Cheyenne, Wyo - 3/9/07 - Potential visitors are being enticed more than ever before by a $5.4 million advertising effort just launched by Wyoming Travel & Tourism. The 2007 campaign represents a 63 percent increase in spending over 2006. “We appreciate the legislative support that allowed us to enhance our ad program this year,” said Diane Shober, state tourism director. “If history and theory prove to be right that will in turn increase the number of inquiries that will go to our website or call seeking a traveler’s journal. Then the whole idea is to turn those inquiries into visitors,” Shober said.
Half of her office’s total budget is devoted to paid media buys this spring that include a number of national magazines along with market-specific approaches in television and newspaper purchases. Magazine buys include an emphasis on family periodicals such as National Geographic Traveler and Family Fun magazines in addition to mature market magazines of widespread interest including Sunset and Smithsonian.
The state tourism office approach for 2007 also delves heavily into online marketing for the first time. “There’s been a huge growth in the number of consumers planning and booking travel on the Internet. You have to have a presence there and we simply didn’t,” Shober said. The tourism website was completely revitalized for easy and comfortable surfing. Web content has been expanded to meet viewer needs. “I hope we’ll see an even greater return on investment by going into that medium and reaching a whole new segment of consumers,” she said.
All of the state’s tourism advertising appears with similar themes and looks in order to strike a widespread balance of awareness. “You need to reach people in a variety of ways and places, reinforcing the message through as many media as possible,” Shober noted.
Television advertising was increased from eleven markets to seventeen and will penetrate ten percent of the households in the U.S. compared to a six percent reach last year. Newspaper insertions (March 18) are reaching a circulation of 1.8 million people with cooperative advertising supported by a number of local tourism entities in the state.
