Driving More Tourism for Chicago through Smarter Digital Marketing

CHOOSE CHICAGO: EXTENDING THE SIGNAL ACROSS THE MIDWEST AND BEYOND

The Broad Appeal of the City of the Big Shoulders

Choose Chicago — the destination marketing organization of Chicago — was in need of some thoughtful, well-targeted digital marketing. They wanted to reach a new audience that appreciates the overflowing arts, culture, architecture and food of a city that’s never shed its Midwestern charm or eagerness to share in its treasures. With tight deadlines and new methods for reaching the right audience, the team at Choose Chicago looked to envisionit for an innovative digital approach that could keep people flowing into the city.

THE APPROACH

Our next engagement with Choose Chicago allowed us to dive deeper into the strategy behind the tactics. Helpful organic social insights and transparent reporting set the partnership on track. With trust built, we moved forward with bigger ideas across more media  — including programmatic, partner direct, paid search, paid social, video, and OOH. We were firing on all cylinders and forging ahead.

“Our capabilities matched exceptionally well with Choose Chicago and their goals and KPIs. We have been able to provide a well thought-out national execution, and have continually tested and retargeted to identify the ideal travel audience. It helps that we’re all faithful Chicagoans, too!”

– Nicole Brown, Senior Account Management, envisionit

THE WORK

We examined Choose Chicago’s currently running media and strategy — untargeted static ads hosted on a single provider — and immediately expanded to include designated market areas (DMAs) across the country. We cast a wide net, and then recast our net wherever we had success in both digital marketing and paid search. And we collaborated with all partners, holding weekly status meetings to ensure that everyone’s goals were aligned.

The National Stage

Bringing the campaign to a national audience revealed audiences Choose Chicago had never considered nor reached.

It’s Showtime, Folks!

Choose Chicago wanted to promote a few different parts of the city — our thriving theatre community and the fantastic leisure industry — so we optimized and targeted appropriately. In our leisure campaign, we found more success with a psychographic approach. So we shifted our resources appropriately.

THE RESULTS

The Campaign That Works

Our segmentation and targeting yielded some incredible results. All paid search campaigns blew past both industry and our own benchmarks. The theatre campaign alone served over 38 million impressions, and the click through rate was nearly 6 times the benchmark. Our shift from a demographic strategy to a psychographic strategy for the leisure campaign saw some fantastic results, as well. Nationwide, it made 76 million impressions, resulting in 3,100 website conversions.

• 38 million impressions for theatre campaign
• 185k clicks
• 76 million impressions for leisure campaign
• 3,100 conversions