FEBRUARY 2012 ADVERTISING/MARKETING ACTIVITIES EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

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1 FEBRUARY 2012 ADVERTISING/MARKETING ACTIVITIES EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Overview: Each year the Town of Taos Marketing and PR Department completes a marketing strategic plan with the staff of Taos marketing consultant (Griffin & Associates). This preparation includes extensive community commentary and input before this plan is finalized. In it, specific, strategic direction is detailed for all promotional activity, and the current version is available for review on an ongoing basis. The February 2012 Report from Griffin & Associates: February marketing and promotion efforts were centered on three themes: 1) Continuing to promote the incredible ski season and upcoming Spring Breaks 2) Promoting the 2012 Remarkable Women of Taos program 3) Promoting spring activities and events in Taos The marketing and promotion efforts continued in February to keep the momentum strong during throughout the winter and moving into spring. We worked on writing and submitting new grants (Hancock, Santa Fe Community Foundation and NM Community Foundation), invited regional media to the Remarkable Women of Taos kickoff event, worked on a Facebook sweepstakes, printed Taos-specific promotional products for sale at the Visitors Centers, designed and hung banners along Paseo del Pueblo Norte and around the Plaza, set up a Pinterest account, and continued our ongoing advertising, social media and public relations outreach. We also continued updating our Destination Management Pages on Trip Advisor both under Taos, NM and Taos County, NM. According to Trip Advisor staff, both pages are performing well and better than many other regions. PUBLIC RELATIONS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: In February, our PR remained steady. Our 9 news releases generated over 1,000 mentions of Taos (many about the US Forest Service and the weather. However several hundred, promoted tourism). The following are the totals: Taos Marketing & PR Work Page 1

2 TOTALS FOR February 2012 Impression s Page Views (where applicable) Value PR Value Newspape r 3,652,899 15,022,202 $48, $486, Magazine 5,564 66,284 $56 $560 Broadcast 64,758,078 $3,692 $36,920 Online 5,289,075,097 $12,289, $122,893, Totals Impressions Value PR Value 68,416,541 5,304,163,583 $12,341,729 $123,417,290 Some of our major media results follow: ABC News Online with over 14 million viewers regarding the Agnes Martin exhibit The Associated Press with over 2 million readers regarding Kenneth Price The Atlanta Journal-Constitution online with over 1.8 million readers on the Agnes Martin exhibit CBS News online with over 6.6 million viewers on the Agnes Martin exhibit Dallas Morning News online with over 1 million readers on NM Restaurant Weed Denver Post online with over 2.2 million readers on the Agnes Martin exhibit Houston Chronicle online with over 2.4 million readers on Spring Break skiing Huffington Post with over 31 million readers on Kenneth Price Lonely Planet with over 1.2 million readers on a road trip to Taos Miami Herald online with over 1.3 million readers on Kenneth Price MSNBC.com with over 33 million viewers on the new Taos Road Marker honoring Virginia T. Romero New York Times online with over 16 million readers on the Agnes Martin exhibit Newsday online with over 1.4 million readers on the Agnes Martin exhibit NPR online with over 3 million viewers/listeners on Kenneth Price Yahoo.com with over 54 million viewers on Kenneth Price We also continued with our regular monthly activities of coordinating media familiarization trips, monitoring online news clips, coordinating calendar updates, distributing hi-resolution photos and responding to other media requests, and microblogging. Taos Marketing & PR Work Page 2

3 See Appendix One for News Releases & Complete Media Report. The monthly report identifies key bulleted highlights from the Taos Marketing Plan. This section shows some weighted percentages to demonstrate where promotional emphasis is applied to maximize Taos traveler education: 1) 95% of all Taos tourism promotion must include an Internet, online presence for Taos. This is so given that 80% of all potential tourists complete their travel research, if not their bookings, online. Therefore, this is a major component of all marketing, advertising and public relations (media) activity. 2) 85% of Taos tourism promotional activity is leveraged through free media coverage for Taos. With limited budgets, and Taos proven aptitude for generating interesting media angles for earned coverage, this is the element leveraged to increase Taos positive exposure for travelers. It is also where Taos has a competitive advantage when compared to other outdoor recreation and art/culture/heritage destinations in the U.S. It is part of Taos annual theme for tourism promotion a way to leverage media attention/coverage, and include everyone in the Taos area who would like to participate. 3) The other heavy-duty competitive advantage for Taos one that can be leveraged online is in the area of social (new) media. Such efforts via TripAdvisor and other travel recommendation web sites, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, Twitter, Yelp, etc., are worked daily by Taos marketing representatives and members of the community are constantly encouraged to do the same and assist in this major Taos promotional focus. This month, we added the latest online site Pinterest to the sites we update weekly. 4) Given limited budgets, reduced staff, and reduced international travel, the State of New Mexico Department of Tourism has wisely taken the lead in focusing traveler education/promotion within the U.S. for the foreseeable future. Therefore, international outreach is via the Internet and earned media/public relations coverage not paid advertising. Taos is doing the same, with a further emphasis on the drive-circle states surrounding New Mexico, in-state New Mexico travel, and specific easy-fly zones with stable economics and the psychographics that appeal to Taos, and vice versa. These include but are not exclusively limited to Southern California and New York. 5) Events, activities and calendar listings are also of importance for placement to maximize Taos promotion. Monthly targets include entities (in print and online) such as the State of New Mexico tourism website, Sunset magazine, New Mexico magazine, Santa Fe s tourism sites/santa Fean magazine, and Taos own calendars at Note: New Mexico magazine, as a State run entity, editorially covers Taos regularly and includes a number of its calendar listings. However, advertising in it is not only expensive, but its subscriber list/circulation is primarily to second-home owners in New Mexico, to visitors already in New Mexico, and to others who have previously fallen in love with what New Mexico offers. Taos promotional efforts of course are to a certain extent focused on reinforcing the area s existing travel audience, but more than ever efforts must emphasize educating new, younger and expanded Taos Marketing & PR Work Page 3

4 audiences about Why Taos? Much of Taos promotion is therefore focused on outreach venues/mechanisms that are not frequently viewed by locals Taos efforts are focused out there with new audiences, rather than here on what we regularly see and read. 6) Recent traveler studies have shown that new audiences need to be educated about what there is to do in New Mexico (and Taos) to improve and expand our travel attraction. Therefore, much effort this year is focused on this activity, including the producing of new sample itineraries specific to the Taos psychographic, in addition to working with tour operators and group travel targets. Our new travel product is available on in addition to the redesign of the site to better serve Taos travel customers. MARKETING AND ADVERTISING EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The Taos Marketing Objectives for FY12 are: Increase occupancy levels, lodgers tax and NM Gross Receipts tax by 2% as measured using the Town of Taos lodging reports, lodgers tax reports and GRT reports. These numbers are recession adjusted. October lodgers tax and GRT results will be available in December. Through January, Lodgers tax for FY12 was down 4.81% over 2010, but even with the decline, the money collected is 4.9% above what was budgeted for the fiscal year. Increase earned media by 5% with at least 10 stories placed in A media (major media with circulations, viewership or online audiences of at least 500,000). We have already exceeded that goal with major exposure including The Today Show, USA Today, MSNBC, the New York Times, the LA Times, Sunset Magazine and many more. Increase walk-in traffic to the visitor s center and page views on the tourism websites/digital footprints by at least 5%. Foot traffic into the visitors center continues to remain steady. The Visitors Center, under the leadership of Cathy Ann Connelly, continued expanded sales results. In February 3,570 people came to the center up from 840 in Create brand differentiation by positioning and collaborating with regional partners and the State of New Mexico. The major initiative we launched in 2012 is the Remarkable Women of Taos and Northern New Mexico program, which will officially launch on March 22. We sent out news releases on the program in February, which were picked up by major national and regional media venues. We also designed an ad for Madden Pre-Press, a co-op program through the NM Tourism Department, which places ads in print publications including the Houston Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News, the Denver Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Diego Union Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle, among others; a co-op Taos Marketing & PR Work Page 4

5 ad for Sunset Magazine with the Taos Inn, Ojo Caliente and the Bavarian; and a print and online ad with Texas Monthly. The ads will begin running in March. Finally, we finalized a movie and radio schedule to run in the May/June timeframe in Denver, Colorado Springs and Albuquerque. OTHER RESULTS Web site traffic remained steady and increasing in February. Unique visitors to taos.org were over 16,000 up from 12,000 in February Taosexpress.com also showed steady traffic with 2,500 visitors in February 2012, up from 2,200 in Our two Trip Advisor Destination Management Pages continue to drive traffic, averaging over 2,600 visitors per month. We continued our bi-weekly Get Out of Town to subscribers within a 600-mile drive radius and our monthly e-newsletter to our database of over 1 million subscribers. See Appendix Two for our February web hits report. And Appendix Three for our sample ads and newsletters. Taos Marketing & PR Work Page 5