With Barcelona - the most visited city in Spain - at its heart, Catalunya is among the most popular destination for tourists anywhere on the Iberian Peninsula. An autonomous “community” with its own language, holidaymakers flock to experience its world-famous architecture, sample its gastronomic heritage and soak up some sun on the Costa Brava.
Spain’s biggest visitor market, the UK is an essential component of Catalunya’s marketing strategy. Having worked closely with the community for several years, Digital Visitor was asked to bolster its previous successes by driving up social media engagement rates and connecting directly with a wider audience.
We’ve been working with Digital Visitor for several years now. They’ve never failed to impress us with the results they’ve delivered for our beautiful country. Naturally, we’re incredibly proud of Catalunya and the global reach of its cultural heritage. There’s no agency we’d rather have helping us spread its message further through social media in the UK.
As a destination, Catalunya presents some unique marketing opportunities. Barcelona’s La Sagrada Familia cathedral is never going to struggle to bring in the visitors, but successful tourism is about more than that. As a DMO it’s important to promote a wider range of attractions a businesses, creating a thriving environment for the whole area.
Our content, therefore, targeted a wide range of experiences on offer across Catalunya. And aiming for a sustained uptick in social media engagement, throughout the campaign our delivery team continued management of the DMO’s Facebook page for maximum impact. Following brand guidelines we tested various content themes, optimising for the top levels of engagement at low cost.
Supporting our strategic channel management was a series of four targeted Facebook ‘hero’ campaigns. As ever, these targeted app-based campaigns were designed to capture qualified leads for Catalunya’s ongoing marketing communications. Centred around four distinct themes (Spanish Grand Prix, Moto GP, Costa Brava and cycling) these campaigns drove users further into the travel planning process, capturing a total of 6,519 qualified email addresses.
Leveraging the buzz surrounding one of Spain’s most popular sporting events of the year, our first campaign offered entrants the chance to win two tickets (and flights) to the Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix. To bolster the viral success of these campaigns, our ads team curated a series of optimised Facebook advertising campaigns to help drive engagement and likes to Catalunya’s Facebook page.
Despite having worked with Catalunya for several years, our latest work with the DMO built considerably on our past successes. Most importantly, our ongoing relationship with Catalunya has helped shift its marketing focus away from traditional marketing, slowly in decline, to forward-thinking social media. Our work delivered:
