Posted on September 10, 2026 by Ellen Matis

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Client: Seven Points Marina at Raystown Lake in Hesston, Pennsylvania

Service: Creator and influencer campaign strategy and management

For 50 years, Seven Points Marina has helped families and groups make themselves at home on Raystown Lake. The experience is memorable once people are there. The marketing challenge was helping more of the right people picture themselves there in the first place.

Hello Social Co. developed a social media strategy that positioned creator partnerships as one part of a larger plan to increase awareness, explain the houseboat experience and move prospective guests closer to a reservation. The first partnership, with family travel creator Mari on the Map, generated 94,108 impressions and 6,441 engagements while giving Seven Points Marina a new collection of content it can continue using after the campaign ended.

The challenge

Seven Points Marina was not trying to invent a new experience. It needed to make an established one easier to discover and understand online. A houseboat trip is different from booking a hotel room, and many prospective guests have practical questions before they are ready to plan: What is included? Is it family-friendly? What does a day on the boat actually look like? Can someone without boating experience do this?

The marina also wanted to reach beyond its existing word-of-mouth audience. Its strongest prospects included families and friend groups within driving distance of Raystown Lake, particularly travelers from Pennsylvania, Maryland and the Washington area who were looking for a manageable outdoor getaway.

The strategy

The Seven Points Marina Social Media strategy prepared by Hello Social Co. at the beginning of our client engagement recommended a small pilot of carefully selected creator partnerships centered on lake life, family travel, outdoor adventure and unplugged weekend escapes. The goal was not to hire the biggest account available. It was to find creators whose audiences, storytelling style and approach to partnership fit the actual experience.

Mari on the Map was a strong match because her work focuses on attainable family travel. Her audience comes to her for useful ideas about what to do, where to stay and how to make a trip work with children. That perspective gave her the ability to do more than post pretty lake footage. She could show families what the experience felt like and answer some of the questions that might otherwise keep a first-time guest from booking.

Hello Social Co. connected the partnership to the marina’s broader content plan, coordinated deliverables and built in collaboration with Seven Points Marina and the Raystown Lake Region. That regional amplification mattered. The campaign introduced the marina through a trusted creator while allowing the client and destination partner to participate in the same story.

What the partnership included

• An Instagram Reel focused on the overall Seven Points Marina experience, published as a collaboration with Seven Points Marina and the Raystown Lake Region
• An Instagram carousel focused on the houseboat experience, published in collaboration with Seven Points Marina
• A static Instagram post highlighting the pontoon experience, published as a collaboration with Seven Points Marina and the Raystown Lake Region
• Instagram Stories that tagged Seven Points Marina for sharing and included five additional Stories as added value
• Five high-quality images licensed for Seven Points Marina’s organic social media and website
• Five vertical B-roll clips licensed for the marina’s organic social media
• A ManyChat automation that gave interested followers a clear next step

 

The results

The live campaign report recorded the following results as of Sept. 10, 2026:

Campaign result	Reported total	What it tells us
Views	94,108	The campaign exceeded the 75,000-impression (views) benchmark established in the strategy by 19,108 impressions, or about 25%. The content gave the houseboat and pontoon experiences meaningful visibility beyond the marina’s day-to-day organic audience.
Engagements	6,441	The reported totals equal an engagement-to-impression rate of about 6.8%, showing that the content prompted action rather than passive exposure alone.
Licensed assets	10	Five images and five vertical video clips gave Seven Points Marina content it can reuse on its own channels.

These are awareness and engagement results, not booking results. The campaign report does not attribute reservations or revenue to the partnership, so we will not pretend that it does. What it shows clearly is that the right creator helped Seven Points Marina reach a substantial audience, earn interaction and build a bank of useful content around an experience that can be difficult to explain through brand-created posts alone.

Why it worked

The partnership began with strategy, not a creator list. Seven Points Marina had already identified the audiences it needed to reach, the questions first-time guests needed answered and the parts of the experience that were most likely to make someone start a group chat about a trip. That made it possible to choose a creator and design deliverables with a purpose.

Mari’s family travel perspective matched the customer Seven Points Marina wanted to reach. The content covered both the larger houseboat getaway and a more accessible pontoon experience. Collaborative publishing brought the creator, marina and regional destination brand together, and licensing extended the value of the partnership beyond the creator’s original posts.

That is the difference between paying for a post and building a creator campaign. One delivers a piece of content. The other connects the creator, audience, experience, distribution plan and long-term content needs.

What brands can take from this campaign

Follower count is one piece of creator selection, but it is rarely the most useful place to start. A strong partnership depends on whether the creator is genuinely right for the experience, whether the audience aligns with the brand’s goals and whether the planned content can help a prospective customer understand what comes next.

It also depends on the work behind the post: vetting, negotiation, contracting, content concepts, approvals, usage rights, communication, experience planning and reporting. When those pieces are handled thoughtfully, creator marketing becomes more useful to the brand and more natural for the audience.

Planning a creator partnership

Hello Social Co. helps destinations, attractions and experience-based brands build creator partnerships from the first idea through the final report. We find and vet creators, negotiate terms, develop content concepts, manage contracts and approvals, clarify licensing and usage, support the creator throughout the experience and help the brand understand what the results actually mean.

If your organization has an experience worth sharing but needs the right person and a clear plan to tell the story, we would love to hear more about it. Schedule a consultation with our Founder, Ellen, here. 

Tags: case study, creator marketing, hello social co., influencer marketing