Arizona Office of Tourism
Arizona Office of Tourism (AOT) is the leader of Arizona’s tourism industry. AOT strives to enhance the state economy and the quality of life for all Arizonans by expanding travel activity and increasing related revenues through travel and tourism.
Why did they come to Off Madison Ave?
AOT sought to increase engagement and community size of its consumer social media channels including Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. With a goal of sharing inspirational and informative content to better support visitors planning a trip or currently on vacation in the state, Off Madison Ave looked to AOT’s social media to spark one-to-one conversations with its communities and drive overall visitation to and through the state.
How did Off Madison Ave tackle their challenge?
Off Madison Ave began looking at each of AOT’s social channels as individual communication channels. We assessed the various audiences and their motivations on each channel, which ranged from residents and part-time residents (or snowbirds) of the state, to international travelers and residents of nearby drive markets (e.g., California, Utah, Nevada, Colorado). The agency analyzed top-performing content on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest by examining the behaviors behind the content. We also identified when and how the content was consumed and engaged with by different audiences.
Off Madison Ave took its findings and developed a social media strategy for each channel to achieve AOT’s goals of increasing engagement and community size. The team started with Instagram given this channel had the greatest opportunity for significant growth. Objectives on Instagram included reaching 10,000 followers to unlock the swipe-up function and launching regular Instagram Stories.
We tapped into people’s inclination to travel by using AOT’s Instagram as the channel for sharing inspirational and aspirational content. This is where the most awe-inspiring visuals and storytelling would be featured and where the social community would share their own beauty shots of the Grand Canyon state.
For travelers who value learning, Off Madison Ave created a separate approach for Facebook. We used AOT’s educational and long-form content here. Facebook’s demographic typically leans toward older audiences and this was true for AOT as well. Facebook is ideal for longer conversations and direct messages, Q & A via the comments and is a direct driver to the AOT website where audiences can find more information and dive deeper into Arizona specific content. To further amplify content and grow the Facebook community size, we coupled these organic efforts with boosted posts and paid Facebook ad campaigns.
Pinterest was another channel the team saw as a great opportunity to invest in and nurture audiences. Pinterest had been set up, however not much effort had been put into growing this channel to date. The agency quickly started crafting a plan on Pinterest that would highlight trip planning and statewide activities that aligned with adventure, wellness, culinary and heritage, the brand’s main pillars.
Additional executions across channels included:
Launching weekly Instagram Stories, started Highlights and created custom Highlight covers
Designing creative for Pinterest boards that really captured the spirit of Arizona and the brand
Increasing its use of user-generated content, sharing the beauty of Arizona through the eyes of the community
Implementing a regular boosting strategy after organic social posts performed well
Developing AOT’s first brand-to-brand influencer partnership with @BarbieStyle working with Mattel, which helped extend Arizona’s visibility among a global audience on Instagram
What were the results?
By implementing the detailed behavioral social strategies and tactics outlined, Off Madison Ave and AOT achieved substantial growth in several areas:
Instagram engagement has increased by 300 percent
Instagram followers have increased by nearly 170 percent
Instagram Stories have received 2.5 million impressions
Facebook followers have increased by 13 percent
Twitter engagement has increased by 103 percent
Twitter followers have increased by nearly 25 percent
Pinterest followers have increased by 35 percent
