Visit Lake Charles Extends One Collaboration, Reaches 60K Visitors

You’ve read about the Travel South collaboration with NOMADasaurus in previous editions of our newsletter, but this month, we want to localize the impact of that collaboration to help you understand the potential for your destination. To this end, we chatted with Kathryn Shea Duncan, Director of Social Media for Visit Lake Charles, to learn how she leveraged the collaboration – and then some. Follow our interview below:   

Q: Let’s start by recapping the Travel South collaboration with NOMADasaurus. What did the collaboration deliver for Lake Charles?

A: Jarryd and Alesha of NOMADasaurus did social posts, including reels, while they were in market and posted additional reels weeks afterward. These included reels focused on Lake Charles and a round-up of their entire Louisiana trip. For every stop on the Lake Charles itinerary they produced, they did at least one Instagram story.

Q: One of our favorite moments in NOMADasaurus’ Lake Charles itinerary is this quote: “…we always knew the real heart of the States lay in the towns in the South, where culture, history and cuisine was as fascinating as it was insightful.” What was yours?

A: Their interactions with Sarge, who was their guide at Lake Area Adventures. Sarge is a huge advocate for what Lake Charles does. I really love what they wrote about him, and they posted about him on Facebook and Instagram. It speaks to the relationships we build here.

Q: Whether it’s NOMADasaurus or other content creators, relationship-building is at the core of any successful collaboration. What advice would you share with other DMOs who are looking to build these relationships? 

A: We start by tailoring any content creator’s itinerary to their specific needs and make the trip align with their values and their audience. [For Jarryd and Alesha, that ran the gamut from curating an itinerary around adventurous, authentic experiences to hosting them at vegan-friendly restaurants.] We then hand-pick who our content creators will be with – from their restaurant servers to their adventure guides – because locals who represent the hospitality industry do a great job educating creators on our culture and history.

Likewise, locals are thrilled to have people interested in our corner of the world – in this case, not just from outside the state, but from outside the U.S. Through social media, including my personal accounts and local Facebook groups, we messaged locals to say, “Don’t hide; these visitors are from Australia!” and that got locals interested in what Jarryd and Alesha were doing. Locals are so proud of our community and heritage, they began to encourage them, messaging them to go to this restaurant or that for the best po’boy, for example. Getting buy-in from locals made NOMADasaurus’ content even more authentic. 

Q: How did the idea coalesce to extend the value of the Travel South collaboration with NOMADasaurus?

A: I knew the power of these stories being told by a third party – they resonate so much with our audience. We can say how awesome Lake Charles is ’til we’re blue in the face, but having someone else speak for us – another person saying, “This place is great!” – is wonderful.

In media and public relations for Visit Lake Charles, I learned that we could get a lot of mileage out of this kind of partnership knowing the volume of assets that would be created – and that we could use these assets in our own marketing if we did it right: blog articles that become evergreen content on a creator’s website (great for SEO); photos, videos and social media coverage that can be reused and repurposed on our channel and theirs. Building a relationship with content creators lengthens and strengthens that mileage.

Q: What organic strategy did you build to this end?

A: Up front, we were very deliberate in our instructions to NOMADasaurus so they could properly write about our destination. This ensures the content a creator produces is accurate and aligns with your goals. [This can be as simple as providing fact sheets and branded hashtags, as examples.] We re-shared their posts immediately and made sure that all mentioned partners were aware – [not only of] the coverage, but of NOMADasaurus’ reach and metrics so partners could see the power of their coverage.

Q: How did paid strategy factor in?

A: When NOMADasauraus’ blog post was shared on social media, it got great traction, so I ran a Facebook and Instagram ad campaign around it.

By the numbers:

• 11-day run
• $300 budget
• 60K reach
• 2,326 link clicks
• .07 cost per engagement

Target geos, demographics and interests were selected in collaboration with Anna Strider, Visit Lake Charles’ Director of Digital Strategy/Online Marketing, to ensure audience alignment and the greatest potential for impact and ROI.

Q: Anything else you would share with other DMOs on the power of collaborating with – and extending the value of – content creator partnerships?

A: You can be the smallest destination, but if you go to a content creator with an awesome story idea and you have that trusting relationship, you can build additional opportunities.