Goals: Clearly state your marketing goals. What did you strive to achieve using this piece or program?
The pioneer of integrative wellness, Canyon Ranch has a strong, proven tradition of guiding resort guests to lasting transformation since 1979. But after three decades of growth and market changes, the brand was in need of its own transformation. Beginning in 2020 and culminating in a revamped digital and social media presence in 2022 and 2023, FINE helped the brand define its next phase—from brand vision and strategy to digital experience and digital marketing.
The digital and social media strategy has been a pivotal element in the brand’s evolution, bringing renewed awareness, engagement, and ultimately, occupancy among new and existing audiences. The four major goals driving digital and social media platform strategy include:
- Engage: Build active social audience relationships, content, and community around the brand purpose and promise “To Inspire Your Well Way of Life”
- Express: Continue enhancing premium luxury perception as a leader in wellness space, distinct from traditional resort/hospitality comp set
- Reach: Recruit diverse new segments to diversify audience composition, acquire new customers via social word-of-mouth
- Drive Traffic: Orchestrate deep links to key areas of specific interest within the website to attract, convert, and retain revenue-generating customers
The central aim was to elevate organic engagement In owned digital marketing channels like social, to increase visibility and reach, which helps drive effectiveness of the paid and earned media to follow. KPIs were based on Audience Growth, Impressions, Engagements, Post Link Clicks, Web Traffic, Conversion.
The real measure was whether digital media could offer Canyon Ranch’s audience the first meaningful step on what could be a whole new way of life.
Results: Which of your original goals did you achieve and how? How did you measure the effectiveness of the piece or campaign? Entrants should provide quantifiable results of their tactics or campaigns. (for example, click through rates or ad equivalency)
Building on Canyon Ranch’s brand position, FINE developed original social content to meet the evolving mindset of wellness seekers. More than overt promotion, the goal was to engage audiences with the conversation, insights, and inspiration they seek.
Visual storytelling was as thoughtfully composed as Canyon Ranch’s wellness pathway experiences. FINE tested engagement levels by topic, and the impact of tailoring content for Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, YouTube. We optimized based on findings, tailoring posts to seasons, situations, social climate, other timely factors.
With a social strategy based on engagement and the data to optimize impact (see Section 3), we gained deeper insight into customer groups, improving marketing strategy with insights that fueled development of targeted multi-channel campaigns. Highlights of the approach:
-Compelling content executed in a range of form factors/patterns to test effectiveness
- Recurring series, like Monday Mantras, recipes (w/nutritional, seasonal, culinary perspectives) and Ask an Expert
- Property/product discovery to help those unfamiliar with the on-premise experience see featured events, activities, and bundled service “pathways”
- Featuring leading wellness experts with inspiring/informative point-of-views
- Impact “guestimonials” touting personal outcomes and transformation via user-generated content
- Generalized wellness tips and advice, seasonally targeted across diverse ages, genders, body types
- Tailored by channel and across core brand and location-specific social profiles
Social content integrated across staycycle and lifecycle touchpoints, from UGC featured in on-property digital signage to callouts in the arrival Welcome Kit. It extended into email aimed at loyal guests, travel advisors, dormant customers, and more. Measured and fine-tuned based on results and perceived value, targeted content enabled the brand to drive bookings while providing value as a guide on your wellness path.
Return on Investment: How much revenue has the piece or campaign generated and how does this compare to your goal? What was the return on investment?
This campaign delivered very strong results and return on investment with customer engagement, in brand awareness in the social space, with driving website traffic, becoming a business-critical driver of bookings and content “engine” across all lifecycle marketing programs.
The key metrics that drive ROI include:
+ 31% in cross-profile growth
+ 62% increase in traffic from organic social
+ 99% increase in impressions
+ 114% increase in engagements
Viewed purely through the lens of driving online bookings, with a conservative measurement (last click attribution), we saw a Return on Investment of 2:1, meaning for every dollar we spent on developing creative and driving channel activation, we made $2 back through a direct guest booking.
This is a conservative number as it does not factor in a multi touch attribution model in or incorporate a great number of wellness advisor- and travel advisor-driven phone bookings.
Division
Digital - Social Media/Social Networking