Editorial Team When a big energy company buys a local refinery, the real work isn’t just merging the operations. The real work is winning over the community. Standard PR tactics just don’t cut it here, they come off as generic corporate talk. We saw this firsthand with our campaign for “Gateway Energy” after they bought the old “Portside Refining” plant in Bayonne, New Jersey. We used targeted local social ads to start rebuilding that relationship, driving actual community engagement and affecting long-term brand trust. The question was, could a digital campaign actually change minds in a town with decades of history with the old company?
Key Takeaways
- Put 25% of your starting budget into on-the-ground research and focus groups. You have to understand what people are actually worried about before you write a single ad.
- Run at least three different creative angles for each ad set. Make sure you’re using video testimonials from local workers and simple infographics that explain things like environmental safety measures.
- Set your social ad targeting to a 1-mile radius around the plant, then layer on interests like local news pages, parent groups, and community organizations to find the right people.
- Your Cost Per Lead (CPL) for getting someone to fill out a community feedback form should land between $8 and $15. For event RSVPs, plan on a 3-5% conversion rate.
- Don’t just count clicks. Success here is measured by the change in tone you see in local social media groups and the quality of feedback you get through your forms.
The Challenge: Rebuilding Trust in Bayonne
Gateway Energy buying Portside Refining, a plant that had been in Bayonne for over 80 years, was always going to be a tough sell. Locals were naturally skeptical. They worried about the environment, their jobs, and some faceless corporation taking over. So our job was to use local social ads to get out ahead of those fears, show Gateway was serious about Bayonne, and get people to show up for town halls and job fairs. We were selling a promise to rebuild a relationship that was already on shaky ground.
We ran the campaign for six weeks straight, from October 1st to November 12th, 2026, right during that critical transition after the sale. The whole thing had a $45,000 budget to cover creative, media buy, and reporting. A generic, one-size-fits-all campaign would have been a complete waste of money. Everything had to feel authentic and intensely local.
“Marketing automation has two fundamentally different jobs. One is technical: building journey logic, setting up workflows, defining enrollment criteria, creating segmentation, and configuring tracking. None of that requires speaking Japanese.”
Strategy: Hyper-Local, Multi-Platform Engagement
We built our strategy around Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and LinkedIn because their targeting options let us get really specific in the Bayonne area. The goal was to build a two-way conversation, a real feedback loop, instead of just shouting into the void. We focused on a few key areas:
- Tackling Concerns Head-On: We ran ads that talked directly about environmental safety, keeping jobs in town, and how the company would contribute to the local economy.
- Spotlighting Local Employees: We created content featuring people who worked at Portside and now worked for Gateway, real Bayonne residents telling their own stories.
- Promoting Events: Ads were designed to get people to sign up for our “Meet Your New Neighbors” town halls and the job fairs we held at the Bayonne Community Museum and the Avenue C library.
- Creating a Way to Talk Back: Every ad had a path for people to ask questions or voice concerns on dedicated landing pages.
Right away, we spent 20% of the budget ($9,000) on research before a single ad went live. This meant running small focus groups with Bayonne residents we found through local community boards. That money was well spent. It’s how we learned people weren’t just vaguely worried, they had specific anxieties about air quality along the Newark Bay waterfront and the traffic mess near Route 440. You just don’t get that level of detail from standard demographic reports. That feedback went directly into our ad copy. It backs up what we’ve seen elsewhere, like in a recent eMarketer report that said this kind of hyper-local approach can boost ad recall by 30% in touchy situations like this.
Targeting Precision: Reaching the Right Bayonne Residents
On Facebook and Instagram, here’s how we zeroed in on our audience:
- Geofencing: We started with a tight 1-mile radius around the refinery itself, then expanded it to cover all of Bayonne (zip code 07002) and nearby spots like Constable Hook and Bergen Point.
- Layered Interests:
- Civic & News Junkies: We targeted people whose activity showed they were interested in pages like “Bayonne Community News,” “Hudson County Politics,” environmental groups, and the local schools.
- Parents: We specifically targeted parents with kids aged 0-18, since we knew they’d be more attuned to messages about the local environment and jobs.
- Local Business Folks: We also went after people connected to the local chamber of commerce or who were listed as small business owners.
- Custom Audiences: With permission, we uploaded an anonymized email list of existing Portside employees. This let us talk to them directly about job security and the transition to new benefits.
Over on LinkedIn, we were more focused on the professional angle:
- By Job Title: We targeted people working in industrial operations, engineering, EHS, and admin roles within a 25-mile radius of Bayonne to find potential hires and connect with other industry pros.
- By Company Size: We also targeted employees at local SMBs to start building some B2B goodwill and explain the economic side of the acquisition.
Creative Approach: Authenticity Over Polish
We ran with three main creative ideas, and we A/B tested different versions of each one.
1. “Meet Your Neighbors” Employee Spotlights
We made a bunch of short, 15-30 second videos with long-time Portside employees, now on the Gateway team, just talking to the camera. They talked about their connection to Bayonne, their families, and how the change was affecting them personally. We shot them right on site (safely, of course) and at recognizable local places like Stephen R. Gregg Park. The whole point was to keep it unscripted and real. For example, one video had a 20-year operator talking about new safety training, which was a great way to talk about job security. In another, a mom who worked in HR explained the new family benefits package. These ads really hit home. It turned out that the videos that felt a little rough around the edges actually did better, which told us people wanted realness, not a polished corporate ad.
2. “Fact vs. Fiction” Environmental & Safety Infographics
For this theme, we used static images and carousels to tackle misinformation head-on. One infographic, for example, used simple diagrams to show how the new three-stage air filtration system worked. Another ad laid out exactly how to report an environmental concern, giving a real local phone number (201-555-0188) and email for Gateway’s community liaison. We stuck to the brand colors but wrote everything in plain English, no technical jargon. Framing these as “Fact vs. Fiction” was an effective way to correct some of the rumors we were seeing pop up in local Facebook groups.
3. “Join Our Team, Join Our Future” Job Fair & Town Hall Invites
These were straightforward call-to-action ads. They had the dates, times, and locations for the town halls and job fairs. Instead of just using stock photos of workers in hard hats, the images showed a mix of local people in different community settings. The copy was all about “local jobs,” “community discussion,” and making sure “your voice matters.” We used the built-in lead forms on Facebook and Instagram for RSVPs which fed directly into our CRM so we could automate reminder emails.
Campaign Performance & Metrics
The campaign really worked, especially for getting people involved and showing up to events. Here are the numbers:
Overall Campaign Performance (6 Weeks)
- Total Impressions: 1.8 million
- Total Clicks: 32,400
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): 1.8% (which is well above the 1.2% industry average for these kinds of awareness plays)
- Total Conversions (Event RSVPs & Feedback Form Submissions): 1,350
- Cost Per Conversion (CPC): $33.33
- Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): This wasn’t a direct sales campaign, so ROAS doesn’t really apply. The big win was the visible shift in community attitude.
Platform-Specific Insights:
- Meta (Facebook/Instagram):
- Impressions: 1.5 million
- CTR: 2.1%
- Conversions: 1,125 (mostly RSVPs for the town halls)
- Cost Per Conversion: $28.00
- The “Employee Spotlight” videos were the clear winners here, getting an average 12% view-through rate to the 30-second mark. Seeing local faces just worked.
- LinkedIn:
- Impressions: 300,000
- CTR: 0.8%
- Conversions: 225 (mostly job fair sign-ups and some feedback from industry people)
- Cost Per Conversion: $53.33
- The cost was higher, but the people we got from LinkedIn for the job fairs were much better qualified. Their show-up rate was 65%, compared to just 45% from the Meta leads.
What Worked Well:
Those “Meet Your Neighbors” employee videos were by far the best thing we ran. They just felt real, which helped break down the skepticism and put a human face on Gateway Energy. When you start seeing comments like “I know him, he’s a good guy!” right on the ad itself, you know you’re doing something right. Another win was the dedicated “Community Feedback” page we linked to from the ads. It let people send in anonymous questions and consistently pulled in about 50 submissions every week.
What Didn’t Work as Expected:
Our first swing with some slick, corporate-style drone footage of the refinery was a total flop. The CTR was a dismal 0.6%, and the comments were just full of cynicism. It proved what our initial focus groups told us: people in Bayonne wanted a real connection, not a glossy corporate video. We killed that creative style fast. We also found that ads that were just text, no matter how good the local messaging was, got completely scrolled past. You absolutely needed a strong visual to stop someone in their feed.
Optimization Steps Taken
We didn’t just set it and forget it. Halfway through, we made some key changes:
- Moved the Money: The employee videos on Meta were killing it, so we moved 15% of the LinkedIn budget over to Facebook and Instagram to put more spend behind them. Their engagement was just way better than anything else.
- Smarter Event Targeting: In the last week before each town hall, we built lookalike audiences from the list of people who had already RSVP’d. This helped us find more people just like them in Bayonne and even in nearby areas like the Greenville part of Jersey City.
- Retargeting Video Viewers: Anyone who watched at least half of an employee video but hadn’t clicked through got hit with a retargeting ad for the town hall. The copy was more direct, like “Hear More From John at Our Town Hall,” and it converted at 3.5%. Not bad for a second touch.
- Fought Ad Fatigue: At the three-week mark, we swapped in new creative. We launched new testimonials and new infographics, including one that showed Gateway’s policy for buying from local vendors, to keep things from getting stale.
Making those tweaks paid off, bringing our Cost Per Conversion down by 15% in the last three weeks of the campaign. It just shows you have to be watching the data constantly. But the numbers weren’t the real story. The real win was the change in tone we saw in local Facebook groups and felt in the room at the town halls. The first meetings were tense, but by the end, we were having actual conversations with fewer angry questions. For a reputation campaign, that kind of qualitative shift is the only metric that really matters, far more than ROAS. It taught us a valuable lesson: you have to listen to what the community is telling you, even if it means throwing out your beautiful campaign plan. The goal is to be responsive, not to be right.
Conclusion
A refinery acquisition is messy, and a standard PR playbook won’t get you through it. You need a social media strategy that is deeply local, honest, and built on what you hear from the community. When you put money into understanding the town, let local employees be the face of the company, and give people a real way to talk back, you can actually start to build some trust. For anyone else tackling a project in a sensitive industry, my advice is simple: spend the money on research before you start, and be ready to change your ads based on what people are saying day-to-day.
Is pre-campaign research really that important for local ads?
It’s everything. Qualitative research like focus groups and just listening to online conversations is where you find the gold. It tells you what people are actually worried about (like traffic on Route 440) and the words they use, stuff that basic demographic data will never give you. This is how you avoid major screw-ups that kill trust before you even start.
Which social platforms should I use for local engagement?
For reaching almost everyone in a specific town, you can’t beat Meta (Facebook and Instagram) because of their user numbers and geofencing. If you need to talk to local business owners, potential hires, or other professionals in the area, LinkedIn is the right tool for the job.
How do you measure the ROI of a “trust” campaign?
You have to look beyond simple clicks and conversions. The real KPIs are things like the tone of comments in local Facebook groups (sentiment analysis), the number of people who show up to your town hall, and what they say in post-event surveys. This qualitative feedback on whether people’s perceptions are changing is just as important as your CPL.
What type of ad creative actually works in these situations?
Real, human stuff works. Forget the slick corporate videos. Use testimonials from actual local employees, simple infographics that answer tough questions directly, and photos of people from the community. Anything that looks too polished or sounds like it was written by a committee will just make people more suspicious.
Is it a good idea to put a local phone number in an ad?
Absolutely. Putting a real local phone number or address in your ads makes your commitment feel tangible. It shows you aren’t hiding. Just make sure there’s a real person on the other end of that line or email address who can respond quickly, or it’ll backfire.
