Introduction
Leeds is a city at the heart of the action, bursting with life and cultural energy. Boasting a vibrant creative community with award-winning national theatre and dance companies, a world-class arena, natural parks, a thriving independent food scene, and renowned retail, Leeds also hosts international sporting events, carnivals, festivals, and more. Partnering with Sojern, the Visit Leeds team improved their visitors’ average length of stay by half a day, leveraging a consistent digital presence with an engaging mix of video and display content through an always-on strategy. Visit Leeds built a new brand image as a year-round city destination, offering a range of fun and engaging experiences for all of their travellers.
Objectives
While Leeds was already a popular destination amongst UK summer travellers with its location in the centre of the UK, the tourism board wanted to build Leed presence for the rest of the year with in-market travellers. They were especially keen to drive longer stays as most visitors only came for one night. The Visit Leeds team partnered with Sojern to build a new brand image of Leeds as a competitive year-round destination using an always-on digital strategy. It was critical for the team to have access to in-depth reporting to prove the number of travellers driven by their digital marketing efforts.
"Sojern’s support was fantastic throughout the whole process. The regular touchpoints we have with Sojern are absolutely crucial to seeing how our campaigns develop. The monthly reporting and the insights are invaluable. We in turn have become more experienced in deciding how we're going to deliver these campaigns and the themes that we're going to use."
Solution
Visit Leeds and Sojern activated an always-on digital marketing strategy using video as an upper-funnel channel to raise awareness and inspiration among UK travellers searching for their next holiday and display advertising as a lower-funnel tactic to ensure Leeds remained top of mind, converting lookers into bookers. Over an eight-month period, the partnership achieved a video completion rate (VCR) of 79% and a return on ad spend (ROAS) of 4.5x. Perhaps the most exciting result shown in Sojern's Economic Impact Report was the half-a-day (24%) increase in the average length of visitor stays which helped drive additional revenue.
About the Partnership
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"Sojern’s support was fantastic throughout the whole process. The regular touchpoints we have with Sojern are absolutely crucial to seeing how our campaigns develop. The monthly reporting and the insights are invaluable. We in turn have become more experienced in deciding how we're going to deliver these campaigns and the themes that we're going to use."
