Case Study
St. Lucia
The Challenge
In 2018, Saint Lucia Tourism Authority (SLTA) was looking for a strong branding presence in an effort to continually increase arrivals to the island year over year. They were looking for a complete overhaul of their marketing message, strategy and brand. Their main KPIs were increase arrivals year over year 8.5% and increase brand awareness for Saint Lucia.
The Solution
Our experienced marketing team at Mediagistic was able to outline a strong marketing and branding strategy to meet their goals which included an always on approach to marketing. We outlined a calendar of seasonal marketing creative and messaging to align with the booking windows of travelers. We researched buyer personas to really understand the target audience, we spoke with SLTA partners such as their social media partner and many members in the trade industry, their sales teams and public relations teams. We knew Saint Lucia’s visitors were not only in the US so we took time to understand their international markets as well.
Achieving
The Dream
The first step was to create a brand new world-class destination website with a strong user experience. We curated new content to really immerse the reader into the true beauty of the island. We outlined a new SEO strategy, included a multi-language option, created 360 videos of iconic locations, and finally ensured the site had an easy hotel aggregator for an easy user experience to find and book a place to stay. Lastly and arguably most importantly we ensured the new sites was mobile responsive since data showed that mobile usage was and still continues to dramatically increase year over year.
Once the new website was live, we launched our new marketing strategy which was a comprehensive multi-channel approach including traditional outlets as well as digital. Through our detailed research we were able to set a unique targeting audience to ensure the people we were reaching met the islands demographic of luxury travelers. This allowed us to maximize our marketing budget and virtually eliminate waste on unqualified traffic.
In our effort to eliminate waste, we leveraged our Adfluence® product on social media ads. Adfluence® is data trigged advertising which allowed us to target users in direct flight markets, pinpoint when flight prices were ideal and increase our presence in that market automatically. We were even able to layer on weather triggers in the direct flight markets to further ensure we hit users when the temperature is cold in their area, dreaming of a sunny destination, while promoting low flight prices in our ads.
The following year, Saint Lucia saw their highest number of arrivals in their history while surpassing the goal of 8.5% year over year increase! Of course, we couldn’t do it alone. Working with SLTAs partners was vital to this successful campaign and complete overhaul. We are proud to be a part of the impressive sales and marketing team for SLTA.
Results
Since the launch of the new website speaking to improved SEO strategy. Organic sessions increased 182%. Organic keywords ranking in the top 3 positions increased 139%. Organic keywords ranking in position 4-10 increased 69%. Speaks to the improved site design/UX, page speed, and SEO strategy, average organic session duration increased 12%. Pages viewed per organic session increased 28%. Organic bounce rate decreased 42%. Speaks to the success of our consistent and comprehensive marketing strategy. Branded search volume increased 94% from 2018.