How do you get tour operators/travel professionals to consider visiting (or touring) your city when you’ve got top destination tours like the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone to compete with? You don’t try and beat ‘em. You join ‘em.
Skim below to see how Digital Edge and Visit Rapid City created an incentive campaign and leveraged the destination’s inspiring landmarks that are located near top places like Yellowstone to increase site visit interest from tour operators.
CAMPAIGN LEAD GENERATION
THE GOAL
Assist Visit Rapid City’s group travel sales team with an integrated digital marketing campaign to acquire leads and interest in the destination from travel professionals/tour operators across the United States.
THE CONCEPT
Digital Edge would re-collaborate with the creative marketing masterminds at Visit Rapid City to zhuzh up the inaugural 2017 campaign. The 2018 concept would target both regional and national travel professionals in one solid campaign, with a message that would encompass the overarching thought of adding Rapid City, SD to one’s Yellowstone tour. A secondary message would promote Rapid City and the Black Hills’ parks and monuments with a FAM tour (familiarization tour) incentive.
THE PROMOTION
WIN A BLACK HILLS FAM TOUR!
PARKS, MONUMENTS & MEMORIALS FOR EVERY BUCKET LIST
The content and messaging of the campaign made tour operators aware that Rapid City and the surrounding Black Hills are only seven hours from Yellowstone, and that the destination includes many parks and iconic monuments and landmarks that would complete passengers’ Yellowstone/western US tour experience.
THE CAMPAIGN LIFESPAN AND COMPONENTS
The campaign ran from July – October of 2018.
Digital Edge ran the campaign exclusively on Facebook and refined the audience throughout the campaign to limit leisure leads. A monthly promotional email was sent out that incorporated video and vivid imagery to bring the destination to life in the reader’s inbox.
THE RESULTS
In the span of just over three months, the campaign yielded a total of 436 leads for Visit Rapid City and created awareness about Rapid City and the Black Hills for several hundred tour operators/travel professionals nationwide. Success!
Big love for our client that continues to do “Big Things!”
Want to see more case studies about the ways our clients are benefiting from our marketing services, and how your DMO could too? Peruse away, friends!
