Tourism New Zealand is a great case study for digital marketing

While I was doing some research on New Zealand tourism for a family trip next winter, I came across an interesting interview on Skift.com with the CEO of Tourism New Zealand, a destination marketing company. This article caught my eye because it reads like a perfect case study on the kind of company/product that would be perfectly suited to digital marketing and the techniques we have learned in class for marketing via search engine optimization, display, and social media.

Tourism New Zealand was intimately involved in the branding and promotion of the country of New Zealand after the Lord of the Rings movies came out. Their strategy relied heavily on "laser focused" digital marketing. In the interview CEO Kevin Bowler talks in particular about a strong focus on search engine optimization and display networks, extolling the importance of identifying your niche market and targeting them effectively.

"We get about 2.8 million visitors a year, which is pretty small in comparison to a lot of major destinations. They tend to be attracted to New Zealand’s outdoors, spectacular scenery and nature. They are not your average international traveler; they are not looking for an ordinary destination. 

We use a lot of digital media to reach that group. We’re very active with Google. We spend quite a bit on search engine marketing and use their display network to leverage intelligence on what people are searching and to identify people who are interested in the types of activities that our destination does really well. 

We’re basically looking to connect our assets and stories with people who are interested in the sort of destination that New Zealand represents. Rather than thinking about mass channels, we spend much more on finely targeted channels."

Bowler also noted some interesting trends that he has seen over the life of their tourism campaign:

"One of them is the trend towards video. People want to consume a lot of destination video content and we’re producing a lot more of it. Even two years ago, the level of interested in video was much lower than it is today. 

The other trend that overlaps with video is access to the site via mobile devices and tablets. It is growing really fast and we expect access from mobile devices to soon be bigger than access from PCs."

It is interesting to see that such a large and long-lived digital marketing campaign has been successful using the same exact techniques we have been learning in class. Definitely check out the interview for more detail.