Sojern Drives Brand Awareness and Economic Impact

Entered by: Sojern & Tourism Western AustraliaThe UK market is Western Australia’s #1 leisure market for both visitors and spend. In 2022, after two years of closed borders, it was crucial to communicate that Western Australia was open to travellers again. At this pivotal time, Tourism Western Australia (TWA) - needed to rebuild and reposition Australia’s largest state as an awe-inspiring place to holiday and communicate a warm welcome was waiting. Tourism WA’s UK agency, SLC Representation, sought to activate a timely multichannel campaign to efficiently locate those most likely to travel, including those who were thinking about the destination, competitor destinations, or other long-haul travel to help quickly rebuild visitation.Through utilising a data-driven approach to audiences and machine-learning, Sojern worked with SLC to reach the travellers most likely to engage and convert based on their past travel behaviour, real-time intent signals, interests and optimise creative for maximum efficiency.Using SLC’s consumer research analysis on the most effective triggers of destination choice and audience attitudes to Australia plus Sojern’s insights, the campaign sought to reach interested UK travellers at scale, though targeting key segments. These included leisure travellers actively searching for holidays in Western Australia and competitor destinations in Australia (Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane) and other long-haul destinations (New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, US) who may or may not have considered Perth or Western Australia. Luxury travellers, frequent travellers, couples, or honeymooners were also a key focus, as were outdoor enthusiasts, foodies, shutterbugs, beach-bound travellers, water sport enthusiasts, thrill-seekers & nature and wildlife enthusiasts.The goal was to direct traffic to Tourism Western Australia’s website, fostering consideration with compelling content and nurturing leads. This entailed building lasting awareness among suitable travellers and restoring confidence in potential Australia-bound tourists. The imminent launch of a multichannel campaign on Sojern's platform, featuring a range of assets, aimed to seamlessly guide travellers through the marketing funnel. Leveraging Sojern's data-driven and machine-learning approach, the campaign identified engaged travellers based on historical travel patterns, real-time intent cues, and interests. Crucially, travel intent cues ensured timely delivery of pertinent information to UK travellers.A test-and-learn strategy facilitated continual targeting refinement, focusing on engagement and conversion. Analyses revealed most travellers booked Western Australia trips over 60 days ahead, often preferring road trips or multi-stop adventures lasting 12+ days but logging only 1-3 days. A strategic data-driven approach harnessed these insights to effectively pinpoint and engage potential travellers. The two-month campaign exhibited robust engagement with video content, notably on Connected TV.Diverse creative versions enabled the Sojern platform to optimise performance assessment and budget allocation. A multichannel framework, encompassing various funnel formats, drove impactful campaigns, yielding significant UK market share. Success stemmed not just from channels, but from a cohesive, holistic strategy targeting the right audiences and ensuring measurable outcomes.With a data-driven approach to audiences and using machine-learning, Sojern found travellers most likely to engage based on their past travel behaviour, real-time intent signals, and interests.The travel intent signals were particularly crucial in helping Western Australia get the right information to UK travellers specifically at the right time. Applying a test and learn approach enabled the team to keep refining the targeting, and home in on engagers and converters. By taking a strategic data driven approach to the campaign, the team were able to use the travel behaviour insights to find and target the travellers that would most likely engage and most importantly take action.Throughout the duration of the two-month campaign, the team saw strong engagement with video content, including Connected TV (CTV). All products having different versions of creatives helped the algorithm to test and learn which creatives were best performing and reallocate the campaign budget accordingly. The multichannel approach combining various lower upper and lower funnel formats to deliver high impact campaigns helped to gain valuable UK market share.It wasn’t only about the channels but also the cohesive holistic strategy, targeting the right audiences and having measurability at the end that drove success. With an 85% positive emotional response to the video ads, 6 of 10 viewers took some form of action after exposure, exceeding benchmarks with 31% searching for more info and 5% actually booking a holiday.The campaign produced considerable success against all KPIs. All brand perceptions improved, significantly driving positive perceptions up to 15% on Western Australia’s nature and beauty. Based on Sojern’s brand study lift results, 64% exposed to the campaign took action 18 points higher than the 48% benchmark. Western Australia rose from 5th to 1st place versus competitor destinations (Australian provinces, New Zealand, US, South Africa and Canada) among exposed users, growing the share of travellers searching and booking Western Australia. More than 8 in 10 responded positively to the adverts – levels far exceeding the benchmark (55%) with those very likely to travel on a long-haul flight recording 94% positive responses. The SLC team also saw a return on ad spend through Sojern’s Economic Impact Reporting, which provides insights that help showcase how marketing campaigns are boosting visitation and tourism revenue.

Sojern Drives Brand Awareness and Economic Impact

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