From TikTok to Terminal: Uncovering Hyper-Local Influencers to Drive Off-Peak Ridership by 22%

Our client was a long-standing regional bus operator, a familiar name in the North of England. While their commuter routes were stable, their leisure services—trips to national parks, coastal towns, and historic cities—were consistently underperforming, especially among younger demographics. Their marketing playbook felt dated, relying on local radio spots and print ads that simply weren't connecting with Millennials and Gen Z. They knew they needed to tap into influencer marketing, but their initial attempts were frustrating. They'd either approach huge, generic travel influencers with exorbitant fees and global audiences, or they'd spend countless hours manually scrolling through Instagram with no real strategy.

That's where our team at Iceberg Data came in. During our first meeting, the client's marketing director confessed, "We feel like we're throwing money into a black hole. We need to find authentic people who genuinely love the places our buses go, but we don't know how to find them or if they even exist." We proposed a data-driven expedition to uncover these hidden gems: a targeted search for hyper-local, high-engagement micro-influencers.

Our first step was to build a precise digital map of their challenge. We mapped their key underperforming leisure routes, like the one from central Manchester out to the Peak District. Then, we defined the ideal influencer profile: someone based in the North West, with 5,000 to 75,000 followers, and a focus on accessible, affordable, and preferably sustainable travel. We then unleashed our web scrapers on Instagram and TikTok, instructing them to hunt for publicly available posts that matched our criteria. We didn't just look for generic hashtags; we targeted specific combinations, like posts geo-tagged in 'Castleton' or 'Chester' that also used hashtags like #daytrip, #girlstrip, #carfreeadventure, or #budgettraveluk .

The initial data stream was massive, but this is where our real work began. We filtered out the noise, discarding posts from tourists just passing through and focusing on accounts that consistently posted from the client's key operational areas. Our NLP models then got to work, scanning captions for sentiment and keywords. A post simply saying "Peak District" wasn't enough. We were looking for captions that expressed genuine enthusiasm and, crucially, mentioned aspects that aligned with bus travel, like an "easy journey from the city" or a "great day out without the car."

The breakthrough came when our analysis revealed a thriving subculture our client was completely unaware of: the 'car-free travel' community. We identified dozens of influencers who actively promoted using public transport for environmental and practical reasons. They weren't just travel influencers; they were advocates for a lifestyle that perfectly matched our client's service. One standout profile was an Instagrammer named 'Wanderlust_Will'. His feed was filled with stunning photos of hikes in the Peak District, all accessed via public transport from his base in Manchester. One of his captions read, "Proof that you don't need to drive to have an epic adventure!" He was, in essence, already an unpaid ambassador for our client's key route. He was the perfect match: authentic, local, and with a highly engaged audience who trusted his recommendations.

We compiled our findings into an interactive dashboard for the client. It wasn't just a list of names. For each of the 50+ recommended influencers, we provided a complete profile: follower counts, average engagement rates, audience demographics, and sample posts that demonstrated their alignment with the brand, like the one from 'Wanderlust_Will'. We even included an 'authenticity score' based on the sentiment of their content and the organic nature of their engagement. The client was floored. They went from guessing to having a data-validated portfolio of ideal partners.

Armed with this intelligence, the client launched a campaign called "Great British Day Trips by Bus," partnering with 15 of the influencers we identified. The results were spectacular. In the first three months, ticket sales on the featured leisure routes shot up by 22%. Their social media accounts, once dormant, exploded with a 150% increase in engagement as the influencers' followers shared their experiences. The campaign's ROI was five times that of their previous radio advertising budget, proving that finding the right, authentic voice is infinitely more powerful than shouting into the void.