Destination Marketing

Overall Efforts

The Bureau worked with Brogan and Partners and USDM.net to implement a destination brand (City Life, Carolina Style) to promote the Capital City area for all types of visitor business (leisure, meetings/conventions, sports, etc.). Performed these steps in brand implementation:

• Put the product first (VisitRaleigh.com)
• Established competitors by sector (leisure, meetings, sports)
• Conducted attitude/awareness studies
• Conducted conversion studies (via online and telephone)
• Conducted PRIZM research to determine highest-value added customer
• Developed online, television, newspaper, radio and magazine ads to reflect brand
• Developed web site to reflect brand that was launched in Fall 2004 and slated for another new rollout in Fall 2005

Overall visitor inquiries totaled 923,520, a 63% increase over the 2003/04 record year.

Online
• The web site continued to be the leading source of visitor information by generating 98 percent of the overall visitor inquiries with total visitors increasing 77% to 904,124 and user sessions increasing 70% to 1.8 million – all the by-product of partner USDM.net implementing an aggressive online marketing strategic plan.

• The Bureau worked to complete a new redesign and marketing overhaul of the VisitRaleigh.com and RaleighSports.org/CarySports.org web sites.

• Internet partner USDM.net implemented an aggressive online marketing strategic plan.

• Developed an online cooperative marketing program with value to area partners that helped drive visitor spending. Area partners contributed more than $25,000 in all to five campaigns as the online marketing reach essentially doubled as a result to 12.4 million impressions. Bouyed by these efforts, overall web site productivity (in terms of user sessions) is up 70% and the campaigns exceeded most goals via a combined 12.4 million interest-based and geo-targeted impressions, almost 150,000 total click-thrus, 7,000 contest registrations and 2,250 new registered users.

• On behalf of North Carolina Tourism and the United Kingdom See America campaign, a weeklong travel package featuring Raleigh, Pinehurst and Wilmington was coordinated as part of an email marketing effort to 600,000 targeted British consumers.

• On behalf of the North Carolina Golf Marketing Alliance, an online golf campaign was developed and implemented involving nine statewide golf tourism partners and USDM.net. The highly successful effort was recognized as the Best Sports Online Campaign by the Web Marketing Association.

TGIF
• In 2004, the Greater Raleigh TGIF Weekend Promotion reached its third year of productivity and is expected to generate 4,500 FY room nights. Over 16,000 room nights have been generated since the promotion launched in spring 2001.

RaleighNow!
• RaleighNow's web site continues to be an important source for local cultural event information. Having debuted in June 2003, usage continues to grow significantly with year-over-year activity showing a 58% increase in unique visitors to some 10,500 per month, 69% increase in user sessions to some 22,000 per month and 68% increase in page views to 72,000 per month. Of note, for all-important remarketing purposes, the current list of RaleighNow registered users has grown 56% to almost 5,600.

CaryNow!
• Introduced Carynow.com as the official web site for Cary event information in partnership with the Town of Cary, Cary Chamber of Commerce and the Koka Booth Amphitheatre.

Summer Rocks
• Partnered with ALLTEL Pavilion, RBC Center, Koka Booth Amphitheatre, NC Museum of Art's Park Theater, City of Raleigh's Alive After Five, Budweiser Downtown Live and Ticketmaster on Summer Rocks promotion to help further define the Raleigh and Cary areas as one of the region's top live music destinations. Last year, the venues hosted 111 events with a combined attendance of 628,072 – an additional boost to the local economy demonstrating the value of live music to our community.

Matisse / Picasso
• Partnered with the North Carolina Museum of Art to promote the three-month Matisse, Picasso and the School of Paris exhibition via a converged marketing approach utilizing direct mail, geo-targeted and interest-based email, magazine/radio/television/newspaper advertising, public relations and more.
• The exhibition exceeded attendance projections by 25% to almost 125,000 – making it the museum's second-most popular exhibition ever – and generated some $9.5 million in economic impact on the Raleigh area. The Bureau's marketing efforts indicated that 19% of the people in Charlotte and 29% of the people in the Triad heard about the Matisse/Picasso exhibition.
• The dedicated Matisse/Picasso pages on the VisitRaleigh.com web site generated some 31,000 page views and 6% of online users attended the exhibition. An online coop campaign featured 15 partners reaching more than 3.3 million interest-based and geo-targeted consumers and generated almost 40,000 total click-thrus (goal of 15,200) and 1,790 contest registrations (goal of 1,600) as the open rate on the email portion of the campaign was 6% (twice the national average of 3%) and the overall open rate was five times the national average.
• In all, Bureau significantly extended the marketing reach with $21,790 of cooperative ad sales and more than $80,000 of in-kind media support.
• The public relations efforts generated more than 300 clips and reached more than 32 million in circulation in titles like New York Daily News, MeetingsSouth, Group Travel Leader, Miami Herald, The Virginian-Pilot, Chicago Sun Times, Detroit News, Chattanooga Times & Free Press, The State in Columbia, Orlando Sentinel, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Louisville Courier-Journal and Southern Living.

Radio
• Extended the marketing reach and coordinated statewide radio promotions by leveraging $27,000 in hotel stays, event tickets and restaurant gift certificates in exchange for over 3,000 live or on-air mentions on 26 NC stations for a media trade value of $238,000 (almost doubled the paid schedule for traditional media).

Partnership Marketing

Overall Efforts
• Partnership marketing efforts generated more than $458,445 in financial and in-kind media support for GRCVB leisure programs, exceeding financial goals by 115% and total partnership goals by 29%.

• Established a task force and plan for the statewide support and building of a new State Visitor Center.

Time Warner Cable/NCACVB Media Partnership
• Served as Marketing and Communications Co-Chair of the North Carolina Association of Convention and Visitors Bureau (NCACVB) and continued to play a primary role in securing a total of $2 million FY in-kind media support from Time Warner Cable on behalf of NCACVB. Since its launch in 2003, this partnership has generated over $5 million dollars in media value and run over 170,000 public service announcements about instate travel.

Year of Craft
• Assisted with securing a $15,000 grant from the NC Arts Council for the NC Association of Convention and Visitor Bureaus to promote 2005 craft events and festivals in conjunction with the Year of the Craft Celebration as proclaimed by Governor Easley.

What's Ahead
• The Raleigh area continues to be defined as one of the region's top cultural destinations. Based on the cooperative marketing successes of Festival Rodin, Titanic Exhibition, and now the Matisse Picasso Exhibition, there will be development plans for marketing the Monet Exhibition coming to the NC Museum of Art in late 2006. This acclaimed exhibition will only be on display in San Francisco, Denver and Raleigh further establishing our regional cultural destination identity. Other notable museum exhibitions coming to Raleigh include the Jane Goodall Exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, The Potter's Eye at the North Carolina Museum of Art, and The Enemy Within at Exploris.

• In its ongoing efforts to generate more web site traffic for RaleighNow, the Bureau has engaged its internet marketing partner USDM.net to execute some robust search engine optimization and listing and linking strategies for this resource. The end result should be more visitation and exposure for all the partners.

• In recognition of the 30th anniversary of Lazy Daze Arts and Craft Festival and as winner of the Regional Event of the Year by the NC and SC Festival and Events Association, the Town of Cary plans to further grow this as a signature event and renowned arts and crafts festival expanding its event offerings to two days. The GRCVB will assist with its marketing and public relations efforts to position this as the must see arts and crafts festival of the year.

• Online booking for CVBs is taking a different direction in the near future. CVBs will position themselves as the "online marketing partner" for hotels and measure the exposure of their hotel partners to the leisure traveler, not just realized bookings. CVBs will recognize the web visitors who looked at the booking page and clicked through to hotel partners or used the booking engine to price rooms online.

• Best practices metrics for future online booking from a CVB web site will include visits to the booking page, number of click-thrus and the percentage of the booking page traffic clicking through to hotels, and number of room nights priced in the booking engine.

• The GRCVB will be researching and testing new direct booking products that track and measure click thrus to hotel sites and the direct booking engine to give an accurate measure of the results for hotel partners. This tracking will result in a projected number of room night opportunities (or affected room nights) presented to hotels.

• In FY 05-06, we will continue offering TGIF as a leisure partnership marketing opportunity for the hospitality community. Most front office and reservation personnel are now familiar with the promotion and have recall upon visitor inquiry. However, a Destination Online Booking Alliance task force will be formed this coming FY to look into how this and all future promotions should be revised to accommodate the tracking, pricing and selling challenges with the need to develop inclusive packages for museum exhibitions including the Monet Exhibition in 2006.

• With the VisitRaleigh website accounting for more than 98 percent of the GRCVB's visitor inquiries, the FY technology strategic plan calls for new web site development experienced based and production and ongoing media and marketing programs. Search engine rankings and positioning, strategic listing and linking placements, direct eMail promotions, incentive programs with other web sites, and monthly traffic analysis will encompass the FY scope of work.

• As the GRCVB Board members and The Conference Table members embark on a new strategic vision, this department will assist with the implementation of tactics as outlined for community advocacy, developing product and infrastructure that contributes to the Raleigh area's unique destination identity, and establishing a plan for the state wide support and building of a new State Visitor/Welcome Center.

• Our declining advertising budget and inability to use GRCVB funds to support media partnerships continues to affect the advertising reach and frequency of leisure promotions and the leveraging of trade/cash advertising space and time. Based on a flat marketing budget, the FY 05-06 efforts will opt for less traditional print advertising and more cooperative marketing programs, cross promotion partnerships, media added value, online and in-kind media partnership opportunities.