Client

Since 1955, the Austrian National Tourist Office (ANTO) has worked to promote Austria as a holiday destination. It cooperates closely with Austrian tourism businesses to promote their products and support their marketing efforts. ANTO targets its marketing to three key regions: Western Europe, Central and Eastern European Countries and overseas countries, covering 96% of all overnight stays.

Brief

Austria’s area of excellence is without a doubt its nature. From majestic mountain vistas and pristine slopes to lush rolling hills and clear lakes, it is a playground for those who love the great outdoors. ANTO wishes to increase the number of leisure travellers in both winter and summer. In winter their target audience are enthusiasts of ski, snowboard and winter sports, in summer those who seek to escape the stress of daily life by unwinding in a natural environment. Encouraging visits from the lucrative UK market is a top priority.  

Both as a winter and summer destination, Austria is not as popular as some other destinations amongst UK holidaymakers. Summer break tourism is low and aside from the main popular ski resorts, several world class Austrian resorts just off the beaten track have low recognition and low numbers of UK visitors. Continuously challenging these perceptions is ANTO’s main marketing goal.

Strategy and Successes

Digital Dialog began working with Austria Tourism in 2016 to execute its UK digital marketing campaigns. The key shared goal is to raise UK market awareness of Austria and specific Austrian locations as both a winter and summer leisure destination.  

A major aspect of these campaigns involved creating and increasing levels of web content. Using connections with niche partners such as winter sports websites, Digital Dialog was able to leverage opportunities for beautiful, image-rich editorial and advertorial content for several campaigns. By carefully curating web placements, Digital Dialog is able to select those that best reflect brand image and campaign objectives.

As well as developing engaging content, Digital Dialog works efficiently to get it in front of the right audience. Audience characteristics and interests – parents of young children, winter sports enthusiasts – are targeted over a range of channels according to what leads to the most engagement and ROI.

Digital Dialog has succeeded in helping lesser-known Austrian ski resorts, such as Serfaus Fiss Ladis, get on the radar of the British public. Additionally, the relaxing nature of Austrian summer holidays has gained prominence in the market.

Campaigns

Unmissable ski resorts in Austria

ANTO wished to get some of Austria’s lesser known ski resorts on the radar of the British public. For this campaign, Digital Dialog wrote an advertorial highlighting 8 Austrian ski resorts off the beaten track. The audience of ski and snowboard enthusiasts were targeted through placement of the advertorial on selected winter sports websites, in addition to an email campaign and display banner ads targeted at winter sports lovers.

Serfaus Fiss Ladis

ANTO wished not only to put this lesser-known ski resort on the map, but position it as the most family friendly skiing report in Europe. Digital Dialog devised a two pronged approach to the challenge. The first phase: planting seeds that would later bear fruit. By embedding advertorials and reviews highlighting the resort on prominent winter sports websites, Digital Dialog built a web presence on authoritative third party winter sports sites for the resort. Once the seeds of the first phase were planted, the second phase was triggered; email and Facebook campaigns were targeted at UK parents with an interest in winter sports to raise their awareness. When they would then go on to search for Serfaus Fiss Ladis, they would encounter the content deployed in phase one. Phase two reached over 586,377 people on Facebook alone and had over 12,500 engagement actions, while the content from phase one continues to grow in SEO rank.

360° Video

If a picture paints a thousand words, how much is a video worth? To really immerse potential visitors into the Austrian landscape, ANTO produced a series of 360 degree videos showcasing the country’s best features. Digital Dialog ran a promotional campaign for these videos on Facebook, Youtube and other 3rd party websites. Facebook and Youtube are the only platforms that support 360 degree videos natively – to get around this limitation, Digital Dialog partnered with a specialist video company. With this company’s ability to package a YouTube video in an ad container, the 360 degree interaction feature was extended across the web using banner ads.

#AustrianTime (Austria in Summer)

To promote tourism in the summer months in Austria, ANTO produced a number of video clips showing different areas and aspects of the country. Digital Dialog wrote engaging copy to support the #AustrianTime campaign and promoted the videos across Facebook. The clips, featuring relaxing getaways in unique countryside settings, were targeted at an urban demographic most likely to take a break from their stressful work routines.