The Brand
Southern Downs Regional Council (SDRC)
The Media Owner
Wülfe Marketing
Background
Wülfe Marketing was invited by Southern Downs Regional Council (SDRC) to provide marketing campaign management – including media planning, buying and reporting – for a Southern Downs and Granite Belt campaign across 2021-2022.
Our pitch was a campaign that started with an engaging data mining concept, complemented by influencer marketing and a small digital ad spend budget. The result – “Which Iconic Southern Downs Trail Are You?” – created a pool of high-value travellers that can now be retargeted to drive them back to the area.
The tourism ad buying landscape is more competitive than ever. Typical ad serving metrics – impressions, reach and views – indicate little about the end user’s buy-in to the campaign without the meaningful data mining of the user and their consequential advocacy. It is simply not enough to run a targeted ad campaign that drives traffic to a blog post.
Purpose
By attaining a refined and qualified audience through our campaign, conversion marketing efforts for Southern Downs Regional Council will now capitalise on this data for years to come, acting on the ongoing insights learned from these users.
Before this campaign, SDRC did not have an effective way to generate, capture and nurture leads.
A strategic and effective data mining campaign gave SDRC the ability to refine and segment their audience for future marketing sprints – in turn allowing SDRC to nurture ad traffic with heightened accuracy. Our success measures were against three specific metrics:
- Visits to the quiz landing page
- Completed quiz numbers
- Completion rate of quiz
Our targets were:
- 10,000 website visitors
- 1,000 responses to the quiz
- 10% completion rate
The Execution
In order to drive meaningful conversion in future advertising activities, it was imperative to execute brand awareness efforts that captured the attention and trust of high value travellers.
Spring 1.1 – Segmented Data Mining Form
We developed and executed an engaging data mining form – a personality quiz. Our rationale was that a personality quiz facilitates buy-in from a cold user by providing entertainment. Additionally, the quiz results allowed us to collect psychometrics and interests, which gave us the ability to further refine and segment the audience for future marketing sprints – in turn allowing SDRC to nurture ad traffic with heightened accuracy. It also encouraged shareability.
The personality quiz asked: “Which Iconic Southern Downs Trail Are You?”
In order to view the quiz, the user was driven to an optimised landing page where they answered questions, and their contact details in order to receive their results. The user then had the ability to download an in-depth PDF about the hike trail, which they could take with them to the region.
Sprint 1.2 – Influencer Marketing
We developed criteria that dictated the selection of influencers, which correlated to the relevant trails and the respective audience segment (for example, a fitness influencer would be selected for the hike that
requires a high level of fitness, whereas we engaged a travel influencer to complete the intermediate track).
We then worked with the influencers to coordinate the hike, key scripting and shot lists based on their hiking trail.
The involvement of influencers in this campaign was pivotal to not only establish trust and industry cut-through, but to the momentum of the future conversion efforts.
Sprint 2 – Giveaway Campaign
Typical giveaway campaigns only require the users to input their first name, last name, and email address, which typically results in poor quality leads, and thus, a lack of conversion. Through qualifying and refining the audience in Sprint 1, and having a more meaningful call to action in Sprint 2, we are able to ensure better quality leads and therefore ROI for future conversion efforts.
In return for posting an image on Facebook or Instagram with the right tags and handles, entries were given the opportunity to win either a romantic giveaway or an adventure giveaway. The giveaway was split to cater to the segments distilled from the high value traveller audience.
We targeted ads for further insights on the segmented audiences consumer behaviour.
This sprint generated a significant amount of traction through user generated content (UGC). We created a targeted ad to retarget users who engaged with the prior ad effort, as well as the generation of lookalike audiences from the data collected from Sprint 1, driving engagement and participation in the giveaway. By having the above giveaway entry requirements, we ensure visitation and economic benefits to the
region immediately without an event push.
Furthermore, through utilising UGC as a key marketing strategy to drive organic traction, SDRC was able to scale the awareness of the overall campaign without additional expenditure on ad spend.
The Results
Southern Downs Regional Council considers this campaign to be a huge success.
For the duration of the campaign, we had:
● 1,652 responses to the personality quiz
● 15,750 views on the website
● A conversion rate of 34.5%
Additionally, our client saw a 43.6% increase in Facebook likes and a 341.6% increase in Instagram
followers.
