Blue Ridge Travel & Tourism

Blue Ridge Chamber of Commerce

Blue Ridge, GA

Blue Ridge, GA, is a destination resort community 90 miles north of Atlanta. They have a large cabin rental business, and their main source of bed tax revenue is derived from independent cabin rental companies throughout the county. The majority of their economy is solely reliant on tourism in their mountain destination.

$3M

hotel motel tax revenue increase year-over-year

website visits from search ads in 90 days

17k

True Views of YouTube video ads in one month

"I appreciate that I can see exactly how effective my LocaliQ campaigns are through reporting and love having a strategy that enables Blue Ridge to meet prospective visitors where they are online."

- Jan Hackett, President & Director of Tourism, Blue Ridge Chamber of Commerce

Goals

Challenges

Blue Ridge has grown and developed over the last 20 years into a popular mountain destination, but the group wanted a way to reach new people as the internet became the predominant place consumers search for vacation destinations and accommodations. And, as more people use aggregator sites like Airbnb and VRBO, they needed to drive traffic to their website to take advantage of their rental properties.

Solutions

Blue Ridge started working with LocaliQ more than six years ago to reach prospective searchers online, and also get in front of consumers on social media and retarget them online. They use:

Video Ads

Display

Search Ads

Results

Since working with the team for LocaliQ solutions, Blue Ridge has nearly doubled their hotel motel tax revenue, an incredible indicator of success they attribute to their marketing campaigns. Even in the slower seasons, Blue Ridge is seeing more visitors than historically measured as a result of getting in front of more online visitors. And, in their busier months, they’re booked to 100% capacity.

Paid search marketing and Facebook advertising drive traffic to their website and help them engage with prospective visitors, while retargeting helps them drive repeat traffic to the site so they can increase rentals of their properties. They have also seen incredible results on YouTube, resulting in increased awareness for their destination.

Jan Hackett, President of the Chamber of Commerce and Director of Tourism, said she appreciates that she can see exactly how effective her LocaliQ campaigns are through her reporting and loves having a strategy that enables Blue Ridge to meet prospective visitors where they are online.

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