Have you ever wondered about the best way to utilize digital media to promote an event? How do you optimize and integrate your website, social media, digital and/or mobile advertising?
We recently implemented a strategic digital media campaign using all of these options for the South’s standout food and wine event hosted annually at our client, Grand Boulevard, in Miramar Beach, FL. Let us explain….
Grand Boulevard, a $500 million lifestyle town center (and a client since 2000), approached us to strategize and execute a 7-month digital campaign to promote its flagship charity event, South Walton Beaches Wine & Food Festival. This festival is the premier wine and food event in the Southeast benefiting Destin Charity Wine Auction Foundation and we are so lucky our client is the venue. Each year we market the event and have a blast doing it (and attending)!
Situation
#SoWalWine offers over 800 wines, celebrity winemakers, chefs, craft beer brewmasters, and special guests plus performances by Nashville singer/songwriters and first-class wine and food seminars led by celebrities and winemakers themselves.
This year’s campaign goals were to drive ticket sales, increase website traffic, mobile, digital and social advertising and curated social media as well as email marketing. At a glance, the campaign achieved:
- 60% increase in overall website traffic
- 16% increase in ticket sales from 2017-2018 resulting in a sold-out event and a $20,000 charitable donation
- 15% increase in social media followers resulting in 15,200 net followers
- 3,830,000 Impressions
- Nearly 60,000 Engagements
Solution
We took an omnichannel
approach from start to finish and achieved these amazing results by implementing a very strategic digital media campaign through:
- Mobile advertising based on proximity, behavioral and retargeting campaigns strategically planned to capture and convert new audiences attending similar events in the top 15 locations of historical ticket purchasers
- Digital advertising utilizing programmatic display campaigns based on behavioral, contextual and remarketing parameters as well as site direct with pre-established media partnerships
- Social media advertising through diverse Facebook and Instagram placements and strategically targeted to followers, remarketing, lookalike and custom audiences
- Curated social media through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram postings centered on event characteristics and ticket sales including targeted outreach with festival vendors, entertainment, sponsors and attendees
- Email marketing distributing a series of email messages from previous attendees and ticket purchasers as well as acquired subscribers from website traffic
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Results
Here’s a r
eview of our results from this integrated, highly strategic campaign:Website Performance
- 28,500 Sessions
- 46,330 Pageviews
- 84% New Users
Mobile Advertising
- 1,600,000 Impressions
- 10,230 Engagements
Digital Advertising
- 960,600 Impressions
- 830 Engagements
Social Advertising
- 740,500 Impressions
- 20,000 Engagements
Curated Social Media
- 16% Growth in Followers
- 360,000 Impressions
- 26,700 Engagements
Email Marketing
- 2,500 Recipients
- 1,600 Unique Opens
- 500 Clicks to the Website
The best feedback... our client said “We have never had this much money in the bank this early. This is the best year of sales we’ve ever had and we believe it’s because of the digital strategy.”
Better yet... the all-in budget for this campaign was only $30,000.
And even better yet… We’re able to use all of the device IDs we captured last year for the 2019 festival campaign, requiring a lower advertising investment!
So if your goal is to sell out an event on a minimal investment, improve the bottom line year over year, and “have more money in the bank early on”, give us a call and let’s get the best plan in place for you.
Email Vince to learn more and consider joining us at sowalwine.com next year!