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PR Briefs
The AMEX card promotion launched last week to help drive late-summer tourists to Perdido Key and Escambia County, Fla. is continuing to amaze us with the speed at which the marketing has seen a measurable return. The three marketing strategies we employed—social media marketing, search engine marketing and public relations—worked seamlessly and in sync to get the word out at light-speed. The first lesson in all of this: a great marketing campaign starts with a great “product” to sell. Our jobs were easier because pretty much everybody likes free $100 gift cards! I would say it’s much more difficult to change a bad reputation or to sell real estate in a poor market than to give away American Express gift cards. So the marketing dollars were there and we could have used them to run “image” ads in magazines and newspapers and on TV and radio, driving interested parties to a central Web site where they would, hopefully, be interested enough to consider booking a vacation in our area. We could have measured the “success” of this program by looking at Web metrics to see how many people visited the Web site. Instead, we created a program that focused on our current circumstances and solved a problem. The “problem” was that the hospitality industry along the gulf coast of Florida has been severely impacted by the oil spill “crisis.” Instead of buying traditional ads, we used the bulk of the budget to purchase gift cards that would interest people enough in our area to take a look at our pristine beaches and book a late summer vacation here. Then we used a very small budget to launch, virtually overnight, a social media campaign supported by search engine ads and PR. We had a total of 1610 gift cards to distribute, one card for every night booked by a family, up to 3 gift cards per room/family. And book they did. I haven’t had time to check the Web site’s metrics lately. Don’t really need to. By today’s tally there are 3500 room nights pre-booked in Perdido Key, and requests for 2208 gift cards. I would say THAT is a measurable return for the hospitality industry in Perdido Key. “You Stay, We’ll Pay” is paying off in a big way for Perdido Key, Florida resorts and condominiums. The marketing strategy, a mix of social media marketing, search engine marketing and PR, has already driven tourists to pre-book 3,000 room nights since it was launched a few days ago. Less than a week ago, we launched a tourism marketing program that has generated a response beyond our wildest expectations and to date has resulted in 3000 room nights being pre-booked from now until the end of September in Perdido Key, Fla. In 30 years of marketing and PR, I’ve been part of some very successful marketing strategies—but this one is by far the most exciting in terms of its low cost and instant return. Over the course of the next few posts, I’ll share insights and real-time updates on this promotion, details of which can be found at www.VisitPerdido.com. The program was funded by BP with marketing dollars distributed to Visit Florida and then to regional Tourism Development Councils (TDCs) in response to the oil spill crisis along the Gulf Coast. Our client, Perdido Key, is a member of the regional TDC and was given a small percentage of the area’s dollars in which to market $100 American Express® gift cards to anyone booking a night at a Perdido Key condo, resort or RV park. Tourists get a $100 gift card for every night they book, up to $300 in gift cards. We loved this program and had pushed for a similar program early in the summer. But we recognized that the current program had a few challenges: by the time it launched last week, U.S. schools were back in session and families had taken their summer vacations already. Additionally, the media coverage of the oil spill over the past few months had left many with the impression that the beaches were covered in oil. Bookings for condos had gone down 30% by some estimates, over the previous year. Another challenge was budget: Perdido Key’s share of the overall program dollars was less than $28,000. Still, we were up for the challenge and developed a strategy that capitalized on social media marketing, search engine marketing and public relations. As a direct result of this program: —Registrations were received for more than 1800 gift cards in the first four days. —3000 room nights are planned between now and the end of September. —Thousands have signed up for Perdido Key e-updates —More than 150 million online impressions are estimated. —National television, newspaper and online magazine earned media, estimated in excess of $100,000, has been garnered. The program is nearing its end—right now the registrations have exceeded our total gift cards. But I’ll be posting the lessons we’ve learned along the way. Jennifer Flake, director of corporate communications at Ford, recently shared how the company strategically communicated through an historic crisis in 2008, when the global recession hit the automotive industry especially hard. Ford, which didn’t take a dime of federal bailout money, created a “social media hub” so that customers could “converse with us,” as a key component of their strategy. And since last Spring, 4.3 million people have participated online. What they learned can help other businesses figure out how social media platforms can be a powerful marketing strategy: 1. For Ford, social media grabbed the attention of a young audience, in fact, Ford found that Facebook enabled them to reach out and grab a future market share of young people who couldn’t even drive yet. 2. Ford found that third party endorsements on their social media sites were much more powerful than anything they could say about themselves. They put hidden cameras in new Fords and let people “swap their ride” for a while. The candid reviews of the actual drivers (with permission afterward of course) were better than any ads they could have produced. 3. A “Spec Your Own Mustang” feature on their Facebook page provided a fun, interactive way to engage Mustang lovers. 4. Ford also created a way to further engage people: by letting them post their own fuel-saving tips on Ford’s site, which in turn created more traffic and fans. A check today showed that the Ford Facebook page is “liked” by 182,700 people.
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