Keith County Chamber tourism director Sean Rubick and marketing consultant Lana presented the Keith County Tourism proposed 2024–25 marketing plan and previewed a geofencing demo (Placer AI) that the tourism office piloted for Rendezvous to estimate visitor counts and origin areas.

Rubick described how the vendor Placer AI uses aggregated cell‑device location data to estimate the number of visits to a geofenced area and to map visitor origins, visit duration and visitation patterns. For a geofence drawn around the Rendezvous footprint, Rubick said Placer AI reported roughly 4,300 visits during the event period and about 3,300 distinct visitors (approximately 1,000 repeat visits). He told commissioners the data can be broken down by age group, household income, education level, origin geographies and typical next destinations after leaving the geofence, and that the tourism office believes such data would improve targeting for promotional grants and advertising decisions.

Lana explained the marketing plan’s three strategic priorities: (1) email marketing platform implementation (Constant Contact) to build segmented subscriber lists and conduct AB testing, (2) an ongoing website strategy that updates metadata seasonally and embeds video content to perform better in search engines, and (3) a focused events strategy to better promote local events and to create landing pages and concierge‑style support for event planners to attract conferences and group events to Keith County.

Cost and use considerations: Rubick and Lana said the last vendor conversation suggested an annual cost in the mid‑thousands (estimates heard previously were in the $6,000–$8,000 range) and noted the visitor committee would evaluate whether visitor committee funds should pay for a subscription and whether tourism grant recipients could be required or encouraged to geofence their event dates in advance. They proposed a Placer AI demonstration for the visitor committee so elected officials and stakeholders could view the product and its capabilities before deciding whether to subscribe.

Why it matters: tourism‑related lodging tax revenue is up year‑over‑year and targeted data could help the county better allocate promotion dollars to markets that produce overnight stays. Commissioners asked staff to schedule a Placer AI demonstration for the visitor committee and to continue work on Constant Contact and the website strategy.

Quotes from the meeting: “We geofenced off from Highway 30 up to Third Street and then the block from A to Spruce Street... we had 4,300 visits in that time frame, 3,300 visitors,” said Sean Rubick. Marketing consultant Lana said the office will begin by building a clean email database and that Constant Contact will allow segmentation and AB testing to improve open and click rates.