Career Woman of the Year
Business & Professional Women
of Raleigh
@lynnminges | @visitnc
DESTINATION MARKETING ASSOCIATION INTERNATIONAL
OUR CAUSE OUR MISSION OUR BRAND PROMISE OUR VALUES
DMAI exists to protect DMAI advocates for the DMAI is the passionate DMAI is committed to the
and advance the success professionalism, advocate and definitive following core values:
of destination marketing. effectiveness and resource for official Innovative, Transparent,
significance of destination destination marketing Responsive, Inclusive
marketing organizations organizations and
worldwide. professionals worldwide.
DMAI cultivates content and aa community for DMOs that makes them passionate about what they have to gain.
DMAI cultivates content and community for DMOs that makes them passionate about what they have to gain.
ADVANCE THE ADVOCATE FOR THE PROTECT & LEVERAGE
DMO PROFESSIONAL DMO INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION RESOURCES
$4.6 BILLION 50%
INVESTED DEDICATED TO
LEISURE
ANNUALLY
MARKETING
Os
DM
US
NTOs
ST
O s
Sources:
DMAI DMO Marketing Activities Study
State Tourism Office Budget Report, US Travel TOTAL BUDGET LEISURE SPEND
Budgets of National Tourism Organizations, UNWTO
LEISURE TRAVEL MARKETING COMMANDS
MAJORITY OF DMO MARKETING BUDGETS
In Line with US Travel Purposes
US DOMESTIC TRAVEL
77% 23%
US OVERSEAS TRAVEL
74% 26%
4%
DMO MARKETING BUDGET ALLOCATIONS
65% 31%
LEISURE BUSINESS OTHER
DMOs KEEPING PACE WITH
CONSUMER MEDIA CONSUMPTION
Mass Advertising Still Rooted in Traditional Media
DMO MARKETING US WEEKLY MEDIA US ADVERTISING
ALLOCATION CONSUMPTION SPENDING
DIGITAL MEDIA TRADITIONAL MEDIA OTHER
Source:
DMAI DMO Marketing Activities Study
DMOs KEEPING PACE WITH
CONSUMER MEDIA CONSUMPTION
Mass Advertising Rooted in Traditional Media
DMO LEISURE MARKETING ALLOCATION
33% 8% 30% 5% 24%
US WEEKLY MEDIA CONSUMPTION
6% 40% 33% 14% 7%
US ADVERTISING SPENDING
27% 43% 19% 11%
PRINT ADVERTISING TV ADVERTISING ONLINE RADIO ADVERTISING OTHER
Source:
DMAI DMO Marketing Activities Study
DOMESTIC VS INTERNATIONAL MARKETING
DOMESTIC TOURISM REPRESENTS FOUR TIMES THE VOLUME OF
INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL
50% 77%
INVESTS
INVEST INTERNATIONALLY
INVEST INTERNATIONALLY
$1.15B
IN INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL
30% OF
15% OF $380M FOR
MARKETING BUDGET
TOTAL
MARKETING BUDGET
TOTAL DOMESTIC TRAVEL
US DMO STO NTO
Sources:
DMAI DMO Marketing Activities Study
State Tourism Office Budget Report, US Travel
Budgets of National Tourism Organizations, UNWTO
50% of US DMOs INVEST IN
INTERNATIONAL MARKETING
80%
72%
72%
23%
18%
34%
34% 25%
18%
19%
COMMITTING 30% OF THEIR TOTAL
MARKETING BUDGET
Source:
DMAI DMO Marketing Activities Study
LEISURE MARKETING BUDGETS BY ACTIVITY
DMOs
51% 10% 30% 2% 7%
NTOs
24% 20% 6% 11% 39%
ADVERTISING CONSUMER SHOWS INTERNET/EMARKETING DIRECT MAIL OTHER
Sources:
DMAI DMO Marketing Activities Study
Budgets of National Tourism Organizations, UNWTO
98% FACEBOOK
91% TWITTER
88% YOUTUBE
64% FLICKR
29% PINTEREST
DMOs HAVE EMBRACED & INTEGRATED
SOCIAL MEDIA
INTO THEIR OVERALL MARKETING EFFORTS
Source:
DMAI DMO Marketing Activities Study
92% WEBSITE HAVE/PLAN TO HAVE
MOBILE
47% HAVE/PLAN TO HAVE
MOBILE APP
Source:
DMAI DMO Marketing Activities Study
CONSUMER MARKETING STRATEGY
TARGET MARKETS
Advertising
Print ● TV • Online •
Radio • OOH/Transit INCREASE INTEREST IN DESTINATION
y
ilit
ib
Vis
Public Relations & Partnerships
Media Outreach • Social Media Sharing
Endemic & Non-endemic Partnerships • GENERATE BUZZ ABOUT DESTINATION
Increase Credibility w/ 3rd Party Partners
ility
Promotional Events & Retail Offers
ib
Hotel Packages • Restaurant Week •
Cred
Exclusive Offers or Discounts • Convention Incentives
Gift w/ Purchase • Sweepstakes
MOTIVATE ACTION
Leads & Referrals
Drive Traffic to DMO site • CAPTURE &
ales
Generate leads & re-message to Per Inquiry TV •
Magazines, Enter-to-Win consumers OUTREACH
lS
Retai
Booking & Purchase
Via DMO site or Partner Sites •
Hotel & Restaurant Reservations • Ticket Purchasing VISITATION
17
Experience, WOM, Return Visit
“What we really need is a mindset shift that will make us
relevant to today’s consumers, a mindset shift from
‘telling & selling’ to building relationships”
- Jim Stengel,
Former Global Marketing Officer
Proctor & Gamble
WHAT INFLUENCES PURCHASE?
Highly influential in decisions to purchase a product or service All adults
Word of mouth 54%
Information from a website 47%
Email sent by someone you know 42%
Something you read in an online interview 31%
Something you heard on the radio 29%
Television ad 27%
Something you received in the mail 25%
Magazine ad 23%
Newspaper ad 22%
Online ad 17%
Email sent by an advertiser/company 16%
Informercial 12%
Mobile phone ad 11%
MARKETING STILL INFLUENCES CONVERSATIONS
49%
of all brand conversations contain a
specific reference to marketing or media
as a content source
Source: Keller Fay, base: 162,000 conversations
….AS DOES ADVERTISING
22%
of all brand conversations contain a
specific reference to advertising
Source: Keller Fay, base: 162,000 conversations
EVOLVED MEDIA MODEL
Advertising
•Print
•Online
•Broadcast
•OOH
Social Media
Coop Mktg PR
Partner Mktg Social Media
Visitors Guides
Vis Ctr
Staff Apparel
Booths
Measurement &
Benchmarking Resources
DMO Performance Reporting
Handbook – Now Available
Activity Measures
Performance Measures
Productivity Measures
DMO Marketing Activities Study –
Now Available
DMO Digital & Mobile Marketing
Toolkit – Nearing Completion
DMO Online Marketing Benchmark
Tool - In Discovery
NC BY THE NUMBERS
• 10th most populous state
• Marketing investment ranks 27th of 50 states
• Ninth among Southern peer states
• $3.5 million paid media budget
• Sixth most visited overnight destination
Apps/Push Notifications
THE MASS(IVE) MEDIA Mobile Email
SMS
Group Texting
Social DM
Voice Marketing
IM IM IM Mobile Email
Email SMS + MMS
Events Email Email IM
Events Events Events Events
Direct Fax Direct Fax Direct Fax Direct Fax Email
Direct Mail Direct Mail Direct Mail Direct Mail Direct Fax
Direct Mail
Telephone Telephone Telephone Telephone Telephone
<1990 1990s 1999 2000s 2012
TV TV TV TV TV
Radio Radio
Radio Radio Radio Print
Print Print Print Print Display
Display Display Display Display Website
Cable TV Website Website Search
Online Display
Website Search Search Paid Search
Search Online Display Online Display Landing Pages
Online Display Paid Search Paid Search Microsites
Landing Pages Landing Pages Online Video
Affiliate Marketing
Microsites Microsites Webinars
Online Video Online Video Blogs/ RSS
Webinars Affiliate Marketing Podcasts
Contextual
Affiliate Marketing Webinars Wikis
Blogs Social Networks
RSS Mobile Web
Podcasts Behavioral
Social Media & Ads
Contextual Virtual Worlds
Wikis Widgets
Social Networks Twitter
Mobile Apps
Mobile Web
Geolocation
Pinterest
Vicki to give an overview of the organization and the role we play in the travel and tourism industry.
Domestic vs International Spending DMOs: $309,845,000 / $65,962,000 STOs: $277,353,411 / $45,301,749
First let me start with a new statistic I just learned from a study Vancouver B.C. shared with me recently. Frankly, it was information that is radically changing the way I think about how we work going forward. Their study said that their efforts account for anywhere from 8.5% to 9% of tourism impacts in Vancouver. I tell you this because we really need to understand our sphere of influence and our impacts on tourism in our communities. I won’t give you the details of how they got to these numbers but it really makes sense when you think about it. Now that isn’t to say our work isn’t important, it is vitally important. But how do we be the best in the space in which we can work.
Integrated marketing for Travel Portland begins on the web. We don’t currently have an advertising budget but have just passed and are collecting Tourism Improvement District Funds. This will allow us to do regional advertising for leisure travel so we are deep in the discussion on how to ensure we are consistent across all channels and that we leverage every dollar against the others. I’m sure all of you really understand how you are leveraging each of your online and mobile tools to create your content strategy. This is just our simple diagram of how we are doing it.
Travel Portland has a blog call Portland Spoke which can be found at www.portlandspoke.com. It is a great blog but as a stand alone piece of work, it really only gets a small share of attention. Again, we all have investment limits on both time and money. But we leverage those blog post and repurpose them to our Facebook page, twitter, etc.
Our investment in the blog just leveraged a much more robust conversation through our Facebook page. We have been very fortunate to work with Sparkloft Media which is based in Portland but works worldwide. Understanding how to make the most of every dollar is crucial.
The consumer has many options so how do we use our resources wisely. (Cherry pick info from Richard’s notes below) How will people become aware that you exist online? Local Search 1. General text search - Recovery search implies, for example, that a consumer knows who she is looking for (i.e., Uncle Georgio’s Pizza Parlor) but she does not know where they are, or needs their phone number. Discovery search implies that the searcher knows, for example, what she wants but not who she needs it from (i.e., pizza on Main Street in Springfield). 2. Facilitated by a maps interface (google maps) 3. Direct to sites which aggregate content – by audience Kidlist Red tricycle By geography Mt hood territory Or both Things to do in portland with children Or by topic Restaurants (yelp) Hotels etc (trip advisor) 4. Many of these are apps also 5. Then there are some which are only apps Foursquare Entertainment book Oh, Ranger! … and leverage the native GPS capabilities of the smartphone
This diagram attempts to illustrate where your identity lives online and the extent to which you can control it. Google Local Business Centre, Yahoo Local, Merchant Circle, Yelp and various other yellow pages like listing sites. Good SEO juice. While we are only one voice out there we are the ONLY ones that have the ability to aggregate and curate information through our channels. We’re the only ones in our communities that can understand the flow and create order out of the seeming chaos for the visitor.
The one area where we have the greatest ability to affect the consumer is on the meetings side of the business. By working closely with our meeting planners who push information to their delegates we can really be a valuable resource and make sure that we integrate our deep knowledge base of our communities and move it to the delegate/visitor. Our local business community really needs us to use our resources to bring it all together.
This is a screen shot of our dedicated Meeting Planner website. But what is important here is that we maintain our brand across this channel too. We are also the only source of this much community information for the meeting planner. And this is a place where we made very conscious decisions to think more creatively. We did focus groups with meeting planners in Chicago and DC where we have employees working in the meetings markets. Each of us is proud of our destinations and know our general level of “fame” in the market. Portland isn’t San Francisco. The meeting planners told us, we know about Portland but my delegates need to know you better so Portland is a must visit destination. We invested our PR teams time and budget in making Chicago and DC leisure media a focus. If the meeting planners see and hear more about Portland in their local press then we up our “fame” quotient with the planner.
This is just another part of the meeting planner site that we have leveraged across channels.
At the same time, we don ’ t want to drown our customers in a sea of content. Ethan here overwhelmed by content in Hazel’s Nut House at Gramma’s Place at Schlichting Century Farms in Tualatin last fall.
The role of Travel Portland in this arrangement is to organize and editorialize, to provide the tools which enable our audiences to navigate and make sense of this content. (Cherry picks from Richard’s comments below) Further, when thinking about our audiences, we could do a better job of segmentation. Trying to please ALL the people with a single product necessarily neutralizes much of what’s special about Portland… Matt Pizzuti at the Convention Center uses the example of ensuring we don’t alienate the Lutheran Women’s conference… but in truth our destination has an enormous amount to offer a variety of different audiences with different interests and needs. If we can do a better job of enabling those audiences to self-select their way through the site, on the basis of location, lifestyle and interest, we can increase our appeal to each niche without anesthetizing our overall brand message. Portland has something for everyone – including Lutheran women – and it’s our job to ensure they find it.
Cherry pick parts of Richards notes below. Aggregation is a big deal – it’s unrealistic for us to imagine that we at Travel Portland can (or even should) be the sole provider of visitor relevant content; neither should we be investing our limited resources in reinventing the wheel. Over the coming year we’ll be doing what we can to aggregate the relevant content from multiple sources… at this point what the sources will be is mostly speculation, but likely candidates beyond the partner directory include Travel Oregon (leveraging their data warehouse known mysteriously as “The Orb”), the Intertwine, TriMet, the Regional Arts and Culture Council, Portland Monthly and 1859 Magazines and high trust User Generated Content sites such as Yelp and Trip Advisor. We’ll also be sharing, retweeting and repinning third party content through our social media channels –Martin from SparkLoft will be talking a lot more about that kind of work in a few minutes.
Opening Remarks – “Trends in Destination Marketing” Other Panelists Terry Berggren, Director of Destination Marketing, Ruf Strategic Solutions, moderator Vicki Isley, EVP/COO, DMAI (UNC-CH grad, worked at Durham CVB) Jeff Miller, President and CEO, Travel Portland (Vicki’s presentation deck as you know is titled “2012 DMO Marketing Activities Study, a benchmark study highlighting budgets, investment, traditional vs. digital balance, international marketing priorities, current and future website applications and integration, and mobile websites and destination apps.)
North Carolina by the numbers – snapshot view North Carolina ranks 10 th in population. Division of Tourism marketing budget of approximately $10 million ranks 27 th. $3.5 million paid media budget. Outspent by eight of our peer Southern states, and even competitors at the CVB level within the region like Myrtle Beach with more than $20 million. As with all of us, never enough money to do all we want to do so we focus on leveraging every dollar to the fullest. Through strong partnerships, we’ve established North Carolina as the sixth most visited overnight destination.
Evolving Brand Research driven program. Well established brand position, known for natural, scenic beauty from the highest mountains east of the Rockies to 300 miles of barrier island beaches. Working now to leverage this position to encourage a higher level of engagement and sharing, by showcasing more of the undiscovered stories the state has to tell. We refer to it as our “deeper connections” strategy, getting inside the beauty and connecting in a more emotional and meaningful way to the sights, sounds, flavors stories and characters of our state. Will help turning weekends into week long visits. First time visitors to repeat guests. And expand our community of loyalists sharing our stories, and making them their stories.
Mass(ive) Media Proliferation and fragmentation of media is well known. Provides both challenges in reaching a mass audience, and opportunities to more narrowly target reach specific life stage and interest groups. And as touched on earlier, with limited budgets we have to prioritize the few things that we hope will provide the strongest ROI for our investment, and do them well.
Challenge – Telling more of our story Strong brand. Complex media environment. Travelers looking for more stories, untold stories, “insider” experiences. How do we most effectively and productively tie it all together?
Program Integration/Content Strategy Integration is a well worn term, but critical to maximize effectiveness and investment. As with most destination marketers, our consumer web site VisitNC.com is the hub for everything we do. And we have found our content strategy planning calendar is the most efficient tool to effectively align all of our programs, particularly web, online display advertising, eNewsletters and social media. Examples here from our current fall campaign - Home page, a Facebook posting of a user provided image and a sample online display ad driving traffic to our fall foliage reports. Marketing and PR lead the effort working in tandem with our content strategy team members at our agencies. 18-month view; living and breathing document that adapts to opportunities or unexpected challenges as they arise. Plan also helps when evaluating new opportunities…are they a good strategic fit, can it be leveraged across the program.
Shift in Media Strategy Desire to tell more of our story, gain year round exposure and make most of limited budget drove a shift in our media strategy. While we’ve all been dialing up our commitments to digital media, this year for the first time, we’ve gone digital with a majority of our media buy. We’ve maintained a presence with our traditional media partners with 40 percent of our budget, and are investing 60 percent of our ad dollars in digital. Why Digital as Lead Medium Digital helps stretch our ad budget and allows us to have year round exposure. Allows us to creatively feature more of what makes North Carolina distinctive and memorable, and you’ll see some evidence here with display ads showcasing: Our motorsports heritage and vibrant urban destinations North Carolina’s emergence as a draw for craft brewery enthusiasts Charming personalities like Blackbeard Targeted seasonal efforts like our popular fall foliage season We’ve also expanded our co-op menu to include more digital opportunities for partners.
What We’ve Learned With Our Online Display Campaign Take advantage of the opportunity to experiment more frequently. Embrace and design for short user attention window; message and call to action should be direct and easily digestible. As we’ve added more messages and executions to the mix, made a concerted effort to link display creative to specific, relevant content within VisitNC.com to ensure we deliver a brand experience that drives higher level of engagement. Be mobile friendly. Review each frame independently…
What We’ve Learned With Our Online Display Campaign Review creative in the context of an actual web page, where distractions exist (from articles, other ads, images, rich media, etc). Use rich media strategically; we’ve found interruptive ads may improve recall, but often at the expense of user experience. Online display allows the flexibility to test and learn, fail fast, and respond by leveraging what’s working best.
Pandora Last spring we introduced a North Carolina station on Pandora, showcasing artists and songwriters who have been inspired in North Carolina. Campaign has been very successful. Nearly 40,000 station adds on web and mobile. Web Click-Thru Rate = 2.09% CTR (129% higher than Pandora’s 0.15% Travel Vertical CTR benchmark) Mobile Click-Thru Rate = 4.28% CTR (245% higher than Pandora’s 1.24% Travel Vertical CTR benchmark)
Project 543 Blog We’re making a concerted effort on social, including: Facebook Twitter You Tube Pinterest Instagram Foursquare Flickr Just recently introduced all-new blog dedicated to the stories of unique destinations and attractions across North Carolina. Complementary tool for the brand, the advertising effort, and our “deeper connections” strategy; getting “inside the state’s beauty” to inform, inspire and prompt sharing. 543 represents the number of miles from Manteo, on North Carolina’s coast, to Murphy, in the mountains, and is traditionally considered the width of the state. Labor of love for our marketing director Wit Tuttell, gathered stories from partner input on the people, places and experiences visitors can only find in North Carolina.
Project 543 Blog (continued) Post on average three times per week. Each entry paired with a custom image and type illustration that can be shared on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+. Entries appear in no particular order and are promoted via VisitNC.com, the Division's social media accounts, eNewsletter program and other efforts. In just a very short period of time, without a lot of fanfare, we’ve attracted nearly 20,000 visits, very high click through rates to the partner sites and active sharing among the users. Tremendous response from our own travel industry partners, and many are enthusiastically promoting Project 543 on their own site using the “spread the word” badge shown at the bottom of this slide.
The Hunger Games Another success resulting from opportunistic thinking, planning and collaboration. Worked to cast a bright spotlight on NC travel destinations with extensive media coverage of film locations used in "The Hunger Games,“ which spent $62 million in our state during 112 days of filming and grossed a record $155 million in its opening weekend. PR, web and social media led the way, with the bulk of our investment in time and hustle, not money. Proactively pitched the film's travel angle to print, broadcast and online outlets for several months, and it paid off in a big way. Nearly four minute feature on “The Today Show” showcasing film locations and related activities. More media highlights included CNN, AP, The New York Times, LA Times, USA TODAY, Toronto Star, the Sun in the UK just to name a few. Editorial placements reached a worldwide audience of 157 million and earned more than $2.5 million in advertising value equivalency . Developed itineraries for VisitNC.com to trace the steps of the film locations and the places popular with the cast and crew during their down time.
Mobile and Apps Vicki’s review of the research highlighted the fact DMOs are investing and placing greater emphasis on mobile sites rather than apps. Shown here are the existing VisitNC.com on the left and a glimpse of our mobile web app promoting wine tourism in North Carolina. While we’ve enjoyed good success with the mobile wine app, we are focusing more energy on the development of a new VisitNC.com utilizing responsive design, so our content is readily optimized for all platforms including tablets and smart phones. More on mobile More than 20 percent of our site visitors are accessing VisitNC.com from mobile devices (22-23 percent the past 90 days). Wine following same pattern. More notes on new VisitNC.com New VisitNC.com with responsive design addresses the trend of more people accessing the web from mobile; more engaging and shareable content including still and video imagery, not just from Division, but user generated too; enhanced, customized CMS on the back end to make life easier for partners in getting their stories to the forefront
Measuring Success While visitation, market share and economic impact are ultimate measures, they are also influenced by much more than our own investment and programs. The collective investment of our local DMOs across the state and private sector properties own marketing efforts. To gain a better measure of our direct contribution to the state’s success, we use a variety of measures including: Campaign effectiveness - Attitude and awareness/ROI studies such as Longwoods (17:1 return in state and local taxes for every dollar spent on paid advertising). Web analytics – visits and downstream referrals to our travel industry partners. Visits up more than 12 percent year to date and downstream referrals are up 11 percent. Digital – cost per click, and more importantly, cost per activity trending down. Cost per activity measures Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) reflecting level of engagement (Travel Guide order, eNews subscriptions, sweeps entries, brochure downloads and downstream referrals to partner sites).
Measuring Success (continued) VisitNC.com home page VisitNC.com: Refreshed home page content plan has proven effective, with the home page bounce rate improving by 20 percent. This means users are more engaged with the site and more easily locating relevant content. eNewsletters (350,000 subscribers) Templates were refreshed to match the digital display campaign designs and reflect updates to VisitNC.com. In addition, the redesign supports optimizations made for those viewing newsletters on tablets and mobile devices as more and more people are consuming their content on the go. Level of engagement among eNews subscribers, open and click through rates, has doubled in the short time since these enhancements were made. Social While we’ve grown our social followers and fans steadily, currently about 100,000, engagement remains our key measure including likes, shares, comments, pins – all trending up.