The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), a nonprofit policy organization in Austin, Texas, wanted more Texans to be aware of their policy priorities and recommendations.

To reach that goal, TPPF launched a campaign in 2020 to grow their audience and increase their brand awareness. By the end of their campaign in November 2020, TPPF reached 708,000 viewers through advertisements and built a grassroots army of 112,000 Texans.

We sat down with TPPF to learn more about their campaign and how they used segmented communications strategies to engage audiences across the Lone Star State.

SPN: What was your project?

TPPF: The Texas Public Policy Foundation set an objective of creating a new grassroots army to have an ongoing impact during the 2020 General Election cycle and beyond. To create greater awareness of, and support for, TPPF’s policy priorities and recommendations, all communications through this project were built around our values laddering (intensive focus group research to understand how different demographics form opinions) and messaging research. This allowed us to effectively speak to our target audiences about the issues that were most concerning to them.

The project was launched in June 2020, with a goal of maximizing our outreach and owned-audience development by the November elections. We had set a goal of 50,000 activists by Election Day, but instead we achieved more than 112,000, and we have continued to refine our engagement with these activists for enhanced segmentation.

By our November goal, TPPF’s advertisements had a combined reach of 708,000 viewers, significantly expanding awareness of our policy agenda. We also had found evidence of the effectiveness of our efforts previously in our September polling, which showed a record high 30 percent of Texans recognizing the TPPF name.

SPN: Who were you trying to reach?

TPPF: TPPF’s coordinated effort deployed an extensive online outreach campaign that worked alongside a data and intelligence company to create models that will identify key persuadable groups (such as Weak Republicans, Moderates, and Weak Democrats). By identifying these cohorts, TPPF was able to launch a targeted campaign of online communications, messaging, and engagement.

TPPF worked across numerous online platforms, such as social media, apps, and website properties to share static advertisements and video content created by our in-house production team. These videos included short, five- to 30-second advertisements that users would see before they viewed their selected video. Titled “pre-roll” advertisements, targeted efforts like this allowed TPPF to place our messaging in front of specific audiences and control how frequently we could place our advertisements for maximum effect and efficiency. We measured individual interest levels through length of engagement, list and group building, and through response to our calls to action.

TPPF leveraged our successful and extensive communications department to cultivate the targeted individuals through exposure to TPPF content. This includes op-eds, videos, pictorials, and other materials that define TPPF’s effective media production. These efforts helped foster an online community of activists to defend and advance TPPF’s values.

TPPF hired a new communications team member to be responsible for cultivating these newly engaged Texans who came to TPPF. This Director of External Relations helped engage, maintain, and grow the owned-audience communities TPPF activates to influence the media, policymakers, and other organizations.

The importance of such a grassroots army cannot be overstated. Few organizations within Texas, or the broader conservative movement, have the capability to implement a sophisticated issue campaign or create such a motivated cohort.

In October 2020, our project pivoted to ride the wave of election-related issues that dominated the news. We focused primarily on election integrity, policing, and public safety, and the major differences between the candidates, Trump and Biden. This allowed us to stay in the conversation and still focus on our targeted issue areas.

However, one of our major platforms delivered a setback when Facebook announced it would not allow campaign-related material to run as paid advertisements in the last week before the election. We immediately ramped up project activities to get what we could out of our remaining time on Facebook, and then shifted to other platforms to continue getting our message out and building our segmented activists list.

SPN: What mechanisms did you use to expand your audience?

TPPF: To build and maintain trust and support from key audiences, we employed segmented communications strategies that allowed us to engage audiences on the topics most concerning to them using the channels they preferred. Online content production formed the core component of this project. This included commentaries, press releases, videos, and social media, and digital ads.

SPN: What did you learn about expanding your audience this way?

TPPF: Through this campaign, we learned the most effective messages and topics to reach our audiences and build an army of activists.

A key finding for us is the strength of segmenting our audience lists by channel and interest, so that we are effectively reaching our supporters and other interested parties with the messaging that’s most important to them in the way they want to hear it. TPPF is proud of the sheer number of owned-audience contacts we have been able to cultivate, but more importantly, we were able to increase those audiences’ engagement with our content. This approach resulted in engagement and email open rates that were consistently much higher than industry benchmarks.

We also fine-tuned our strategies for outreach and engagement going forward. While it is difficult to know the direct results of our outreach, the outcomes of the 2020 election offer strong evidence that suburban women and minorities identified with conservative values. In Texas, conservative candidates gained seats in the Statehouse and maintained key congressional seats, even in suburban districts, when the Republican candidates focused on issues aligned with our conservative messaging. Even the left-of-center publication The Guardian has reported on how minorities and women shifted toward Republicans this election. While TPPF is nonpartisan, these election results demonstrate that when conservative values are messaged appropriately, they appeal to all Texans.

SPN: What do you hope to accomplish by expanding your audience?

TPPF: This effective campaign positioned TPPF to for success in what was a frequently contentious, but still fruitful, legislative session, and set us up for ongoing citizen engagement during the special sessions currently underway. Because of our strong relationships with the Governor, Lt. Governor, and new House Speaker, we began the session with a veritable army of engaged citizen activists and a playbook of the right messages to grow our activist army through session and into the future.

As we completed the first phase of our project in November, we leverage our owned audience to prepared for the potential challenges to our legislative goals. One strategy we were able to deploy for continuing to recruit and engage our additional contacts was the establishment of our new conservative commentary website, TheCannonOnline.com, which was officially launched in February 2021. While we will continue to seek earned media coverage through placement of op-eds in traditional media outlets, establishing our own clearinghouse of conservative content will allow us to circumvent mainstream media bias, get our communications out faster, equip our activist army, and share our message with new audiences.

For their successful outreach campaign, the Texas Public Policy Foundation is a  finalist in State Policy Network’s Communications Excellence Awards, in the Expanding Your Audience Award category.