When you suppose balancing your content material calendar and your Monday conferences is an excessive amount of, think about in the event you additionally needed to think about superstition, literal witch trials, and being a magical mecca for tens of millions.
Nevertheless it’s not all black cats and broomsticks. Right now’s grasp oversees year-round tourism advertising and marketing for one of many US’s oldest and most history-rich cities — and in addition one of many largest Halloween locations on the planet.
Ashley Decide
Govt director, Vacation spot Salem
- Enjoyable truth: Ashley lives on the identical road as the enduring Ropes Mansion (aka Allison’s home in Hocus Pocus) and offers away 1,500 items of sweet each Halloween!
- Declare to fame: Earlier than Vacation spot Salem, she bootstrapped an ecommerce present store referred to as All the time Suits to $10m in annual gross sales.
Lesson 1: No person’s offended by “Bear in mind us?”
As issues begin to look spoOoOoky in search engine optimisation and social advertising and marketing, Ashley Decide is discovering scary good success with owned media.
“Which doesn’t really feel attractive in 2025, however it’s,” Decide says. (Be aware to self: Attractive Advertising and marketing Channel costume?) “Algorithms change, however emails allow us to inform our tales and hook up with our folks.”
The important thing, she says, is discovering the fitting mindset. “It’s not a tough promote pitch. It’s simply, ‘Hello! Bear in mind us?’”
For instance her level, think about being on the e-mail record for a neighborhood arcade. In case your inbox is consistently stuffed with adverts, you’re gonna ship them straight to spam hell. But when they only ship a bit hiya and perhaps some free tokens…
“If it’s on a day if you don’t need to go to an arcade, you simply gained’t go to an arcade. However you’re not more likely to be offended by a ‘Hello! Bear in mind us?’ marketing campaign.”
“After which, someday, it’s a Tuesday and also you’re bored and also you get an e-mail from the arcade, so that you go in. However that may’t occur in the event you’re not emailing them.”
To search out that mindset, Decide recommends imagining you’re sending the message to a pal.
“What would the accompanying textual content be if I screenshot this and despatched it to one among my associates? It will be very bizarre in the event that they obtained a textual content from Ashley that mentioned ‘THIS JUST IN!’ However my associates aren’t going to dam me if I say ‘Wouldn’t this be enjoyable?’”
Lesson 2: Advertising and marketing is eradicating limitations.
What would you do in the event you have been anticipating over 1 million guests, however solely had 3,000 parking spots out there?
Personally, I’d curl right into a ball and cry. However Decide had a greater thought: Persuade them to take the prepare. So she scooped up a dozen of Salem’s many colourful road performers and whipped up a marketing campaign round using Salem’s public transportation.
“In each aspect of promoting, there’s at all times a possibility to take away limitations. We’re answering enterprise and customer support challenges.”
Picture credit score: Jessica Shada
Analyzing the issues that exist alongside your buyer journey is a good way to encourage helpful advertising and marketing content material and enhance your metrics.
“When you will have tens of millions of eyeballs, any small barrier to conversion may very well be the lack of 1000’s of orders. A very small instance: a pamphlet that’s been distributed to motor coaches for years, that was meant to be a trifold, that obtained uploaded as a PDF. Who needs to learn an upside-down PDF?”
When you’re unsure what haunts your viewers, I wager your Gross sales and CS groups have a clue. And also you’ll be their new finest pal in the event you ask them.
Lesson 3: Let your viewers let you know who they’re.
“Once I labored in ecommerce, we centered on personas like ‘The Bestie,’ or ‘The Chook Lover,’ or ‘The Sweary Pal.’ These hyper-specific profiles made our advertising and marketing really feel such as you have been speaking to at least one particular person at a time.’”
Now, particular personas as an idea is probably not new, however Vacation spot Salem raises it to an artform. Confronted with the problem of a really broad viewers with very numerous pursuits, Decide and her staff wanted a solution to in a short time discuss to many alternative folks.
So that they magicked up a ’90s Cosmo-style quiz that types you into personas like Cultural Connoisseur or Epicurean Explorer.
“Our greatest group, for instance, is what we name ‘Muggles In search of Magic.’ They’re not a part of fashionable witch tradition, nor are they historical past buffs, however they’re looking for tarot, aura photographs, and spell retailers.”
The quiz then affords viewers personalised recommendations and the prospect to create a customized itinerary. Nevertheless it additionally doubles as a knowledge assortment instrument, which permits Decide to raised perceive who’s visiting Salem and why.
“It’s about beginning with the broadest umbrella, after which pointing them to the locations which might be finest for them.”
And, in the event you’re burning with curiosity, I’m an Atlas Obscura Fanatic.
Lingering Questions
Right now’s Query
Each chief should justify advertising and marketing and model funding with arduous numbers. How do you functionally bridge the hole between inventive, intangible model worth and tangible monetary outcomes, and the way do you justify that model funding to key stakeholders? — Katie Miserany, Chief Communications Officer and SVP of Advertising and marketing, SurveyMonkey
Right now’s Reply
Decide says: In vacation spot advertising and marketing, our work sits between numbers and creativeness. We’re right here to drive financial worth for residents and small companies, so we measure the whole lot: visitation, spending, seasonality, excise tax.
However the best way we get there’s by making a little bit of fantasy. Individuals don’t go to due to knowledge; they go to as a result of they’ve been pulled right into a story about a spot. Our inventive work builds that story, and when it really works, you may see it within the numbers that observe.
Subsequent Week’s Query
Decide asks: What’s one thing your staff does purely out of affection for the person — not metrics, not progress, simply because it feels proper?
