The metrics of marketing Branson

Heather Hermen has been the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Branson/Lakes Area Chamber of Commerce & CVB since September 2024. The Branson Globe (BG) interviewed Herman (HH) about using marketing metrics and data to market Branson. The results, in a Q&A format, are below:

BG: What experience do you have in marketing tourism destinations, and for how long have you been doing it?

HH: I’ve been in the tourism industry for over 20 years and have owned Front Burner Media, a full-service marketing and public relations agency focusing on destination management and marketing, for the last 14 years.

BG: What metrics do you use to evaluate destination marketing performance?

HH: KPIs, goals and objectives in a strategic plan are standard for destination marketing. From there, we divide that out into items that come from the STR report, Smith Travel Research, around average daily rate, booking windows and then other data metrics that come in from data platforms like Datafy, Adara, Arrivalist, Placer.AI, and more. Data-driven decision-making is the key to destination marketing; these tools help us gather the proper metrics and show return on investment with tax dollars. 

BG: What are some of the KPIs that you evaluate?

HH: Visitation activity increases or decreases, and increases in tax dollars, website activity, room occupancy, average daily rate and booking window, among others, are key indicators that we and other destinations follow.

BG: What other metrics do you use?

HH: Credit card, spending, how long people are staying in market, and how much people are spending per household. We’re following our digital ads from when they were served on a phone, computer, or mobile device to when they come into the market to see how effective our ads are and the return on investment [ROI].

BG: That’s what they’re used for?

HH: They provide data that helps us know how much credit card spending is, how long they’re staying, where they’re staying, where they’re shopping, what they’re doing so that we can then build plans all around that.

BG: Digital media advertising handles most of that, but aren’t we also marketing using TV?

HH: Yes, we advertise on both Traditional TV and Connected TV.

BG: Didn’t know there were two different types of TV. Isn’t TV just TV?

HH: No. “Traditional TV” is broadcast TV, including cable, satellite and antenna reception, where the person watching sees a scheduled TV program at the actual broadcast time. “Connected TV” puts the same content and more on your TV using the internet to deliver the content to a person’s TV, smart phone, smart application, or another connected TV device such as Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, etc., on demand.

BG: What’s the difference between them, from a marketing point of view?

HH: There’s not much we can do regarding Traditional TV except know the commercial aired at this time and on this channel. With Connected TV, you can tell exactly who saw it, when and where they saw it. We can also tell if a viewer ever visits our website; if they ever come here, we know that.

BG: Of the two, which is the more effective marketing tool and why?

HH: Connected TV because it provides more data to determine how many viewers see it and how they react to it.