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Over the past year, Visit Oxford has undergone a remarkable transformation through a newly developed integrated marketing and messaging campaign focused on increasing brand awareness, website traffic, and visitor engagement. The “A Place to…Your Story” campaign, developed from audience and geolocation insights, highlights Oxford’s brand propositions, targeting key personas: Road Trippers, Nostalgia, Opportunity Seekers, and Ole Miss Alumni. We established key business objectives focusing on growth/retention of core markets and extending visitation share of longer length of stay markets.
Approach
We recognized the need to not only retain but to expand our visitor reach from out-of-state markets. To achieve our goals, we developed a robust digital marketing plan using a combination of digital-focused buys to push leisure messaging in these markets. Utilizing our data resources, we identified our top primary markets and an emerging market to target, as well as print placement in niche publications, such as Small Market Meetings to reach the meetings and convention audience.
Our overall media strategy varied based on the markets and audiences within. With high-level brand awareness in our core drive markets, our efforts were directed to drive conversions. Our expanded and emerging markets included efforts to drive brand awareness and media tactics to ensure Oxford was on the radar for growth in key opportunity markets.
By continuously measuring key metrics like total impressions, clicks, page views, and average time on site, we optimized the campaign’s effectiveness to increase awareness, engagement, and visitation. We ultimately achieved significant increases in social engagement, hotel occupancy, and overall visitor spending.
RESULTS
The “A Place to……..Your Story” campaign achieved outstanding results, meeting our objectives of increasing brand awareness, engagement, and visitation.
Aside from the typical marketing metrics, we look to see if our marketing strategy is successful. We also keep a close eye on the economic impact of our campaigns and the numbers speak for themselves. With an 18% increase in hotel demand and a 7.2% rise in the average daily rate, the community of Oxford saw a 26% increase in revenue, correlating with Visit Oxford’s goal to boost visitation and economic impact.
One of our primary objectives was to grow Oxford’s markets and after analyzing year-over-year comparisons, we saw an increase across visitor numbers, visit nights, and estimated visitor spending potential across our top 5 primary out-of-state markets, further highlighting the success of this campaign.
MEDIA
60M Impressions
400,000 Clicks
700,000 Video Views
SOCIAL MEDIA REACH
1.74m Increase in Facebook Reach
700,000 Increase in Instagram Reach
160,000 Increase in Instagram Reel Views
1.3m Increase in Tiktok Views
WEBSITE METRICS
443% Increase in Web Users Residing Outside MS
144% Increase in Organic Engagement
6.38% Increase in Session Duration
CREATIVE STRATEGY
Our strategy for the “A Place to…….Your Story” campaign differentiates Oxford from other Mississippi destinations by acknowledging that the stories of Oxford are being written between the lines of the traditions residents hold and the bright horizon they’re marching towards. There’s history written on every corner, moments captured in every trophy, and a character glowing behind every welcoming smile. Through this new campaign, we invite target audiences to not sit still in Oxford but to come walk the streets rich in history, to dance to the music heard throughout the town, to move to the edge of their seat as the game clock winds down, and to find a story they can’t wait to make their own.
We conducted a three-day video and photo shoot, building new and intentional assets to best connect with our audiences while aligning with established marketing pillars: Literary, History, Arts, Culinary, Nightlife, and the University of Mississippi.
MEDIA STRATEGY
We developed a robust digital media plan designed to maximize reach, engagement, and visitor conversion. We partnered with prominent platforms such as Google, Meta, TikTok, and MobileFuse to create a diversified and robust digital marketing strategy.
We selected these platforms and tactics to leverage our extensive reach and precise targeting capabilities. Google and Meta were pivotal for search and social media marketing, allowing us to capture intent-driven audiences and foster engagement through visually appealing content. TikTok was chosen to tap into younger demographics with creative, short-form video content that resonates with their browsing habits, and MobileFuse provides advanced programmatic advertising solutions, enabling us to deliver personalized and timely ads to our target audiences across various digital touchpoints.
Using a mix of these media tactics, we ensured a broad yet targeted approach, maximizing our exposure while tailoring our messaging to align with audience interests and behaviors. This strategic combination of platforms allowed us to maintain consistent brand awareness, drive engagement, and boost visitation, ultimately achieving our campaign objectives.
INNOVATION FOCUSED
Our digital-first media approach leverages tactics like rich media to maximize reach and engagement. By integrating dynamic content across high-performing channels and utilizing geo-targeting technologies like MobileFuse, we ensure our messages resonate deeply with our key demographics.
The ads shown are examples of the rich media expandable. The banner cycles through the five “A Place to…” frames, the ad expands to full screen, handwritten word animates drawing into place as typewritten paper with the copy slides up from the typewriter. After a few moments, the typed paper slides up out of the typewriter and off screen. It is replaced by the next sheet of paper while a new focus word is written in.
THIS CAMPAIGN WON TWO AWARDS IN 2024!
2024 STS Shining Example Awards: Best Marketing Award, Budget of $100,000-$499,999
2024 MS Governor’s Conference on Tourism: Best Digital Marketing Award
