Insights into Travel Oregon's tourism marketing campaign

Thrilled to chat with Mo Sheriffdeen from The Oregon Tourism Commission (Travel Oregon) about their latest tourism marketing campaign the '7 Wonders of Oregon'. Mo Sheriffdeen the man in charge of Digital Brand Strategy & Publishing at Travel Oregon and we chat about this campaign as well as general marketing and DMO thoughts.

Mo starts off chatting a little about the campaign and said that although the campaign was developed to inspire people to visit these hero places in Oregon "The Wonders were essentially a framework for exploration of the entire state..."

A range of channels/tools were used throughout the campaign including TV, online video, paid media, social media, website, PR.

From about the 5 minute mark we talk about why social media is now the norm when developing tourism marketing campaigns "Social media is just a natural place to share those (travel) experiences."

The call to action even on TV used the hashtag #TravelOregon, Instagram was a key tool throughout the campaign.

From the 10 minute mark we talk about using and working with social influencers. They worked with seven influencers one for each of the seven wonders - each influencer was paired with a local. Each influencer delivered about 8000 new Instagram followers to Travel Oregon. We talk about if working with social influencers fits into social media or PR or paid media.

From about the 14 minute mark we talk about measurements and metrics in relation to campaign. Mo shares specific campaign results and we chat about measurement in general.

Travel Oregon also layered in social listening and see if they could impact what people were talking about in relation to Oregon "we diversified the range of topics of what people were talking about..."

They then looked at how the campaign impacted web traffic.

Then they kept digging and looked at engagement, and tracked volume of travel guides ordered and saw significant increase and this is looked at as an intention to travel. They also worked with partners tracking specific '7 Wonders' packages sold. And finally, some of the Seven Wonders had gates that track number of visitors so that was also tracked and reported.

From about the 20 minute mark we discuss how industry was involved, included and kept informed about the campaign. Travel Oregon developed an industry playbook as well as key assets for industry to use (listen for more details).

We then talk about the next steps and what happens now that the campaign has finished. Mo chats about the next phase and some new and exciting additions and add ons - worth listening - super cool.

"It's really important to talk to those micro niches. It's not effective anymore to market in mass, to a mass population because everyone is different and we are looking for a personalised experience. So personalisation is huge in tourism, we are all looking for a place or a brand that talks to us as a real person and caters to our passion."

"That is why we focus on niches that make sense for Oregon, niches we have product for and that drive people to come here and experience Oregon."

From the 26 minute mark we talk about the role of the DMO and how that is changing - and managing the growth of tourism and making sure it is growing sustainability.

"It's not just about marketing, people have a lot of sources for information, people don't necessarily need to come to a DMO to get information...DMO's are still relevant especially as destination curators. We are free to focus on curating those experiences for our visitors. Create a space to bring the best of the destination together - being a management organisation verses a marketing organisation."

You can find out more about Travel Oregon here

http://traveloregon.com

https://www.facebook.com/TravelOregon

https://twitter.