Digital Marketing Program

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VISIT STOCKTON — HERMES AWARD ENTRY — PAGE - 1 of 4 PREPARED BY: JENNY ROSE — DIRECTOR OF CLIENT SERVICES

HERMES AWARD ENTRY

Digital Marketing Program Visit Stockton

Agency Representative

Jenny Rose director of client services

NOTICE OF CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION “Confidential Information” shall mean all information disclosed under this agreement, including, without limitation: 1. Any data or information that is competitively sensitive material, and not generally known to the public, including, but not limited to, information relating to product plans, business plans, marketing & advertising strategies, finance, general operations and methodologies, customer relationships, vendor relationships, customer profiles, sales estimates, customers and clients of any of the foregoing; 2. All confidential or proprietary concepts, documentation, reports, data, specifications, computer software, source code, knowhow, trade secrets, whether or not patentable or copyrightable. © Copyright 2015 Tempest Interactive Media—all rights reserved. If there are any concerns, questions, or issues regarding Confidential Information, please contact Tempest directly.

Tempest Interactive Media 2509 N. Campbell #23 Tucson, AZ 85719 Office: 800-274-8774 Fax: 800-274-8775

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PROJECT OVERVIEW

Redefining Visit Stockton’s Digital Marketing Program One of California’s fastest-growing communities, Stockton is a dynamic, multicultural community with a revitalized downtown and vibrant waterfront that offers a unique destination to leisure and event travelers alike. In October of 2013, Visit Stockton decided to reimagine its online marketing platform to provide a more user-friendly interface that provides comprehensive travel information to its leisure and special event traveler audience. MARKETING OBJECTIVES

Visit Stockton wanted to utilize responsive design and server side detection technology to consolidate Visit Stockton’s multiple web publishers into a single platform that would provide a myriad of benefits to the Visit Stockton team: •

Improved efficiencies in maintaining web copy

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A future-proof user interface that would quickly adapt to the viewing environment of individual site visitors

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A content distribution system that would consolidate Stockton’s event calendar into a single entity, allowing the Visit Stockton team to leverage its events calendar more effectively in ongoing marketing for the region

Tempest Interactive Media 2509 N. Campbell #23 Tucson, AZ 85719 Office: 800-274-8774 Fax: 800-274-8775

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Build awareness for Stockton as a premier California destination for both leisure and events-driven travelers

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Increase traffic to the website and drive traffic to VisitStockton.org

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Expose new online visitors to VisitStockton.org and to the numerous features of the site

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Integrate social media content throughout the new website

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Build brand awareness of Stockton as an exciting destination for leisure travel and special events

TARGET AUDIENCE

Target audiences for the Visit Stockton website include local residents in the greater Stockton area, national and international leisure travelers and special event travelers throughout the United States who use the internet and search engines to learn about Stockton-related travel, attractions, and special event space. RESEARCH, PLANNING, AND IMPLEMENTATION

Visit Stockton partnered with Tempest Interactive Media to create and manage the web design, development, and implementation process, along with strategizing and executing an online digital marketing program postlaunch. The project kicked off with a creative brief and intiial requirements gathering meeting between Visit Stockton and Tempest Interactive Media. During this meeting, the overall design and messaging themes as well as overall marketing objectives were defined. Tempest prepared initial website design comps along with the site’s navigation and information architecture and both were delivered to Visit Stockton for approval. After a brief revision

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period design comps were approved and the development of the site began.

family-friendly destination for a wide variety of events and things to do, and defines Visit Stockton as a trusted resource for planning travel in the area. The website features engaging user interface features on all webenabled devices, and enhances the Visit Stockton leisure travel and meeting planner database by encouraging opt-ins through newsletter signups, guide requests, and event calendar submissions.

Prior to the launch of the new website on March 1, 2014, the Tempest digital marketing team thoroughly audited the existing digital marketing programs promoting Visit Stockton online. All organic optimizations on the old site were carefully transferred to the new site, including title tags, meta description tags, and internal links cross-promoting pages throughout the website. Tempest also utilized 301 redirects to ensure all of the organic equity built up in the old www.VisitStockton.org was fully and seamlessly transitioned to the new site. Once the new website launched, the Tempest digital marketing team thoroughly reviewed and audited the paid search program to identify areas in which Visit Stockton’s advertising budget could yield a higher return on investment. One of the first issues Tempest was able to identify was an attribution error within the paid search program’s analytics configuration, which was causing some traffic to be tracked as direct traffic. This not only led to incorrect reporting, but also limited the ability to fully understand the dynamics of the paid search program’s performance. MESSAGE

The new website and integrated interactive marketing campaign showcases Stockton as a

Tempest Interactive Media 2509 N. Campbell #23 Tucson, AZ 85719 Office: 800-274-8774 Fax: 800-274-8775

RESULTS

While performance in organic search remained uninterrupted through the transition to the new website, there were substantial opportunities to leverage the new www.VisitStockton.org to capture even more visibility through organic search. Through a variety of organic search initiatives, multiple facets of Visit Stockton’s optimization were improved both on-site and off. As the impact of these initiatives began taking hold in the search results, Visit Stockton saw improved performance in organic rankings for the website, as well as traffic increases that continue to build momentum: •

Visits from organic search increased 219 percent

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Total visits to the site increased 202 percent year-over-year

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New users captured by the site increased 179 percent

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Pageviews on the site increased 136 percent

These improvements in Visit Stockton’s digital marketing campaign have profound impacts on the website as a whole. By carefully auditing the keywords and campaign structure within the paid search account, Tempest was able to create substantial efficiencies in the paid search account, leading to the following results: •

Visits from paid search increased 1,000 percent

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Impressions generated by the campaign increased 211 percent

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Clicks increased 34 percent

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Overall cost for the campaign remained consistent with 2013 levels.

A combination of a more efficient, relevant campaign and improved ad copy is engaging users, leading to a 208 percent increase in new users captured via PPC.

Tempest Interactive Media 2509 N. Campbell #23 Tucson, AZ 85719 Office: 800-274-8774 Fax: 800-274-8775