2013 DCBA Strategic Plan - Destination Cape Breton Association

Doers and Dreamers – In partnership with the Nova Scotia Tourism Agency (NSTA), Cape BretonIsland and The Fortress of Louisbourg are featured in the 2013 guide with a five-page insert. ForCape Breton, a two-page spread features a new image of experiencing the Skyline Trail to showthe beauty of the island, as well as smaller images and description of the artisan, cultural andculinary experiences supporting Roger Brooks’ suggestion mentioned earlier in this document.The Travel Guide to Cape Breton – In partnership with City Printers, the 2013 Travel Cape Bretonwill feature updated editorial content, inclusion of operator provided packages and experiences,and a six-page feature on Louisbourg 300. The print run will be larger to increase off-islanddistribution.NewspapersIn 2011 and 2012, newsprint was tested in Toronto, New Brunswick and Newfoundland with weakresults. However, The Chronicle Herald continues to remain a strong source of visitor recall representing45% of all survey respondents who recalled our ad from a newspaper in 2012. In support of ourconversion based visitor goals for 2013, our newsprint buy will be focused on the Chronicle Heraldincluding:18 weekly ads in total and starting the last week of May with banner size teaser ads, and runningthrough the summer with 1/3 page ads each SaturdayFull page ads in both the Summer and Autumn tourism insertsOne full page aditorialOnlineOur investment in online advertisement will also focus on the channels that provided the strongestvisitor recall and most qualified web traffic in terms of bounce rate and time on site. In 2012, our onlinebuy was quite broad and significantly impression-based and included general interest sites such as theWeather Network and online newspaper sites, run-of-network advertising and online magazines. Thisbroad approach led to a decrease in qualified traffic. In an attempt to improve the results, some of theinvestment was pulled back from the impression-based sites and re-focused on Google Adwords whichproved to gain a much more targeted and interested audience. Due to the improvement from theAdwords campaign, the investment in 2013 will shift to be primarily Adwords-based which will enable usto target our audience (authentic experiencer and cultural explorer) by interest, geographic location andInternet search behaviour.The remainder of the online investment will be focused on other sites which brought a good returnincluding Trip Advisor and NovaScotia.com. We will also be testing a select group of sites that are alsotargeted to our demographic interests such as Vacay.ca which continues to acclaim Cape Breton Islandas a must-see visitor destination and the Saltscapes website where Cape Breton Island experiences willbe continually featured on the main page of the site.TelevisionIn 2012, the Nova Scotia Tourism Agency arranged destination spotlights on the popular evening newsprogram Live at 5. The opportunity was offered to the various regions to have the show aired live fromtheir location. Cape Breton Island capitalized on the opportunity to have the show aired twice from the31