Challenge
Identify and develop an influencer strategy to take advantage of the laid-back, welcoming lifestyle of New Braunfels and broaden visitors’ point-of-view about things to do when visiting that is beyond typical water recreation activities for which it has become known. Our charge was to showcase the destinations’ features during the shoulder seasons of Spring, Fall and Winter.
Approach
Since we were in our third year of working with this client, we wanted to fine-tune the demographics we targeted as well as identifying influencers in new niches. This was informed through a new destination database in which the client could see where and when spending was spiking and from where visitors originated. Targeting influencer campaigns are a budget friendly investment for shoulder season visitation compared to the traditional advertising spend for summer. And especially so for smaller, regional destinations.
Results
- We created three seasonal campaigns and partnered with 8 influencers in 2022. All had different themes, itineraries and dining options.
- The influencers created more content than we expected and that content had higher engagements than our goal, too.
- More importantly, overnight visitation, visitor spend and web visits all increased over the same time period from the previous year.
- The ability to create and share great travel experiences for regional influencers was our ultimate goal. But even more meaningful is that we were able to correlate for the first time, that those campaigns positively impacted KPIs for this destination.
This project won an award of merit from the PRSA San Antonio Del Oro Awards in 2023.