaign

Overview

Sylvan Lake’s “90-Minute Miracle” digital marketing campaign was designed to attract laborforce talent to the Alberta laketown. Built in collaboration with NATIONAL Public Relations and funded through a collaborative effort involving local developers, the Province of Alberta’s NRED Grant and the Town of Sylvan Lake, the campaign was launched with a budget of $180,000. The initiative was driven by local developers who sought to accelerate lot sales and capitalize on the wave of interprovincial migration to Alberta from B.C. and Ontario.

The campaign’s narrative focused on Sylvan Lake’s proximity to amenities and nature, its affordable living and higher quality of life, using increased leisure time as the narrative’s hook. It invited the target audience to consider the time they spend commuting, running errands, or traveling to natural destinations, while highlighting the town’s advantages, where “time is affordable.”

Project Purpose

The primary objectives were to:

• Increase awareness of Sylvan Lake and attract new residents and businesses to the town by showcasing its affordability and livability.
• Strengthen community ties and encourage local collaboration.
• Enhance the marketing capabilities within the community to ensure sustained growth and development with a new suite of assets to use for future marketing efforts.

The campaign goal was set for impressions to increase awareness of Sylvan Lake in Ontario and B.C. while driving the target audience to the campaign landing page.

Effectiveness and Meeting Objectives

In five months, the campaign’s 13 static and video ads garnered more than 14 million impressions, 18,170 clicks to the landing page and reached more than 2.7 million unique users across Meta, StackAdapt and Pinterest. Individuals between the ages of 25 and 44 and Ontarians have been the top engaged audiences on all platforms, accounting for 7.5 million and 6.4 million impressions respectively.

Six local developers, who formed part of the project steering committee, were provided with a marketing toolkit that they could use to run their own campaigns at the same time. This tactic was utilized to build education and capacity regarding community marketing.

Target Audience

The campaign targeted individuals within the age range of 29 to 44 in Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary and the surrounding areas. The campaign focused on young families and couples seeking more affordable housing options, with the desire of owning a larger house at a lower cost surrounded by nature. This audience group prioritizes work-life balance and seeks to be in an area that boasts beautiful scenery, access to varying activities, neighbourhoods filled with greenery and shorter commutes.

Challenges and Adaptations

Upon initial launch, the campaign was seeing high engagement from individuals ages 55 years and above. The campaign team narrowed the targeting across digital platforms to focus on individuals within Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver and Calgary surrounding areas and those within the 29 to 44 age range.

To refine the campaign messaging, several iterations of ads were A/B tested to identify which elements resonated most with the audience. Those learnings informed the rest of the campaign as the ad spend was tailored towards messaging and creative that saw higher engagement.

After four months of the campaign, we observed user fatigue on Meta, demonstrated by high frequency; as a result, the campaign team extended the campaign on Pinterest with a small ad spend to test three ads. In 30 days, Pinterest saw nearly 850,000 impressions, 3,360 clicks, a Click-Through Rate (CTR) of 0.4% and a Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM) of $4.85 – exceeding industry benchmarks for the platforms.