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Sedona tests educational ads and geolocation pilots to steer summer visitors
Summary
The DMO described experiments using Arizona Office of Tourism funds, paid search, geotargeted display (Azure/DataFi) and AllTrails landing pages intended to provide stewardship messaging to likely visitors and encourage shuttle use without inspiring new visitation.
Staff presented results from spring pilots that used co‑funding from the Arizona Office of Tourism Rural Co‑op Program to test “always‑on” educational messaging and hyper‑targeted digital advertising.
The DMO said AOT provided $50,000 and the DMO matched 50% of eligible activity as part of the rural co‑op program. Using that funding, staff piloted paid search, attribution‑based display advertising and geo‑targeted campaigns run through vendors including Madden Media, DVA, Azure (a vendor like DataFi) and DataFi itself.
Tactics included: customized AllTrails maps and new landing pages (hiking guidance, getting around/Sedona Shuttle Connect), paid search keywords tied to trail names, and hyper‑targeted display ads served to repeat springtime visitors from the Phoenix metro. Staff said the paid search campaign (March 15–May 30) drove unusually high click‑through and session duration to the transportation and stewardship pages: the transportation group showed a 21% CTR and sessions averaging more than two minutes.
The DMO also ran a 30‑day hyper‑targeted display campaign to promote the Sedona Shuttle Connect and trailhead shuttle routes. Staff geo‑fenced city limits, park‑and‑ride lots and shuttle‑serviced trailheads to try to measure shuttle ridership via device attribution; they said attribution worked inside hotel polygons and within city limits but pick‑up at small park‑and‑ride polygons was nominal and inconsistent.
Staff said the technology vendors capture location data from apps with location services enabled and that park‑and‑ride polygons may be too small to get reliable device captures. Board members suggested signage or QR codes at park‑and‑rides and an intercept survey; staff said those were options but would require additional resources.
Staff reported the pilots drove nearly 40,000 users to ScenicSedona.com across strategies in spring and that the tests produced a baseline for future paid search and display work, plus improved landing pages and AllTrails integrations. No formal policy or expenditure changes were proposed at the meeting.
