Industry Expertise
Destination Marketing
Perspective
Every destination has a story.
The challenge is making people want to experience it.
For more than three decades, McKenzie Wagner has helped destinations, communities, attractions and cultural organizations turn what makes them distinctive into reasons to visit, explore and come back time and again. We’ve worked across tourism and destination marketing long enough to know that there’s no single formula for making a place matter. A historic city, a regional destination, a cultural attraction and a museum may have very different audiences and objectives. What they share is the need for a compelling story, a marketing strategy, and creative that turns a story into action.
Experience
We're well traveled.
MW has worked with destinations at different stages, from establishing a brand and defining a position to building awareness, attracting new audiences, and giving people more reasons to visit. Showing people a beautiful place is the easy part. The harder part is understanding why someone should care about it, and getting them to go.
That might mean finding the real story, building a stronger sense of place, reaching a new audience, extending a season, or getting someone from “That looks interesting” to “I NEED to see this for myself.”
Our experience includes destination marketing for communities and CVBs, regional tourism organizations, attractions, resorts and cultural institutions.
Impact
We help places become destinations.
We bring strategy, branding, creative and digital together to help destinations and cultural organizations:
- Define what makes them different
- Build a brand people remember, with a clear, cohesive identity
- Find the travelers, visitors and niche audiences most likely to respond
- Turn awareness into visitation with campaigns and digital experiences
- Bring communities, attractions and businesses together under one story
- Extend the conversation beyond the visit
- Measure results with digital performance and campaign data
- Evolve as the destination changes
Proof
We’ve been doing this for a while.
Our destination marketing experience reaches back decades.
McKenzie Wagner helped bring four communities together under a single destination brand. We’ve developed integrated campaigns to attract visitors and encourage longer stays, and built brands around attractions with national reach. We’ve also stayed with some organizations for years, evolving their marketing as audiences, markets and challenges change.
Some of the places we've helped tell their stories:
Springfield Convention & Visitors Bureau
More than a decade of branding, advertising, visitor guides, digital marketing, video, events, and niche-market development.
Museum of the Cherokee People
A cultural institution in Cherokee, North Carolina, where we created the museum's website to help share its history, culture, collections, and visitor experience. The Museum is one of the country's longest-operating tribal museums and welcomes approximately 83,000 visitors each year
The Great Pumpkin Patch
A long-term relationship that grew an individual attraction into a broader destination brand spanning multiple businesses, products and experiences.
Amish Country of Illinois
A destination brand bringing four communities together under one identity, supported by integrated print, digital, email, search and retargeting campaigns.
City of Urbana
City rebrand, tagline development, and complete city website, as well as a destination marketing campaign, with a unique identity and flexible system of print, digital, and outdoor advertising templates to support ongoing city promotion.
ROI
What does experience look like in numbers?
90%+
above industry-average click-through rate
A digital campaign for Amish Country of Illinois delivered a click-through rate 90% above the industry average.
10+ years
of continuous partnership
Our relationship with the Springfield Convention & Visitors Bureau grew into more than a campaign. It became a decade-long brand and marketing partnership.
5.8%
increase in travel expenditures
Springfield reported a 5.8% increase in travel expenditures in 2013—the largest increase reported statewide that year—and had increased travel expenditures three consecutive years.
15,000+
Facebook followers
Our work for The Great Pumpkin Patch helped build a social following of more than 15,000 Facebook fans, while generating national media exposure across television and major lifestyle publications.
67%
increase in organic search sessions
A focus on SEO improvements to the Museum of the Cherokee People's website has led to a 67% increase in organic search sessions on the site. Direct sessions have also increased by 58%.
53%
Active User increase for motcp.org
We have dramatically improved the Museum of the Cherokee People's web traffic, increasing the active user count by over 53%, total sessions by over 48%, and site views by over 47%.
