Tag Archive for: DMO
Digital Campaign Process for DMOs Beyond the Sign Up (VIDEO)
By Brian V. Matson, TwoSix Digital Senior Director of Strategy and Education
I recently returned from the Texas Association of CVB conference in Beaumont, Texas where I presented a keynote on digital campaigns. The session was well-received. One of the talking points that seemed to have stuck with attendees was my analogy of digital campaign development compared to the layers of an onion. My point was that when conducting a digital campaign much of the effort should come after the public campaign comes to an end.
Peel back the layers in your digital campaign
The layers of the “campaign onion” are:
Entry Point: The entry point is simply how users are getting to your offer. It could be through paid ads, organic posts or through blogs, etc. Even if a user doesn’t interact with the offer you still have a major opportunity to cookie the user for later communications and content offerings.
Acquisition: The acquisition stage is when a user enters their email, submits information, likes a page or opts in for future communications. These users will be added to a database that you can use to target future messaging to whether through promoted content, e-newsletters, etc.
Retargeting: This stage is after the public campaign has ended and it’s time to put the data to work. By using retargeting tools you can reach a wide range of users who interacted with your initial offer. It’s key that the retargeted messaging match the theme of the campaigns niche for maximum resonance.
Cross-Promotion: During retargeting you can cross-promote your other social media accounts. Building additional touch points with consumers can help you reach them in a more regular manner. If a user follows you on Facebook you should try to entice them to connect on Instagram, Pinterest, etc. by sharing content from those channels in retargeted messages.
Nurturing: This is all about engagement and interaction. This stage is key to showing users relevant content and putting your human side forward for increased authenticity and consideration.
Conversion: This stage may take a bit of time but eventually, if you provide quality content pieces that resonate with user interests, you will enjoy the benefits of a well-educated visitor who is more prone to share their experiences and increase word-of-mouth awareness for your destination.
While many DMOs do a great job of presenting offers to their audiences there are a lot of missed opportunities to get more out of the results of a campaign’s core mechanics. Once a user has clicked on an ad or social media post they’ve indicated interest. It’s our job as marketers to develop and deliver content well after the campaign ends to continue the educational and inspirational process whether they signed up or not. If your digital campaign is focused on a particular niche (as it should be) you now have a prequalified audience to develop content for. That’s huge.
Before you launch your next digital campaign
Check to make sure that you’ve done the following:
- Installed a Facebook website pixel on the campaign’s landing page to retarget users with relevant content relating to the campaign’s theme in the future.
- Ensured (and tested) that the campaign is mobile friendly and features an easy to use sign up process from mobile devices. Don’t forget the opt in!
- Developed a plan for using existing databases to help drive your online advertising for the campaign. These high value targets can really enhance your final results. Facebook’s Custom Audiences and Lookalike Audiences should be created in the ads manager prior to the launch of the campaign.
- You’ve created a content calendar including a handful of posts (or evergreen content) that can be used to re-market to users after the campaign ends. Stretch it out. Think long term communication and provide valuable bite-sized pieces of content to keep consumers aware of your destination in relation to their expressed niche.
Want to learn more? Check out the entire keynote below which includes several case studies, additional tips and even more info on making your next digital campaign one that produces results well into the future and help to better convert your next wave of visitors.
Digital Engagement Ranking: US Tourism Office Edition, QTR 1, 2015
Here is the Digital Engagement Ranking of the 50 United States Tourism Offices for Q1, April of 2015.
You can view the entire Digital Engagement Ranking: US Tourism Office Edition, QTR 1, 2015 here.
We would like to congratulate the states that have made the top ten:
1) Oregon; 2) Michigan; 3) Colorado; 4) Virginia; 5) Massachusetts; 6) Hawaii; 7) Florida; 8) Louisiana; 9) Georgia and 10) California.
The top 10 stayed relatively consistent from last quarter with some notable shakeups. Oregon overtook Michigan at number 1, causing Michigan to drop to 2. Colorado shot up from number 12 to the number 3 spot, with Virginia dropping to number 4. Massachusetts also rose one place to the number 4 spot.
As you can see in the final scoring, Oregon and Michigan are quite close with scores of 90.6 and 88.4 respectively.
The report features an overall digital and social media ranking of each state from one through fifty. It is the third consecutive quarter the report has been published and the comparison results from last quarter are located on page three.
We continue to place significant emphasis on website engagement and the importance that content development plays in that process.
There is a detailed breakdown of the ranking criteria and weighting scale within this report, with both Overall Website Traffic Rankings and Facebook Engagement coming in as the most weighted. This report covers the first quarter of 2015. We will continue to publish the Digital Engagement Rankings on a quarterly basis, along with adjusting the weighting criteria to coincide with tourism industry and digital marketing trends.
We are also looking into additional resources to help us attain engagement numbers that will span a longer period of time.
As always, feedback, comments and ideas on improvement for the ranking are always welcome. Please be sure to leave them on our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/TwoSixDigital.
Digital Engagement Ranking: US Tourism Office Edition, QTR 4, 2104
Here is the Digital Engagement Ranking of the 50 United States Tourism Offices for Q4, December of 2014.
You can view the entire Digital Engagement Ranking: US Tourism Office Edition, Q4, December 2014 right here.
We would like to congratulate the states that have made the top ten:
1) Michigan; 2) Virginia; 3) Oregon; 4) Massachusetts; 5) Hawaii; 6) North Carolina; 7) Florida; 8) Louisiana; 9) Georgia and 10) California.
As you can see, the top 10 stayed pretty consistent from last quarter with only one change. California moved into the number 10 spot and Tennessee dropping to 11. Based on performance and consistency, the top 10 is almost interchangeable. And, as you can see in the final scoring, Michigan, Virginia and Oregon are all very close with scores of 82.5, 82.2, and 82.1 respectively.
Other movers of note in this quarter include Colorado, up eight spots to 20; New Hampshire up ten spots to 15; Montana up ten spots to 16; Minnesota up eight spots to 19; New York up nice spots to 27 and Indiana up 11 spots to 29.
The report features an overall digital and social media ranking of each state from one through fifty.It is the second consecutive quarter the report has been published and the comparison results from last quarter are located on page three.
As we developed our new ranking criteria, we continue to place significant emphasis on website engagement and the importance that content development plays in that process. In the Q4 report, we made some additional adjustments to add more emphasis on Facebook engagement – since it is an area of interest and concern with the new algorithm changes.
There is a detailed breakdown of the ranking criteria and weighting scale within this report. This report covers the fourth quarter of 2014. We intend to continue to publish the Digital Engagement Rankings on a quarterly basis in the future, along with adjusting the weighting criteria to coincide with tourism industry and digital marketing trends.
We are also looking into additional resources to help us attain engagement numbers that will span a longer period of time.
As always, feedback, comments and ideas on improvement for the ranking are always welcome. Please be sure to leave them on our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/TwoSixDigital.
Digital Engagement Ranking: US Tourism Office Edition, QTR 3, 2104
Today, we officially publish the first-ever Digital Engagement Ranking, featuring a digital and social media ranking of the 50 United States Tourism Offices.
Over the past six months, we have had several requests from state tourism offices to re-develop the benchmark process that I originally published in July of 2009. But, like everything digital, there is an evolution process. We felt that the use of digital and social media marketing had evolved over the past few years and the measurement had to extend beyond social media.
In our conversations with a number of destination marketing organizations prior to working on this rankings report, we learned that concerns have grown beyond social media. The common thread in many of our conversations was in regard to the development of website content and how that content can be integrated into multiple social media channels to inspire prospective travel consumers to take action.
One reoccurring theme throughout our discussions was a re-emergence of the organization’s website. Over the past few years, websites took a backseat to social media – as the new, shiny applications, got a lot more of the attention. But when we reflected back on the primary call to action for almost all promotional and advertising efforts, the website was the core of the tourism organization’s efforts.
As we developed our new ranking criteria, we placed a significant emphasis on website engagement and the importance that content development plays in that process. We also utilized numbers of followers and fans to determine overall audience reach and amplification, along with placing more emphasis on the popular social networks and the engagement that each network generates.
There is a detailed breakdown of the ranking criteria and weighting scale within the report. This report covers the third quarter of 2014. We intend to publish it on a quarterly basis in the future, along with adjusting the weighting criteria to coincide with tourism industry and digital marketing trends.
You can view the entire Digital Engagement Ranking: US Tourism Office Edition, right here.
Now, we would like to congratulate the top ten states:
1) Michigan; 2) Massachusetts; 3) Oregon; 4) Louisiana; 5) Virginia; 6) North Carolina; 7) Hawaii; 8) Florida; 9) Tennessee and 10) Georgia.
Special thanks to Laura Edgington for coordinating the ranking process and Kyle Jurczak, from Michigan State University, for his help with the mathematical calculations and weighting scales.
As always, feedback, comments and ideas on improvement for the ranking are always welcome. Please be sure to leave them on our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/TwoSixDigital.