Introduction
VISIT FLORIDA is a destination marketing organization (DMO) focused primarily on driving visitation to the state of Florida and increasing economic impact. As a highly sought after travel destination and one of the most well-known domestic and international destinations globally, Florida continues to set record-breaking visitation numbers. The long-term digital marketing partnership between Sojern and VISIT FLORIDA has been pivotal in boosting tourism and delivering economic impact.
Objectives
Digital marketing is the foundation of VISIT FLORIDA’s advertising strategy, as it allows them to be data-driven, flexible, and optimizable. They sought a digital marketing partner who specialized in travel data to reach travel intenders who were either looking to visit Florida or a competing destination to get in front of them with messaging about Florida to inspire them to visit and ultimately, drive economic impact to the state.
As a state with unique needs throughout 67 counties, it was critical to get access to the right data and insights with a partner who didn’t deliver a one-size-fits-all approach. They wanted to turn the dial up or down as necessary for their DMO partners across the state to drive the right visitation at the right time, and help them reach their key audience segments.
Detailed reporting was imperative for an effective partnership, as the team needed very granular information on their audience to understand what messages were resonating, who was engaging, and who was visiting Florida and its destinations. They also needed good footfall measurement as they were focused on driving dispersion throughout the state.
“Sojern has always proven to be a successful partner. They provide insights that we may not otherwise see, and without them we have a hole in our reporting and analytics. They help us get to a granular level of our consumer to understand the intricacies that help us drive visitation and position ourselves as a unique destination, and to have that one-to-one personal connection through our messaging. They are an absolute necessity for our media and build the foundation of our campaigns, including our evergreen, always on campaigns. My take as CMO at VISIT FLORIDA: Sojern is a must. They are an exceptional partner and truly have our best interests at heart. They're not looking to sell media for the sake of it, they plug in what works best for our organization. I can’t say enough about Sojern and how honored we are to work with them as a valued partner.”
Solution
“Our partnership started with Sojern being just another programmatic media vendor in our overall media strategy. As time went on, we had more in-depth conversations with the team and discovered all of the value they bring to us. We began utilizing them more and we saw better and better results,” said Summer Gonzalez-Mendez, senior manager of paid media at VISIT FLORIDA.
Today, the partnership is focused on a multichannel digital advertising strategy on display, native, video, CTV, and social, running many different campaigns and media tactics throughout the year, which all deliver strong performance. The strategy is a full-funnel approach for all of VISIT FLORIDA’s media, activating tactics to drive awareness down to conversions. The team consistently tests new solutions with Sojern as soon as they become available which helps them stay ahead of the curve in the travel marketing space.
“Everything Sojern has to offer, we want to buy into. We love being a test partner. We recently started running social media campaigns with Sojern and are seeing excellent results,” Gonzalez-Mendez said. “We include Sojern in every single campaign that we run throughout the year, and we’ve tapped them for almost all of our international campaigns. Sojern is probably our first and foremost go-to media partner, and they are very differentiated from other programmatic media vendors.”
Sojern delivers monthly economic impact reporting to the VISIT FLORIDA team that includes footfall attribution. Using this granular reporting, VISIT FLORIDA can report attributable economic impact results to their team, committees, board of directors, and their stakeholders throughout the state.
“When you work with a partner like Sojern that can show the passenger count of visitors coming to Florida and where they're going in Florida—because a big goal of ours is dispersing throughout the state—we're able to take that to our destination partners to show them how we are driving the economy in their specific destination throughout the year, and leaning into support their need periods. Florida has a lot of peak and off seasons, and a partner like Sojern allows us to plug the holes throughout the year depending on seasonality and needs from our DMO partners,” Brett Laiken, CMO of VISIT FLORIDA said.
A recent campaign that ran from October 16, 2023 to March 31, 2024 focused on targeting domestic travelers seeking sunny destinations in the winter. The campaign goals were centered on driving searches and bookings, in addition to website engagement. The campaign was very successful, resulting in $108,888,604 in estimated economic impact from online bookings, a 258 to 1 ROI, 268,594 confirmed travelers (157,142 foot traffic visits and 111,452 online bookings), and 76,287 hotel night stays.
About the Partnership
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“Sojern has always proven to be a successful partner. They provide insights that we may not otherwise see, and without them we have a hole in our reporting and analytics. They help us get to a granular level of our consumer to understand the intricacies that help us drive visitation and position ourselves as a unique destination, and to have that one-to-one personal connection through our messaging. They are an absolute necessity for our media and build the foundation of our campaigns, including our evergreen, always on campaigns. My take as CMO at VISIT FLORIDA: Sojern is a must. They are an exceptional partner and truly have our best interests at heart. They're not looking to sell media for the sake of it, they plug in what works best for our organization. I can’t say enough about Sojern and how honored we are to work with them as a valued partner.”
