Central Detroit Christian
Awareness for Nonprofit Program Rebuilding Detroit Neighborhoods
The Objective
Central Detroit Christian (CDC) is a nonprofit qualified HUD Counselor, faith-based organization dedicated to communities and individuals. They partnered with Detroit Land Bank Authority and Liberty Bank on a new project, funded by JP Morgan Chase Foundation.
The objective of the project was to help home buyers in Detroit get through obstacles with counseling, financing and home repair assistance, while rehabilitating vacant and abandoned homes and developing new homes. Liberty Bank would provide mortgage and rehabilitation loans to those with credit scores as low as 600 and down payments as low as 3% for houses being bought through Detroit Land Bank Authority property auctions. The goal was to re-establish the strong bones of neighborhoods in Detroit. CDC and our team were charged with getting the word out to prospective buyers and educating them about the program.
Initial Research and Analysis
Research was done to build audience profiles and digital advertising targeting. This included buyer demographics, keywords the target audience used in search, and targeting zip codes where housing demand was.
Our research looked at two groups of people – those with a desire to move to Detroit and existing residents that want to stop renting or move into a new home. In both cases, we found the desire was there but there was a lot of confusion, lack of answers, negative stories about the city and a lot of red tape. They were excited about the future of Detroit, but unsure how to be a part of it and make an impact.
Our Social Media & Digital Approach
In order to achieve our goals, we deployed the following tactics:
- Organic and paid social traffic to boost public knowledge of the availability of the programs to help with homeownership
- Use social and digital data to help seed the growth of email marketing lists and include email in our marketing strategy
- Educating communities and residents in Detroit of CDC programs with a mix of both slow organic growth and a push of targeted Facebook advertising
- Create and promote blog posts and web content answering questions on the eligibility of these programs to increase awareness and spread the programs’ reach further through word of mouth
- Combine the above methods and robust tracking features to increase the number of referrals and other data from those interested in the programs offered
The Results
At the completion of our campaign, CDC saw the following results:
- Facebook Ads targeted Detroit and up to 50 Miles. Visitors were overwhelming from Michigan at 85.5%., but click-thrus included a number of states, which points to people in the targeted area sharing it outside of Michigan
- Our Facebook overall cost per unique link click was $0.81, which is an excellent industry average
- Instagram’s placement performed almost as well as the Facebook news feed for CDC
- Our video ads performed very well, with a cost per link click of $0.71, which is an excellent industry average for video ad performance
- We were reaching a new audience, as the majority of traffic to the site were new use
Empowerment means providing education and affordable housing. It means restoring hope and building community equity. Hudson Collective helped us activate and engage our community through social media and digital advocacy to help get funding from our financial partners into the local neighborhoods that need it most in Detroit.” – Lisa Johanon, Director for Central Detroit Christian
