With the ever-evolving interests and priorities of consumers, destination marketing organizations (DMOs) face the challenge of maintaining relevance and capturing the attention of modern travelers. Some DMOs are finding success in achieving a fresh new look by flipping their visitor guides upside down — figuratively, of course.
At Simpleview Summit 2024, attendees heard from Destination Madison about how its team flipped its visitor’s guide from drab to fab. If you missed the session or had questions for the presenters, this Q&A is for you.
Ashley Pettay
Content Manager, Destination Madison
Jen Kuhn Karanja
Senior Creative Strategist, Destination Madison
Q: From start to finish, how long did it take you to concept, design, and produce?
Strategy took about three months and execution took about six months — for a total of nine months.
Q: How many guides did you print in total? Is there a digital version?
We have printed 100,000 guides. Yes, there is a digital version on our website.
Q: How many team members worked on this guide?
The short answer is: a lot. There are, of course, additional team members that helped contribute to the success of the guide, but here’s what the core team looked like:
- Strategy development: Three team members
- Creative direction: One team member
- Content planning: Three team members (a handful of planning sessions included an expanded group with members from the brand and partnership teams)
- Copywriting: One team member
- Proofing: Three team members
- Reviewing for partner alignment, messaging, and organization alignment: Four team members
Q: We only have a digital visitor’s guide. Any insights on the pros and/or cons of digital guides versus printed guides?
We find it important to have both; we put as much effort as we did on the print guide into year-round, nearly continuous maintenance of our website — which functions as an online guide. We have a PDF version of our print guide online that gets looked at, but there’s no evidence to say it is a primary planning tool for visitors. My advice would be if you want to rely only on digital, focus on your website content rather than create a PDF or some other “guide” that lives on your site in addition to web content.
We liked the challenge of applying a digital mindset to a printed piece: Match the user’s brain when it comes to their unique interests, but create a tangible printed piece that feels too nice to dispose of. Print helps us create a strong emotional connection with users because it is tangible. This tangible, high-quality printed piece also allows planners, stakeholders, and visitors to showcase our city (our brand) to all those who come into contact with it. It makes the statement that we as a team are willing to invest our time and resources into a tool that works for them!
Q: With sustainable tourism on the rise, would you revisit the print version and consider installing QR codes around the city for accessibility?
We will always continue to innovate based on trends and more importantly, people’s wants and needs. Our guide is aimed at outside markets for awareness. Not every DMO has the awareness challenges that we face. The QR code idea is interesting if it plays into the guide itself as a carry-over once you are in the city.
We found through this process that there is still a great demand for printed products (see this article for reference). We will likely continue with some version of printed pieces in the future that align with our existing commitment to sustainable printing.
Q: How would you recommend prioritizing new iterations on a short production timeline?
I think that depends on your team, your destination, and your strategic goals. We haven’t found seasonal guides to be of value for us — but that might not be true for everyone given their type of destination. If you are making that many printed pieces in a year, I would recommend focusing on creating a plan to make small changes over time until you get to the end result you’re looking for.
Q: Can you elaborate more on the every other year investment? Do you also print annually or every other year?
We are still deciding how frequently we will print or redesign this guide. At launch, we printed 100,000 guides with the anticipation that we would need to reprint at some point. We are still learning some of the innovations in terms of distribution that might be needed to allow for a guide that is consumed both outside and inside the market.
The idea to make it evergreen allows us flexibility, which our team wanted. It also forced us to focus on content that showcases our destination’s biggest and best stories that drive visitors rather than getting caught up in tiny details around dates, times, events, etc. (which our website does so well).
Q: What kind of places are you distributing your guide outside of your immediate market?
Our distribution model is evolving and we are hoping to get out in more markets as we go. As of now, we share guides:
- By mail to people who request them on our website (this remains a popular resource for visitors)
- Local partners, like hotels and performing art centers, that often get out-of-town visitors
- In visitor centers across Wisconsin
- At tradeshows and conferences
Q: Do you do ads for your members, where they pay for quarter, half, and full pages? How do you work that into your content?
We chose not to sell ads for this guide to maintain consistency in content and presentation. Innovating our guide was driven by our partner's request for more digital marketing opportunities. We are currently developing this monetized program.
Q: Why did you decide to make a smaller guide than usual? Did people request a smaller version?
As part of our research to help inform our strategy, we ordered a lot of guides to see how all of you were helping showcase your cities. Guides came in all sizes, some at this reduced size. We felt it was easy to hold, made its way to the front of an 8.5x11 rack, and the final ultimate size was determined by our printing partner who helped us maximize the number of guides we could print on a form so we could maximize cost and fuel our sustainable printing practices.
Q: How did you use the visitor postcard? Where are those distributed?
The visitor postcard is a piece we use tucked into a guide when we mail them or we want to add a more personal touch. We also use a “Dear Partner” card as well.
Q: What portions/departments of your budget did this project hit marketing?
When we decided to create the type of guide we did, we shifted the piece from being driven by partnership to being driven by marketing. This made sense when the guide became essentially an ad to distribute outside of the market. When we did this, we also shifted the cost to marketing, using about 10% of the overall marketing budget.
Note that the cost will only be every two to three years given the evergreen nature of the guide. We gave up the ad revenue offset and built the costs into our marketing budget as it served as a tactic for awareness in our overall consumer journey and marketing outreach.
Q: Did you have any pushback from partners that always paid for ads? How are you recovering costs?
We have not had pushback. We knew heading into our decision that partners were asking about additional opportunities, like digital advertising, more than an ad or listing in the guide. The timing was right to change post-pandemic (our last printed guide was in 2019).
That said, we knew cost recovery would be a journey.
We have begun extensive work on creating a monetization system that will provide partners access to a “marketplace” of opportunities for their business. The marketplace focuses on both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) options for digital exposure on our communication platforms, access to photo and video assets, bulk orders of guides, and event sponsorship. The system was designed to offer opportunities at a wide range of price points (something for everyone), allow partners input on creative solutions, and provide metrics reporting so that they can track success.
We currently offer custom bulk guides for our partners who need larger quantities for their recruitment and relocation efforts. We also have sponsorship opportunities for those looking for a custom option to include their logo on the cover.
Q: Did businesses pay to be included or how did they choose which ones to highlight?
We did not sell any space in this guide. We chose what to highlight based on what:
- Stories we want to tell based on our destination brand
- Content we see performs well online
- Content we had available to us that looked stunning and matched the visual experience we were developing
- Businesses are integral to our city
Don’t miss out on unique ideas like this.
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