The Wrightsville Beach Marketing Advisory Committee has a $45,807 rollover budget to spend and a new challenge of marketing online in a time when most browsers or devices block online display advertisements.
During its Dec. 8 meeting, the committee discussed getting around the ad blocking by using new platforms on Instagram and Facebook while joining with other local beaches in a large campaign aimed at attracting vacationers in late August and early September.
Instagram just recently started allowing advertising, and the ads have created some backlash when they are too obvious, said Steve Kelly, media planner for the town’s advertising agency Clean Design.
But the tourism industry has had great success in Instagram advertising because, with location being the product, tourism clients can create effective ads using nothing but beautiful imagery. That holds true for Wrightsville Beach’s latest campaign, which depends heavily on large, eye-catching photographs of beach scenes with the tag line “Just another day on the island.”
The committee is also considering a new kind of Facebook advertisement that appears in news feeds but has a button prompting users to enter an email address. Clean Design can then compile that information and follow up with newsletters or E-blasts.
To get around browsers blocking online ads, Clean Design recommended a more subtle form of marketing called native advertising. Native advertising is any ad that blends in with its platform, like a sponsored article about Wrightsville Beach on a travel publication’s website.
Links to Wrightsville’s tourism website can also be placed within or near real articles on similar topics.
“It’s really just a disguise for a display ad, but since it’s an article people are more likely to click on it because they don’t feel like they’re being sold something,” said Shawn Braden, Wilmington and Beaches Convention and Visitor’s Bureau vice president of marketing.
Another way to generate native advertising content is to hire a popular travel blogger in one of Wrightsville Beach’s target cities to write about the island.
“It could be a mom with a travel blog,” said French West Vaughan account director Leah Knepper, who handles the town’s public relations. The blogger would be provided with photos of Wrightsville Beach and guidelines for tone and message.
In addition to new advertising channels, the committee could use its rollover budget for a new campaign aimed at attracting vacationers in late August and early September, when Blockade Runner Beach Resort owner Mary Baggett said the island experiences a sharp drop off in tourism.
To put enough money behind the campaign, Wrightsville Beach would join forces with other local beach towns like Carolina Beach. The campaign would target families in northern locations whose children don’t go back to school until after Labor Day and draw them in with promises of summer weather without the crowds.
“Just show them a picture of the beach on the Fourth of July as opposed to what it looks like in August,” said Alderwoman Lisa Weeks, who sits on the committee.
The rollover budget doesn’t cover all Clean Design’s recommendations, so the committee will narrow down the list by its January meeting.
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