Cibolo Creek Ranch | Launching an Influencer Marketing Campaign to Reach New Customer Segments

Consumer & Retail, Digital Marketing, Marketing & Creative
Challenge

The owner and executives of Cibolo Creek Ranch, a historical, West Texas luxury resort located near Marfa, approached Pierpont in 2022 seeking an updated marketing strategy to drive awareness and increase occupancy rates, expand its customer base to new demographics and become known as a year-round rather than seasonal destination. 

Objectives

Following a competitive review of the peer set and research into potential new audience segments, Pierpont recommended repositioning Cibolo Creek Ranch as a destination offering curated, personalized experiences for adventure seekers, cultural sophisticates and history buffs along with its traditional customer base of outdoor enthusiasts. To achieve the objectives Pierpont recommended beginning with an influencer campaign to create an initial pop of awareness, followed by an aggressive media relations push to top-tier travel writers who could provide third-party credibility. 

Solution

Pierpont secured participation from two influencers each targeted to a different audience segment: one a female model and Western-wear enthusiast, and the other, a male outdoor enthusiast, adventure-seeker and hunter. Both influencers were also located outside of Texas. Pierpont worked with Cibolo Creek Ranch leaders to organize and curate the visits, negotiated the influencer contracts, managed the relationship through to planning the posts and stories shared during and after the visits. As a result of our work, we achieved more than 1M impressions on social media, including more than 10,000 content interactions. 

Results

Following the influencer campaign, we secured more than 15 top-tier media placements including pieces in AAA Magazine and TripAdvisor and secured visits with two additional freelancers writing for D Magazine, The Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express News. 

As a result, Cibolo Creek Ranch has a larger and more diverse following on social media and is increasing its occupancy.  

Influencer Impressions 2.2M
Increase of Social Media Followers 45%
Increase of Online Visits 3K%