Using Social Strategy to Increase Visitation
Social Media Campaign
In 2014, we became the agency of record for a 14,000-foot mountain with a geography-defying highway that winds all the way to its summit. We pitched them on embracing a new marketing plan with a strong emphasis on social media. Today, this site is the most visited mountaintop in North America.
Rebuilding the Brand
We started by rebuilding the brand from scratch, basing our new direction on the destination’s wholly unique marriage of road and mountain: the inaccessible with the accessible, the epic grandeur with Sunday-drive convenience.
We built a social media strategy and a campaign that turned a rural highway into a bucket-list experience. Our client set a goal to double Facebook followers by the end of the year. By the end of our first year on the campaign, we more than quadrupled the mountain’s follower count. With Instagram we did even better. And by the end of our first year, we’d set an all-time visitation record on the mountain.
Every year that followed, we set a new all-time visitation record. In our fifth year on the campaign, we doubled the record set the year the campaign launched.
Facebook Video Content
Instagram Video Content
With the new brand, we implemented a new media strategy with a strong emphasis on digital and social media targeted to reach a younger audience. Through the power of social media campaigns, this site shed its image of being solely for “retirees in RVs” and became an exciting road trip destination for millennials. We continued to boost relevant posts and optimize for conversions. Our top-performing posts achieved a $0.0083 cost per engagement and $1.66 cost per follower gained.
A New Challenge
Each year we continued to dramatically grow our social media reach, engagement, and following in each platform. And each year we set a new record in total visitors to the mountain. In 2019, we tackled our greatest challenge yet: how to retain attendance rates while the mountain underwent major closures for the construction of a brand-new summit house.
The renovation meant the parking lot on the summit was going to be closed, and the primary perk of visiting this peak – driving your own way to the top – was no longer an option.
Instead of permitting visitors to drive to the top, the destination would offer a shuttle service. It was a bug the client challenged us to turn into a feature.
We launched an interim social campaign over the summer and fall that did just that. Our client set a lofty goal of 400,000 visitors for the year of the partial closure, and with our “Shuttle Launch” campaign we rocketed past that goal to 592,000 visitors.
