Early in the spring of 2019, Mikula-Harris entered into a unique partnership with Bath County to provide strategic and creative guidance to its office of tourism. The relationship allowed us to steer the tourism program in a few significant ways:
• exercise creative influence over the advertising, messaging and design
• build a media plan for advertising and marketing
• bring all aspects of the Bath County tourism brand into alignment, including social media
• establish priorities by launching new initiatives and scaling back others
We were given a budget and tasked with getting maximum impact for the county, its citizens and its tourism-related businesses. We began planning and negotiating immediately even though our budget didn’t become available until the start of a new fiscal year on July 1, 2019. We began to see modest results sooner mostly because of our social media activity driving some web traffic. After July 1, things kicked into higher gear. Here are some insights on what has happened and why:
• The media plan contains a mix of print and digital advertising, but definitely more digital than previous years. Print is needed to build brand awareness, which is not easy to measure, while digital advertising builds awareness while also delivering traffic to the website. All our advertising is as targeted as possible, whether by interest, location within driving distance of Bath County, or some other criteria.
• Using recent research, we identified some key areas that we believe could be strong growth areas for tourism in the county and we committed to pursuing them relentlessly. One is scenic drives including motorcycle riders. Second is building upon the county’s growing reputation for great fishing, which got a boost in spring of 2019 when some entrepreneurs launched a fly-fishing festival.
• We designed and printed a Motorcycle Rides & Scenic Drives brochure that includes details on five routes that begin and end in Bath County. It is displayed at select Virginia Welcome Centers and certain local visitor centers. The online flipbook version has been promoted on social media. It has been viewed online 550 times with an average read time of 2:13 since it launched in September. More marketing to support this niche is scheduled for the spring.
• In September, we sent the first ever consumer e-newsletter to keep in touch with people who have opted-in through the website. At first this e-newsletter will be published quarterly but that may change depending on its popularity. The newsletter offers insights and ideas about why to visit Bath County and what to do when here. It’s filled with links to the website, including the lodging and dining pages to make it easy for people to plan a trip. The first issue had a 28% Open Rate and a staggering 24% Click Rate.
• Between July 1 and October 31, website traffic to the official tourism site of discoverbath.com is up about 30% over the same period in 2018. Website analytics can confirm that the traffic is resulting from our initiatives and viewing the pages we want them to view. For example, online ads for scenic drives and fishing lead directly to relevant landing pages. They are the second and third most viewed pages on the website behind only the Home page.
Those are just a few specific examples of propelling the brand forward and achieving measurable results. Other good things are happening, too. We have had regular meetings with tourism stakeholders to report on everything being done to promote the county. Keeping the lines of communication open is helping to build strong partnerships. There is a wonderful sense of teamwork between the office of tourism and local businesses. We also applied for and received a grant from Virginia Tourism Corporation that will allow even more marketing opportunities. Finally, Hot Springs was recently awarded Top Adventure Town status by Blue Ridge outdoors magazine. A lot of people voted for Hot Springs, but I believe in my heart that the official tourism social media outlets lead the get out the vote drive.
Now that we have shared some specific accomplishments and statistics, the third and final post on this subject will offer some thoughts on the strategy and guiding principles behind the decisions that produce the results.
