Holidays at The Beach - Holiday/Winter Marketing Campaign 2021
The Myrtle Beach Area Chamber and Convention & Visitors Bureau used its Winter and Holiday campaign to showcase The Beach as a year-round destination. The campaign highlighted why the holidays are brighter in Myrtle Beach, including over 12-hundred restaurants, 11 new attractions, 10 top-notch theaters, 90 great golf courses, 8 piers for fishing, 7 malls for shopping, 60 miles of beaches, 5 Christmas light shows, 14 unique towns, 3 big parades, 2 state parks all of which can be enjoyed during a getaway to The Beach.
The focus of the campaign is a full-funnel approach that includes three phases: Inspire, Engage and Convert. Each phase has its own unique purpose, messaging, creative and individual media content. The mix of media included in this campaign is as follows:
Publisher/Content Partnerships
Local Cable TV
CTV
Audio/Podcasts
Performance Digital
OTAs
Paid Social
Paid Search
The campaign was also supported with additional marketing efforts that included public relations, email, and promotion via owned media channels. Plus, new in 2021 was the creation of a Holiday Guide. The Holiday Guide was a 48-page information booklet on the Grand Strand from Thanksgiving – New Years Day. It provided information on holiday shopping, shows, events, and more. 100,000 booklets were printed and distributed to sites including the Visit Myrtle Beach Welcome Centers and accommodation racks, as well as more than 200 regional store racks.
2021 Visit Myrtle Beach Holiday Guide
Winter Wonderland at The Beach
In addition to our Holiday/Winter Campaign, the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber and Convention & Visitors Bureau supported the marketing efforts of a new event, Winter Wonderland at The Beach. This inaugural event took over the Burroughs & Chapin Pavilion Park, transforming it into a magical wonderland filled with walkthrough holiday light displays and a real ice rink, sponsored by Southwest Airlines. The event was promoted regionally and in non-stop air markets.
Winter Wonderland at The Beach digital banner ad
Holiday/Winter Audiences
While the holiday/winter audiences were still focused on our Terminal Data personas of Beachin Boomers, Beach Sophisticates, Family Tides and Beach on a Budget the markets shifted to focus on drivable areas. This included an increased presence in NC, GA & FL. However, the campaign continued with national and regional investments where relevant. The specific local cable TV markets included the following:
Atlanta, GA
Augusta, GA
Baltimore, MD
Boston, MA-Manchester, NH
Charlotte, NC
Chicago, IL
Cleveland-Akron (Canton), OH
Greensboro-High Point-Winston Salem, NC
Hartford & New Haven, CT
Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, FL
New York, NY
Norfolk-Portsmouth-Newport News, VA
Orlando-Daytona Beach-Melbourne, FL
Philadelphia, PA
Pittsburgh, PA
Raleigh-Durham (Fayetteville), NC
Richmond-Petersburg, VA
Roanoke-Lynchburg, VA
Washington, DC (Hagerstown, MD)
Wilmington, NC
Markets, audiences, media channels and timing varied for each media and were chosen based on insights from various data sources including Visa Vue Cardholder accounts, KeyData Guest check-ins and website performance. Of course, these campaigns were all fluid and were optimized to maximize the results.
Following are highlights from each channel, as well as sample creative for the campaign:
Publisher/Content Partnerships
Run Length: November – January
The publisher network media made up 17% of the total mix for the holiday/winter campaign. The three platforms included Meredith, Thrillist, and Matador.
Meredith Corporation
The Meredith platform targeted contextual travel by utilizing custom articles to showcase the best of the Myrtle Beach area. The strategy was to use a publisher network with a full view of performance across different titles to test different content formats and topics and how they resonate. By continuing our partnerships from past seasonal campaigns, we are able to maintain frequency in titles that align with the family and affluent traveler audiences. This partnership included articles with three of Meredith’s main brands: Travel & Leisure, Food & Travel, and Food & Wine).
The following articles were published through Meredith:
Travel & Leisure:
Food & Travel:
Food & Wine:
Food & Wine: Where to Eat, Drink, Stay & Play in Myrtle Beach
Matador Network
The Matador platform has a larger male audience and an adventure travel coverage which diversifies the content portfolio. This platform used social pro branded articles to target family travelers, beach vacationers and road trippers. The Matador article was Myrtle Beach: Even in Winter, there’s no better place to be.
Thrillist
New to this season was the addition of Thrillist as a publisher network partner. The partnership with Thrillist was included to reach their affluent millennial audience with custom content to highlight the evergreen features of Myrtle Beach. 86% of their audience takes action towards recommendations on the site. The two custom articles were Winter is the Season to Explore Myrtle Beach with Fewer Visitors and inclusion in the article: 10 Destinations for a Winter Vacation.
Linear TV - Local Cable TV
Run Length: November -January (4 total weeks)
The holiday/winter campaign focused spend (13%) in local cable across target markets as holiday programming amped up and invested in both digital and linear placements to expand reach. The Terminal personas were used to inform network-specific network placements and included an estimated 10.5M impressions. The specific :30 commercial was created to show the lighter and more entertaining side of Myrtle Beach. It was designed to put a Myrtle Beach Twist on a holiday classic – “12 Days of Beachmas”.
CTV
Run Length: November – January
With 11.6M guaranteed views, the strategy behind increased investment in CTV was to drive efficient awareness in the key markets, by targeting an addressable audience with 1:1 targeting and implementing Terminal audiences with Samsung and Travel Desk. Samsung has both device mapping abilities and owned inventory to be able to reach consumers on multiple streaming services and track arrivals post-exposure through Arrivalist partnership. TravelDesk CTV was used to extend CTV as a focused channel for our multi-touch strategy and utilized our addressable audiences through a high-view and reach tactic.
Audio/Podcast
Making up 10% of the media mix audio was once again used to convey the message of our holiday/winter campaign. Pandora/Stitcher’s podcast libraries were used to align with content and audiences through host reads and audio spots. However, Slate was new to the audio mix. A partnership with Slatepodcasts was included to test their attribution and retargeting capabilities in the podcast space. Commercials and host reads were included on podcasts such as Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend and Dateline.
Performance Digital
The performance digital category made up the largest percentage of our media mix during this campaign at just under 19%. This was split between four platforms: TravelDesk, Yahoo, Sojern, and causal IQ. TravelDesk Digital executed the digital approach under a primary programmatic partner to leverage 1st party data and custom audiences. Historically top-performers, Yahoo and Sojern allowed for specific targeting capabilities in our key markets with a history of winter travel activity. Both included native and display placements. CasualIQ was utilized to gather insights against our Terminal personas using a new data set in their consumer database and proprietary optimization strategy.
Travel Endemic/OTA’s
Run Time: November to January
OTAs and Travel Endemics made up 2% of the media mix. Expedia and Trip Advisor were utilized due to their power and data of the key travel sites that many consumers use as their primary resources for each stage of their trip planning journey. Premium inventory such as native and display drove active consumers to VisitMyrtleBeach.com.
Paid Social
Making up 9% of the media mix, paid social included placements on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and TikTok. The winter/holiday strategy includes the following:
Emphasis on placing messages on the proper social platforms
Video ads developed specifically for TikTok using platform endemic messaging and visuals
Continue testing TikTok creative as Instagram Reels placements
A/B creative and Terminal audience testing
Mobile-first videos both in feed and on stories across platforms.
The specific platform funnel messaging initiatives can be found in the chart below:
Paid Search
Paid search continued to run through the winter campaign and was once again a full-funnel approach. It made up 7% of the total media mix for this campaign and again included Google, Bing, Google Discovery Feed, and Gmail. Similar to the Fall campaign, the strategy was an “always on” approach, running across all main search engines for intent-based awareness and capturing “hand raisers” while maximizing impression share and optimizing for Keyphrase, Device, Engine, Match Type, Demographic, Geographic and audience performance. A breakdown of the paid search Keyphrase categories can be found in the chart below:
PUBLIC RELATIONS
From an earned media perspective, Visit Myrtle Beach pitched the many benefits of enjoying the holidays along the Grand Strand. Amazing Christmas shows, plenty of elbow room and sunshine, lower prices, a huge selection of quality restaurants, light shows, community parades, tree lightings and special events all topped the list.
Visit Myrtle Beach/Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce also cosponsored a new holiday event in Myrtle Beach - Winter Wonderland at the Beach. In collaboration with the City of Myrtle Beach, Visit Myrtle Beach served as the marketing arm for this exciting event in downtown Myrtle Beach which was open from late November through January 2. The walk-through light exhibit with an ice skating rink was designed to attract visitors to the downtown area and position the Grand Strand as an premiere holiday destination. Through sponsor videos, social media (both paid and organic), and creative web content, the message to visit The Beach for the holidays was heard far and wide.
Various pitches around this new event garnered media coverage, and four influencers were hosted to cover Winter Wonderland at the Beach along with everything the region has to offer for the holidays. One of the four influencers also covered our destination’s autism-friendly efforts, a topic that is a key focus for our organization.
Public relations efforts were bolstered with press releases promoting Winter Wonderland at the Beach, and winter travel, both of which received significant pick up.
The winter of 2022 brings a virtual media mission with qualified Canadian media, attendance at various travel writer conferences, a return to desk side visits with key media in key markets, and work on a number of high profile integrated media projects.
Public Relations Highlights
Other Winter/Holiday Campaign Elements
How Partners Can Get Involved:
CVB Leisure Tourism Investment Partners can submit special packages and offers for seasons via the Partner Extranet. Everyone is encouraged to submit their events online via the Submit Event Form.