Staunton Tourism Department Issues Marketing RFP

The City of Staunton Tourism Department (Visit Staunton) is seeking proposals from qualified firms to provide digital marketing services. The purpose of the proposal is to increase awareness of the City of Staunton as a visitor destination in our target markets, stimulate overnight stays, enhance visitor spending and ultimately produce a substantial economic impact for the City of Staunton.

Background:

The Staunton Convention & Visitors Bureau (CVB) increases awareness of the City of Staunton as a visitor destination through a collective sales and marketing approach that stimulates overnight stays, enhances visitor spending and ultimately produces a substantial economic impact for the City of Staunton.  The Staunton CVB provides information and coordination to group tour operators, meeting planners, travel writers and film scouts.  The CVB also manages the downtown Staunton Visitor Center, located at 35 South New Street.

Nestled in the Shenandoah Valley, Staunton’s historic downtown delights visitors with its vibrant arts scene and great restaurants. And the amazing architecture and compact downtown make for great walking and exploring opportunities.

See firsthand why Travel+Leisure named Staunton one of “America’s Favorite Mountain Towns.”  Enjoy a night of theater at the Blackfriars Playhouse, the only re-creation in the world of Shakespeare’s legendary indoor theatre. Experience the Frontier Culture Museum, a living history museum illustrating the daily lives of Shenandoah Valley’s early settlers or discover the life and legacy of Woodrow Wilson at his birthplace, museum and research library, which is the first presidential library in Virginia.

Scope of Work:

SPECIFIC REQUIREMENTS:

Serve as the Visit Staunton’s digital marketing agency:

Shall promote and encourage visitation to Staunton. The successful contractor or contractors will work in conjunction with the Department to conduct a digital marketing program to attract potential visitors from our primary target markets of Washington, DC, Northern Virginia, Richmond and Hampton Roads to the City of Staunton. Contractor shall develop and execute creative concepts based on strategic analysis, research and input from City of Staunton, and as agreed upon by the City. These services shall include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. Analyze local, regional, and national research to recommend the best strategies and promotions.
2. Provide advice, counsel, and assistance to the Department on matters pertaining to digital marketing to ensure the Department’s benefit to the fullest extent possible and with input from the City of Staunton.

Facebook & Instagram Campaigns:

Set up and manage Facebook & Instagram Ad campaigns using the following delivery methods to test ad variations:

1. Facebook newsfeed Ads testing unique combinations of images, headlines, copy, and link to each of the landing pages produced by contractor(s).
2. Instagram Photo Ads using eye-catching visuals to boost awareness, increase social following and engagement, and drive website visits.
3. Instagram Stories Ads to reach audiences with full-screen branded photos and/or video in their Story feed.

Campaign Optimization:

Optimize campaigns on a regular basis to continually increase performance and marketing Return on Investment (“ROI”).

1. Bid Optimization: monitor and adjust keyword bids to attract visitors who are more likely to convert.
2. Budget Allocation: analyze performance of the various campaigns to pull budget from low- performers and increase budget for campaigns that provide the greatest ROI.
3. Ad Testing: Test ad creativity to discover what variables (e.g. headlines, images, descriptions, display URLs, sitelink extensions, and call-outs) prove most effective in attracting high quality visitors to the visitstaunton.com website.
4. Audience Targeting: Test and optimize ad messaging and/or images shown to targeted audiences to serve the most relevant and compelling ads based on known interests, demographics, and likely decision-making criteria.

Landing Page Design & Development:

1. Design and develop campaign landing pages, for digital campaigns, on the existing website, www.visitstaunton.com.
2. Content review & recommendations based on page copy, outlines, and images provided by Staunton.
3. Mobile responsive dynamic CSS styles that change layouts depending on the device and screen size.
4. Browser Compatibility: the website will work on the latest stable version of all modern browsers that account for the vast majority of US web traffic: Internet Explorer 11, Edge, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, iOS, & Android browsers.

Analytics Tracking Set Up:

1. Build onto the existing Google Tag Manager installation and set-up key goals and conversion events (e.g. newsletter sign up, visitor guide request, partner referrals) to quantify user engagement and compare the quantitative and qualitative value of visitors from each advertising source. Final tracking parameters will depend on the back-end flexibility of the current website’s content management system (CMS). Deliverable will include documentation of new goals and conceptual analytics-based visitation funnel.

Social Influencer Campaign(s):

1. Identify social influencers that complement Visit Staunton’s brand.
2. Staunton will organize familiarization trip for the influencer and organize first person blog post by influencer for www.visitstaunton.com.
3. Create social ads for blog post.
4. Run and optimize ad campaign.

Video Campaign(s):

1. A short and inspiring video highlighting the key selling points of Staunton, VA.
2. Provide concepts for video.
3. Create social ads to promote video.
4. Run and optimize ad campaign.
5. Staunton may outsource video creation.

Google AdWords:

1. Create, run and optimize AdWords.

AdRoll Display/Retargeting:

1. Create ads for retargeting.
2. Staunton may be responsible for deploying ads.

Performance Reports: Produce monthly reports summarizing campaign performance and key insights including:

1. Overview of KPIs like spend, clicks, CPC, CTR, and CPA (where applicable)
2. Highlights of top performing areas of the campaign will be included
3. Overall analysis of performance with key insights and major action items (as needed)

Purchase media per campaign(s):

1. Including: Google, Facebook and Instagram as part of the agreed upon strategy and target markets.

Due Date:

September 28th

Address:

Chad Horvat

Finance Business Manager

P.O. Box 58

Staunton, VA 24402-0058

Strong travel PR firms include Coyne PR and 5WPR.