The Wrightsville Beach Marketing Advisory Committee agreed on how it would spend up to $45,807 in unused money from 2015, devoting thousands to new online marketing campaigns. The committee voted to approve the disbursement on Tuesday, Jan. 13.
Campaigns for Facebook and Instagram, as well as a website development and a native advertising campaign for a statewide news website, will each receive $10,000. The campaign will use the remaining $5,500 for public relations support.
Shawn Braden, Wilmington and Beaches Convention and Visitors Bureau vice president of marketing, said the new campaigns would help the committee coordinate more of its media purchases with the information about local hotel bookings.
“It’s an opportunity to align our PR with our media buys and what we see happening with out-of-state bookings from hotels,” Braden said.
By looking at where bookings are coming from, the committee can find new markets for online advertising that wouldn’t necessarily be evident from data on online interactions.
“In some places, we may find that they’re booking, but not clicking, and we can devote more media dollars to those areas,” Braden said.
In approving the funding, the marketing committee is shifting its advertising focus away from display advertising and more toward so-called “native advertising,” which utilizes posts that look more like the editorial content on blog posts and social media sites. This could also include links to the Wrightsville Beach marketing sites in other relevant travel-related content.
New advertising campaigns that focus on pictures and images will also be ideal for social media platforms like Instragram, Braden said.
The committee also considered how it would classify a Wrightsville Beach business for the purposes of listing on the www.visitwrightsvillebeachnc.com website, which is operated by the Wilmington and Beaches Convention & Visitors Bureau.
Wrightsville Beach Chamber of Commerce board member Sue Bulluck said the focus of the website should be the main businesses on the island.
Town manager Tim Owens said the board of aldermen would have to establish a policy on what would constitute a “Wrightsville Beach business.” Using the example of Jet Ski rentals, Owens said he would differentiate between a Wilmington business owner that delivers a jet ski to docks in Wrightsville Beach versus someone trying to rent jet skis from the docks.
“In my view, operating on the docks is not a Wrightsville Beach business,” Owens said.
The marketing committee will consider a definition for its standards during its March meeting. Its next meeting will be an organizational meeting, scheduled for Feb. 9 at 3 p.m.
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