What our client asked for was pretty standard: drive visitation to Arkansas, generate awareness of Arkansas as a viable vacation destination and create awareness of the Arkansas marketing message. But how we answered was where it got interesting…
We needed to maximize the impact of our media budget, so support was concentrated within the key feeder states surrounding Arkansas: Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana. Support was also placed within Arkansas to help generate in-state travel.
Ad support was concentrated in the months of April, May and June during the spring/summer marketing period and in September and October during the fall period to provide a stronger presence for the state during each period. This timing also aligned with our traditional media support to maximize creative messaging impact when Arkansas was on-air.
Eighty-five percent of our media inventory ran as video to maximize creative impact on Arkansas’s target audiences. To maximize reach, we pursued cross-channel presence across websites, connected TV programming and social networks. Digital television support ran in April and early May, mirroring the timing of broadcast and cable television.
With ad technologies, we found that pre-roll and native videos reached consumers watching video content online and provided greater creative impact. DVAST contextually and behaviorally personalized videos served to consumers based on data. Mobile data targeted mountain bike and motorcycle owners in their homes on mobile devices. Internet Of Things drove consumers from the Arkansas television commercials to the mobile website through Shazam tagging. Native content reached consumers through less-intrusive content ads. Geofencing targeted visitors at tourism destinations in surrounding states (The Alamo, St. Louis Arch, Graceland, etc.) with mobile video and banner ads.
For digital ad campaigns, we used a blend of mass-reach websites, niche sites and local sites to maximize reach to various target audiences. For connected TV, to reach changing viewing habits (smart TVs, connected TVs, laptops and mobile devices), we placed 24 percent of television dollars with connected TV partners.
Our partnerships extended digital reach and budget. Travel South purchased video and content partnerships with Sojern and Matador Media as part of group buys with other states through the Travel South association. National Geographic implemented a cross-media sponsorship that included online, television, connected television and in-magazine support. COOPs implemented a digital retargeting co-op program for in-state travel partners. Arkansas drove visits to Arkansas.com. Visitors were retargeted with banner ads from local tourism entities participating in the co-op program.
Our total 2017 digital media budget was $1,679,563. Visits to Arkansas.com specifically from digital campaign received 566,022 visits, which reflected an increase of 63 percent over the 347,401 visits generated in 2016. Our cost-per-visit was $2.97, which was 24 percent more cost-efficient than the 2016 cost-per-visit of $3.45. Our page views were 692,880, a 63 percent increase over the 425,740 pageviews generated in 2016. We received 134,538,707 impressions – a 58 percent increase over the 84,927,486 impressions generated in 2016.
In summary, this large-scale, complex Parks and Tourism initiative incorporated the latest and greatest in marketing tools and channels. All quantitative and qualitative measures confirmed the high effectivess of the strategy and successful performance by all metrics.
