En Route With MVTA Campaign to Increase Ridership

Target Audience: The target audience for MVTA's social media marketing campaign, En Route, included current riders and prospective riders within the communities we serve. The campaign aimed to educate audiences about the wide range of destinations MVTA can connect them to while humanizing our routes by sharing relatable rider stories and experiences.

Strategy Objective:The En Route social media campaign strategy centered around utilizing different social media platforms with their respective target audience demographics to accomplish several goals simultaneously. Social media served as a direct, interactive platform to connect with both transit riders and local businesses. Key elements of the strategy include: Personalization and Storytelling; Community Engagement; Business Partnerships; Visual Storytelling; and Cost-Effectiveness.

Situation Challenge: The En Route social media campaign utilized digital platforms to engage riders, residents, and businesses, bridging the gap between public transit agencies and their communities. By sharing real stories and feedback from riders, the campaign humanized the transit experience, fostering a deeper connection with a broader audience. Highlighting local businesses through visually engaging posts, the campaign showcased how transit connects people to key destinations while promoting local products and services. Through creative and cost-effective strategies, the campaign successfully boosted community engagement, generated valuable feedback, and increased ridership, reinforcing transit's role as a vital community resource.

Results Impact: The En Route social media marketing campaign resulted in increased ridership, greater public awareness, and stronger engagement with current and prospective riders. By highlighting the variety of destinations MVTA serves and humanizing our routes through relatable rider stories, the campaign effectively showcased the value of public transit. Some soutes we targeted experienced ridership growth with 16.31% ridership increase in comparison to 2023. On social media, the campaign posts reached 60,000 people and a click-through rate of 6% of people seeking to learn more about the routes.

Why Submit: The En Route social media campaign blends creativity, community engagement, and strategic social media use to tackle public transit marketing challenges. By sharing real rider stories, it humanizes the transit experience, fostering a stronger connection between the agency and the community. Additionally, it bridges the gap between transit and local businesses, showcasing how transit connects riders to key destinations and supports local economies. Through cost-effective, visually compelling content, the campaign engages a wide audience, generates meaningful feedback, and advances goals of increasing ridership, enhancing customer engagement, and promoting positive perceptions of public transit.