3433 Litia Pinecrest Road, #340 Valrico, FL 33596 Phone: 937-726-0697 Website: http://h2oenvgroup.com/ E-Mail: cfrantz@h2oenvgroup.com

UTILIZING DIGITAL STRATEGIES TO OPTIMIZE

PUBLIC EDUCATION AND OUTREACH

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Overview and Goals We are excited about the possibility of working together to increase awareness, generate more inquiries and help you exceed the outreach and public education requirements for your municipal separate storm sewer system (MS4) permits.

In this proposal, you’ll find our proposed strategy and solutions based on the EPA goals and needs as outlined in their Public Education and Outreach Minimum Control Measure factsheet. Drawing upon our extensive experience working in environmental compliance, we have crafted a well-rounded digital marketing strategy that is designed to increase social consciousness of impacts to the environment, namely stormwater quality.

Our approach will utilize major online marketing platforms, such as Google and Bing,

and social networks, like Facebook and LinkedIn, to grow interest and visibility

within the general public.

We are eager to assist your office increase public support to achieve compliance goals through educational community campaigns on the importance of stormwater management, personal responsibility and impact.

The proposed strategy is scalable and open to negotiation; we welcome the opportunity to go through our approach with you.

We look forward to working with the Storm Water Management Division and look forward to the possibility of becoming your partner and an integral part of your team. Please feel free to reach out at any time if you have questions regarding this proposal.

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Observations Considering there are approximately 750 Phase I MS4s and 6,700 Phase II MS4s in the most densely populated areas of the country, it is imperative that municipal leaders have an effective means of reaching out and educating the general population of their impacts to stormwater and the environment in general.

Maximizing Current Strategy

Digital media expands reach and focuses messages in support of the 3 main action areas of a successful environmental public education and outreach program:

1. Forming Partnerships

Digital media strategies enable campaigns to target specific stakeholders to initiate and educate new and current partners within the community.

2. Using Educational Materials and Strategies

Using existing educational material in conjunction with established MS4 operator websites we will drive internet traffic and create impressions to communicate the importance of environmental stewardship.

3. Reaching Diverse Audiences

Utilizing digital data, this technique expands your offices ability to direct material toward specific groups likely to have significant stormwater impacts.

Evolving Strategy in the Digital Age

Digital media empowers public education and outreach programs to experiment with multiple local strategies to address many viewpoints and different target audiences. In addition, real-time data analytics allow the project manager to change messages mid-campaign to maximize results. Measurable digital data attributes of a campaign allow for detailed analysis and reporting of outreach impact and goal progression.

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Targeting Parameters

Location

Location targeting allows you to reach customers in key locations by country, state/province, city and zip code. This information comes from people's stated location on their profiles and is validated by their IP (Internet Protocol) address.

Demographics

You can also refine your target audience based on information people have shared about themselves in their profiles, such as age, gender, relationship status, education and the type of work they do.

Interests

Interest targeting lets you define your ideal audience by their interests, hobbies and social media activity.

We can target outreach to individuals from information they’ve added to their online profiles, keywords associated with the webpages they like or apps they use, ads they’ve clicked on and other similar sources.

Behaviors

Online behaviors are activities that people do on or offline that inform on which device they're using, purchase behaviors or intents, travel preferences and more.

Behaviors are constructed from both someone's activity on and offline activity provided by data from trusted third-party partners. For example, by using third-party services, we can safely target residents or local businesses who buy hazardous materials, wash their cars, or clean up after their pets without any independent data collection.

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Services

We are proposing to provide a marketing campaign using current industry practices in order to deliver information directly to the public with tailoring capabilities to reach specific groups of commercial, industrial, and institutional entities with significant stormwater impacts. This approach can also provide measurable analytics that can be used to allocate resources appropriately to meet measurable goals of MS4 Stormwater Management Plans.

Targeted Campaign Paid advertising is undeniably a successful technique to increase visibility and awareness. Keyword-based search advertising through platforms such as Google Adwords and Bing Ads are the most effective since they control the vast majority of the search market (and 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine). For stormwater programs with both general and well-defined audiences, advertising within Facebook and LinkedIn can produce impressive results due to the ability to drill down to create targeted user segments based on profile information. Platforms that will be leveraged include:

Google Adwords Google Adwords should be the core focus of any paid advertising platform, as it is the quickest way to effectively generate quality website traffic for stormwater programs. Google Adwords will enable MS4 operators to quickly and effectively generate website traffic and increase visibility with the public.

Facebook and LinkedIn Facebook and LinkedIn are excellent platforms to get a program's best management practices in front of the audiences most likely to pollute in a very targeted, and therefore efficient, manner. These efforts will not only allow MS4 operators to generate quality website traffic but also create program awareness with target audiences which will help influence good behavior.