2021 Marketing Plan Final

L E I S U R E MA R K E T

Michael Bonoffski, CDME Senior Vice President, Marketing & Communications

Kristen Cranford Marketing Coordinator

Julie Hinson, TMP Communications Manager

Lindsay Ficklin Digital Marketing Manager

PROMOTING CABARRUS COUNTY AS A TOTAL ENTERTAINMENT DESTINATION THAT OFFERS ADRENALINE EXPERIENCES, FAMILY-FRIENDLY FUN, UNMATCHED SHOPPING, HISTORIC ATTRACTIONS AND HAND-CRAFTED FOOD AND SPIRITS DESTINATION: CABARRUS COUNTY

a top leisure destination, we will focus our strategy to reach our target at every point of the travel purchase funnel to attain sus- tained brand awareness. This will be achieved by various tac- tical approaches including paid advertising, public relations, marketing partnerships, email marketing, content marketing & social media.

BACKGROUND For FY2021, we are continuing to optimize our marketing communication efforts by focusing on digital strategies that get us closer to travel deci- sionmakers and targeting audiences who demon- strate the best conversion potential. Our paid advertis- ing efforts will extend to geographies that exhibit a higher propensity to visit Cabarrus County via research data. OBJECTIVE To support the business objective of driving hotel revenue, our marketing objective is to continue driving awareness and under- standing of Cabarrus County and the unique experiences it offers. We have partnered with FourthIdea, a creative agency specializing in Travel and Tourism. Our overarching goal from a paid perspective is to drive traffic to visitcabarrus.com. Once visitors are on site, our plan is to increase engagement by offering deeper content that supports travel decision-making and to create a more prominent call to action around “places to stay”. The more online resources we offer the po- tential traveler, the better chance we have at influencing the visitor journey and ultimately impacting revenue for the county. The follow- ing provides an overview of the integrated marketing plan.

CAMPAIGN GEOGRAPHIES:

• North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia

AWARENESS-DRIVING DIGITAL MEDIA TARGET AUDIENCE The target audience for our campaigns will consistently fit the fol- lowing criteria: • Users living within a four-hour drive radius • Motorsports enthusiasts • Ages 25-49 • Adults with children • Women passionate about travel • Household income of $50,000 or more We will modify this based on individual campaign needs (e.g., targeting users with children with family-focused creative) and will adjust bids based on other audience criteria (e.g., implement- ing a slight bid increase for women). However, the criteria above will be core to our audience targeting and will, in most cases, re- main unchanged.

STRATEGIES As we continue to increase awareness of Cabarrus County as

v i s i t c a b a r r u s . c om