(Arnolds Park)– An organization that markets tourism in the Iowa Great Lakes will be deploying some new marketing strategies in 2023. Rebecca Peters of Okoboji Tourism says one of those will be focused on Uber and Lyft vehicles in the twin cities area…
“We’re working with a company called Carvertise that will wrap five Ubers or Lyfts in the Minneapolis market for three months. And those drivers have all been vetted by the company. They know what they’re doing. They’ve worked with other destinations around the country. And so when somebody gets into one of those cars they can say what is going on with this driving billboard you’ve got going on? And the driver can say, here’s a Vacation Okoboji Visitor Guide, you can learn more about it.”
Peters says those vehicle will also be “geo-fenced”…
“Wherever it goes in Minneapolis, any mobile device that comes within 50 feet of that car will then be served ads directing people right back to Vacation Okoboji-dot-com. And we think that this is really an exciting way to put ourselves in front of new markets and to get some brand awareness out there.”
Peters says they’ll also be deploying a new tool over Winter Games Weekend that utilizes cell phone data…
“We can go back through and we can pull that information from up to five years back and we can use that information to then try to target those people in the future to say these are the people we want to come to our community and we can serve ads specifically to them. And we’re really excited. So for Winter Games this year we’re going to try some new marketing using this technology. And so what we’re going to be doing is we’re going to, you can get data from the past three years of Winter Games and we’re going to be serving ads to people who have been here before. Not local people, but people outside of the area. And then we create a look-alike audience, so people who are very similar to those who come here are going to be more likely to come, and we’re going to be serving them those ads also. Then as an added bonus, because this is all being done through your cell phone, through your mobile technology, we can then track to see if those people saw an ad and then came to our community during Winter Games.”
Peters says Okoboji Tourism will also be sharing that data with other organizations and businesses in the area.
