Situation

A mid-tier Visitor Bureau retained Simpleview to assist in their six-month brand and co-op campaigns. After establishing client goals, the challenge was to promote brand awareness and CVB partners through online media. Projected numbers were assembled and success metrics were identified as traffic volume, online booking searches and visitor guide requests. At the same time, the co-op campaign needed to drive visitors to partner sites through a custom landing page- all while running side-by-side with the brand awareness campaign.

Solution

Simpleview's Search Engine Marketing team immediately developed an online media strategy that included a well-defined campaign media plan. This plan served as a collaborative road map to ensure campaign strategy was transparent to all parties. After research and negotiations with publishers, the team decided to utilize three mediums to accomplish client goals: online display, paid search (PPC) and email marketing. Publishers were chosen solely based on campaign goals and brand alignment. The team worked directly with the bureau, as well as their creative agency, to develop custom landing pages and creative that delivered the message that would lead to high conversions for both the brand and co-op campaigns. Throughout the entire campaign, the team worked to push publishers for better performance and was often able to negotiate added value when targets were not being met.

Through PPC, the team worked diligently to optimize and develop tightly-themed keyword sets and ad groups that assisted them in being highly visible on top search engines Google, Bing and Yahoo. This led to increased traffic and higher conversion rates.

Additionally, in-depth reporting allowed Simpleview and the bureau to see which campaigns, ad groups, keywords, creative and publishers were performing best. These reports detailed top conversions as well as how users were engaging with the landing pages and website. With this information, targeting and optimization became more precise.

Results

The campaign ran for six months and served 7,408,615 impressions through email marketing, paid search and display ads. This was a 15% increase over projected numbers. The campaign also saw 68,005 visits to the four custom brand-landing pages, a 20% increase over forecasted numbers. Email marketing accounted for 236,123 opens and 14,590 clicks to the various landing pages. Paid search generated the greatest amount of visits with 49,808 and 2,314,068 impressions.

Co-op partners could choose either three or six month placements and partners were rotated evenly on dynamic landing pages. During the six-month period, the campaign served 8,687,786 impressions through email marketing, paid search and display ads. The campaign also provided 57,470 visits to the co-op landing pages, a 42% increase over projected numbers. Email marketing accounted for 42,169 opens and 4,739 clicks to the co-op landing pages. PPC was also a generator of huge traffic with 44,190 visits and 2,143,416 total impressions.

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