That's WY Summer 2018 Social Campaign
Category
National State Tourism Directors Mercury Awards > Social Media Campaign
Description
National State Tourism Directors Mercury Awards > Social Media Campaign
That's WY Summer 2018 Social Campaign
About This Entry:
The Wyoming Office of Tourism (WOT) aims to drive demand for travel to the state of Wyoming through a robust marketing program centered on the core human value of adventure. Research showed that WOT’s audience is adventurous not just physically but intellectually. Asking “why?” is built into their DNA. Marketing thus had to deliver on a level that goes beyond the usual events and attractions that destination brands often promote.
Social media played a natural and crucial role in telling this story by incorporating #ThatsWY messaging into each piece of social content, creating a consistent, memorable, and authentic campaign unifier around which everything revolved.
To connect with an increasingly mobile audience, our social campaign leveraged niche interest-based targeting and inspired potential travelers through a combination of dynamic social-optimized content pieces that included animations, short-form videos, and striking imagery. We inspired and converted travelers by white-listing emerging targeting opportunities such as Trip Consideration Optimization, and successfully used sequential messaging to retarget people who initially expressed interest by inspiring them to take the next step in the travel process, including signing up for an E-newsletter or Travel Guide.
Objectives:
• Compel potential travelers to visit Wyoming by reaching and inspiring them at every stage of the trip-planning process
• Drive awareness, interest, and trip-planning by highlighting Wyoming’s unique differentiators and destinations through an always-on mix of authentic and dynamic content targeted to three niche audiences that our research revealed to be comprised of people most likely to visit
• Corresponding KPIs:
o Awareness:
Impressions
Reach
o Web traffic
Landing page views
o Video
Video views
o On-post engagement
Post reactions
Post shares
Post comments
New page likes
o Conversion
Travel Guides
E-Newsletters
Audiences:
Our research showed that our sweet spot potential travelers fell into at least one of the three categories below, which we used as starting points to build persona-based targeting profiles.
• Adventurer niche audience segment
• Family Traveler niche audience segment
• Western Culture niche audience segment
Campaign Strategy:
Leveraging insights from the annual Advertising Effective Study and Visitor Profile Survey, we identified three distinct niche audiences groups that presented the most potential to convert to visitors. The data revealed high interest in specific categories of activities and experiences unique to Wyoming, as well as prior visitor volume demographics that informed the niche targeting strategy. In the age of personalization, the strategy aimed to deliver the most relevant content to each niche group at the right time and in a compelling way that was native to their viewing platform.
Each piece of content was tailored to reach at least one of three key niche audiences, and refined audience parameters on an ongoing basis via daily monitoring and optimizations. Each audience group was built with granular geo-targeting, demo-targeting, and interest-based targeting:
• Adventurer niche audience segment
o Focused on reaching passionate adventurers including outdoor activities aligning with Wyoming’s
product such as rock climbing and whitewater rafting
• Family Traveler niche audience segment
o Honed in on parents with an interest in taking family vacations
• Western Culture niche audience segment
o Reached people keen on experiencing places of cultural significance and western heritage, such
as by visiting historic landmarks
Additional targeting and optimizations included:
• Retargeting people who had engaged with our social content with relevant messaging such as
signing up for E-Newsletter or Travel Guides
• Post-by-post thematic targeting
• Lookalike audience targeting to reach audiences similar to those that have proven to be qualified
• Behavior-based targeting to
• Trip Consideration Optimization to reach people who had demonstrated interest in traveling
Our content adapted the brand voice for social media to inspire our audience by pairing grand visuals with thoughtful philosophical statements while weaving in #ThatsWY and tapping into the mindset of those seeking our unique brand experience.
The creative mix appealed to our mobile-centric audience through a range of movement-based, social-specific assets that leveraged WOT’s breadth of brand assets to create a diverse portfolio. This included dynamic animations that caught the eye of potential travelers in a crowded social environment, designed graphics and video.
Results:
Performance of the Summer 2018 social media campaign demonstrated improved efficiency and volume year-over-year including driving qualified web traffic. Emerging ad formats such as Facebook Lead Gen Forms also helped improve conversion efficiency and streamline the user experience.
Success metrics across the three niche audience groups proved the tailored strategy to be effective in delivering relevant content in alignment with interest-based data from our research. Specific performance metrics per audience group provided insights into the strength of the interest-based creative and messaging, as well as potential areas of focus for future campaigns. For example, Family Travelers are highly engaged with our content, which presents rationale for prioritizing content geared towards on-post engagement for this audience.
KPIs
• Awareness
o Impressions: 37,710,455
Western Culture: 11,659,869
Family Traveler: 12,197,279
Adventurer: 10,336,611
All Segments: 3,516,696
o Reach: 5,206,574
Western Culture: 5,866,643
Family Traveler: 4,504,573
Adventurer: 3,811,280
All Segments: 1,855,236
• Web traffic
o Landing page views: 100,014
Western Culture: 24,522
Family Traveler: 30,215
Adventurer: 37,402
All Segments: 7,875
• Video
o Video views: 479,741
Western Culture: 270,245
Family Traveler: 23,490
Adventurer: 182,949
All Segments: 3,057
• On-post engagement
o Post reactions + post shares + post comments: 55,811
Western Culture: 7,787
Family Traveler: 20,504
Adventurer: 6,871
All Segments: 20,649
o New page likes: 4,319
Western Culture: 358
Family Traveler: 491
Adventurer: 361
All Segments: 3,109
• Conversions: across all segments
o Travel Guides: 537
o E-Newsletters: 738
The paid social program contributed to the overall success of the holistic Summer 2018 media campaign. Per the 2018 Advertising Effective Study, advertising produced 1.25MM incremental trips to Wyoming, a 24% increase year-over-year. These visitors spent an estimated $1.48B in the state, a 31% increase year-over-year.
Overall budget = $173,571.30
• Paid promotion budget: $161,571.30
• Production budget: $12,000
Why This Is A Finalist:
It seems like a challenge to market the vast, open state of Wyoming, but the Wyoming Office of Tourism made it appear absolutely effortless. The brand strived to create a "consistent, memorable, and authentic campaign" and that was accomplished completely. With a mobile-first approach, the brand strove to compel potential travelers to visit Wyoming. Smart KPIs were included to judge the success of this gorgeous campaign. This campaign set a new bar for how users view Wyoming. This entry also linked directly to live, organic social media posts, so we could explore how people engaged directly with content. The Devil's Tour video spliced movie footage with the historic, natural monument. Each piece of content was beautiful, intriguing, and well positioned. It was a joy to review these standout highlights of the campaign.
Winner Status
- Finalist