Destination Marketing Podcast Episode 36: Josh Scheer
Adam Stoker: Today's show is brought to you by a great partner of ours named Connect Travel. Connect Travel puts on the premier trade shows and conventions in the destination marketing industry. Coming up in February is the Marketing Leadership Summit, and that's February 19th through the 21st in Kissimmee, Florida. We're really excited about that event. It has a unique format that we'll talk about a little bit later in the show. So go to connecttravel.com if you want more information. We hope to see you there. Adam Stoker: Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Destination Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Stoker. I'm president and CEO of Relic, it's an advertising agency focused specifically on the destination marketing industry. I want to take the knowledge that I've gained over the years and share it for free with all of you. Excited to be here today. I've got a great guest for you and we have a unique product that we want to talk to you about, that we feel like could benefit every destination. Before we get there, I want to introduce our guest today. Our guest today is Josh Scheer, and he is the Digital Marketing Director at Relic, actually. Josh, we're excited to have you here today. Josh Scheer: Hey, thanks for having me. Adam Stoker: 01:13 Josh, we have a few questions we ask all our guests on the show and I want to ask you those questions too, alright? First of all, I want to know if you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be? What's your dream destination? Josh Scheer: I still haven't made it anywhere in Europe yet, so that's a short-term goal. Hope to make that happen sooner rather than later. Adam Stoker: You know, you need to spend more time with some of our guests that we've had previously because there's a lot of people that have been to Europe. Josh Scheer: I know, I feel like I'm really missing out. One thing I'd really like to do though is there's a trail called the West Highland trail in Scotland that runs South to North across the country. It's like 140 or 50 miles long and I would love to take a week, hike that, go from town to town, hit some distilleries. That would be fun. Adam Stoker: Wow. That would be quite the trail, that's a very specific trip. Josh Scheer: Yes. Adam Stoker: What’s it called? Josh Scheer: I think it's the West Highland trail. Adam Stoker: The West Highland trail. Josh Scheer: If I'm remembering correctly. Yeah. Adam Stoker: Alright. You're going to have to get a Scottish accent between now and then so you can fit in. Josh Scheer: Oh, I'm not going to try that. Nope. Adam Stoker: Just give us the West Highlands trail in a Scottish accent. Do you mind, really quick? You going to pass? Oh, you're going to give it a try. Josh Scheer: Nope. No one needs to hear that. Adam Stoker: That was close. That was very close. Josh Scheer: Sorry, everybody. Adam Stoker: 02:36 Tell me, of all the places you have traveled Josh, and actually I follow you on Instagram, so I get to see that you do a great job of taking advantage of a lot of our local places, but tell me your favorite place you've been. Josh Scheer: Oh man. This year we got to do a lot of stuff. I think one of the highlights was St Lucia in the Caribbean. We did one of the big box all-inclusive resort things and thought it was going to be a little weird, but it was actually quite enjoyable. Adam Stoker: Was it? Josh Scheer: Yeah, loved it. Adam Stoker: Okay. Josh Scheer: And that was a lot of fun. And then, probably one of the other big highlights this year was we got to hike The Wave down in, I guess Northern Arizona is technically where it is. That was awesome. Adam Stoker: That's not easy to do, right? Josh Scheer: No, we got super lucky. They only allow 20 people in every day, permit-wise and they're pretty strict about enforcing that too. We won the lottery; they do a daily drawing and we got in. It was amazing. Adam Stoker: When you put in 400 applications, sometimes that helps your chances of your name getting drawn, is that right? Josh Scheer: That would help. But no, this was a one-time we're going to try it and it worked out. Adam Stoker: It was legit. You actually won it. You didn't cheat at all? Josh Scheer: No, didn't cheat. There were like 70 something applications the day we went, and we were one of the 10 that got drawn. Adam Stoker: Wow. So, tell me about The Wave. What was amazing about it? Josh Scheer: 04:03 It's such a super beautiful, unique rock formation. If you haven't seen it, you've got to look it up. I can't even describe it, but it looks like a wave in sandstone. Adam Stoker: How would you feel about posting some pictures of The Wave on the LinkedIn group Destination Marketers when we're done here? Josh Scheer: Oh yeah. Then you can see my wife and my dog too. Adam Stoker: You know what, we're dying to see your wife and your dog, so that's perfect. That's awesome. Okay, well Josh, we're excited to have you on today and I know we're going to talk about a specific product that we've been working with, but before we do that, I want to have you share with our audience a little bit about your background and what led you here today. Josh Scheer: Yeah, sure. I started my career in journalism, that's what I went to school for. Focused a lot of that on the PR side of things and then a lot of local reporting. Then I spent a good seven years in Wyoming as a reporter, and then ultimately, a news director managing a team of reporters there. While I was there, I got to work a lot with our local destination and help them with some of their marketing on our news site, which was so much fun because I really loved the place that we were living, that was Lander, Wyoming. Getting people excited about where we lived was super fun. Also while we were there, we did all content marketing for our news sites. We didn't do any sort of display advertising or AdSense or anything like that. Getting to write that content and see the winds that our clients had really led me away from news and into marketing, and man, it's been a wild ride the last few years. Adam Stoker: Yeah, I think that makes you an interesting digital marketer, because a lot of digital marketers are so caught up in the metrics, which you are, you have a great feel for, but you can appreciate the differentiation ability of creative and I think that makes you unique as a digital marketer. Josh Scheer: Yeah. It's been a lot of fun. As I transitioned out of news, I spent a lot of time specifically in paid search and learning how to run those PPC campaigns. It's grown from there. I love everything about it from social to display ads, to email marketing. It's all fun. Adam Stoker: Tell me a little bit about what you and your team are doing here at Relic to help some of our destination clients, the types of channels you're working within, some of the stuff you're seeing. That would be a great piece of context for our listeners. Josh Scheer: 06:52 Yeah, sure. We're pretty full service as far as a digital agency goes. We do everything from paid search, like I said, to brand awareness through display advertising, to social media marketing at a couple of different levels. Building that brand awareness on Facebook and Instagram, but then also pushing people through that marketing funnel and getting them to download travel guides, join newsletter lists, getting them excited about the individual destinations. From there we take them into the email marketing where we're writing a bunch of content with our content team and then serving that out on an automated basis. That product is getting more and more fun on a monthly basis where we're finding some cool things that we can do there. Oh, and SEO too. That's always important. Making sure you're ready and available on Google. Adam Stoker: Great. I'm excited to have you here today. With most of the people that I bring on, I'll have them come in and kind of talk more in general about their trade and I'm sure we could do an entire episode on digital marketing for destinations, but I really wanted to highlight a technology that you're using that you found some real success with, with some of our destination clients. I think very few destinations are aware of this specific technology. I'm wondering if you could walk us through Simpli.fi, what it does and why it's been beneficial for some of our clients. Josh Scheer: Sure. Simpli.fi is one of several programmatic display ad providers out there. If you're not familiar with what programmatic means, it's just the automated buying and selling of digital ad space, whether it's display, video, et cetera. Adam Stoker: Why would I do programmatic instead of social, paid search, or the other channels that are out there? Josh Scheer: It's reaching a different audience. While Google has a pretty extensive display network, you could even say that Google's display ads are programmatic because it's automated buying and selling, right? They don't have a monopoly on the display ad space. There are other providers out there that help you reach additional people and Simpli.fi is one of those. Adam Stoker: Alright, great. Tell me more. Tell me more about Simpli.fi. Josh Scheer: 09:18 I mean every display programmatic provider has its pros and cons, but where Simpli.fi really sets itself apart is with its geo-targeting capabilities. Not only geo-targeting but all things geo, really, even geo-conversion tracking. Let me see, does that make sense? Adam Stoker: It does. There's a whole lot that goes into that, right? Maybe give us a couple of use case examples. Let's talk geo-fencing, right? Because that's a component of that. Give me a use case of why I would want to do that and how. Josh Scheer: One thing that's different about Simpli.fi than other ad platforms is usually when you're setting up a new campaign, you've got some sort of geographic region you're targeting, whether it's zip codes or maybe a 10 mile radius or even a one mile radius, I think is as narrow as you can get on Google. Simpli.fi uses GPS data from phones so that we can actually draw very specific outlines of where we want to target our ads. For example, Simpli.fi is great for anyone with a physical space, but if you wanted to target people who are at a specific mall or something and serve those people ads, you could draw lines directly around the boundaries of that mall and serve just those people ads. Adam Stoker: What if it was a trade show? Josh Scheer: Trade shows, you can get down to the room. One thing I've done for clients in the past is we've gone to trade shows. We geo-fence the entire convention center and served as the people there, encouraging people to show up at our client's booth. Then we can actually go a step further draw a smaller square around where our client's booth is located and be able to see how many devices that were served an ad actually showed up at our client’s booth. Adam Stoker: Okay. Is that the main function of Simpli.fi the geo-targeting, geo-fencing capability and the ability to serve ads based on the location that someone has entered? Josh Scheer: 11:36 That is its main differentiator. It can go beyond that and serve ads based on other targeting methods. It can do contextual targeting based on content on different websites. It can do a simple website retargeting. You've got a pixel on the site so you can serve ads to people who've been to your site before and even IP address targeting. If we had a list of IP addresses, we could upload that and target those. Adam Stoker: Okay. What if you have a target persona and say, "Hey, here's the demographics that that my target persona is looking for." Are you able to plug those in and target those specific people through Simpli.fi? Josh Scheer: To a certain extent. Adam Stoker: Okay, there are some limitations. Josh Scheer: There are some limitations. I can't tell it to only target people within a certain age range or gender so to speak, but I can say I want these ads to show up on websites where the content is about travel, and if our ads are about travel, we know the audience is going to be more relevant. Adam Stoker: So, more qualitative. We're able to see a little bit more psychographics through Simpli.fi and target that way, interest space. Josh Scheer: Sure. Yes. Adam Stoker: Alright, good. Did we get through what it is? Josh Scheer: I think so. Adam Stoker: Now if I'm a destination, why do I care? Josh Scheer: 13:00 Yeah, why do we care? I think what makes this such an interesting option for destinations, especially smaller destinations who can't afford a big attribution product like an Arrivalist or Adara, where you can actually see visitation tied to your advertising. This is a much more cost-effective way to do it at a smaller scale. We could, in theory, take our targeting, whether it's we are retargeting people who have been to the site and downloaded a travel guide and then we could serve those people impressions and ads and then track who actually shows up in the destination. We can draw that geo-fence and watch those devices come through. Adam Stoker: Okay, so you're saying that we can run ads in a geographic location, say, Salt Lake as an example, just because we're here, and I want to draw people to Salt Lake from Southern California. I can run those ads in Southern California and see of those impressions who actually showed up within the destination, obviously not name and information, but I can tie that conversion together? Josh Scheer: Yes. Adam Stoker: Now that's interesting for the tourism industry because you know Adara and Arrivalist and, I believe, Sojourn also has a product similar. Josh Scheer: It does. Adam Stoker: They've had a monopoly on the ability to tie that conversion together. I know this isn't a robust or comprehensive attribution tool, but tell me what this gives a small destination, as far as a leg up, if they can't afford a major attribution tool like the ones that we've mentioned. Josh Scheer: Yeah. This helps you show some ROI. You can see a return and actual visitation based on your advertising. It's something that's hard to come by in this industry and that's really important. Adam Stoker: Totally. What about, let's say we've identified that they're in the destination. We've drawn the line around the destination, right? How can I use Simpli.fi to communicate or to advertise to people that are in the destination? Let's say I have an event, right? And I'm like, "Okay, you're here. Come to this event." What type of ability does that have? Josh Scheer: Oh man, I think there's a couple of different ways we could do it. I mean, obviously you could run a traditional geo targeted campaign with tighter restrictions. So, if we've got an event at a location, we can. Adam Stoker: Let's say the Fair's going on. Josh Scheer: 15:40 We want to get people to the Fair. That's what we're trying to do here. We could run a wider radius kind of ad campaign like we would elsewhere, targeted around people who are in our location and then the ad obviously would need to speak to the Fair, encourage visitation, have a good landing page behind it, strong calls to action, and then based on those impressions served, we should be able to see with a smaller geo conversion zone who received an ad actually showed up. Adam Stoker: You can actually attract the people that saw the ad within the destination, then you've got a second geo-fence and you can see if they actually attended the event. Josh Scheer: Yes. Adam Stoker: Another unique and interesting feature for destinations that have had a difficult time tracking conversions in the past, right? Josh Scheer: Absolutely. Adam Stoker: I mentioned earlier that today's show is brought to you by Connect Travel, their Marketing Leadership Summit is coming up in February. I had the opportunity to go last year and it was such an interesting format. It's actually a format that allows you as a destination to sit down with suppliers for a few minutes, a short period of time to see if you want to continue the conversation. It allowed me to meet with several people and get to know their needs quickly and build a quick relationship so that we could see if we wanted to continue the conversation. If you're looking for new technologies, new products, new partners, it's a great way to have a quick introduction without taking too much of your time. I hope to see you there February 19th through the 21st in Kissimmee, Florida and president Obama will be speaking this year, so we're excited for that event and we'll see you there. Adam Stoker: Alright. I'm going to keep firing at you. Josh Scheer: Hit me. Adam Stoker: Let's say I've got people who come to my destination and I'd like for them to book a second trip back. I've geo-fenced my destination, now how and when will I start to run those ads to get them to come back? Josh Scheer: 17:52 Yeah, this is a great question. Simpli.fi calls it event retargeting. What we would do at that point is we would set up our tight geo-fence just around people we care about, the devices we care about, and we can collect that over a set amount of time. I think it defaults to a max of two weeks, but then you can set recurring ones to start right after that. And essentially you collect an audience of those devices that were in your location and then serve ads to them regardless of where they go and encourage them to come back. Adam Stoker: That's interesting, especially if you're targeting more of a drive audience, right? People that can get there without booking a flight or people that it's more of a staycation. They could come twice in a three-month period or something like that. Right? If you've got an appealing enough event or message going on. Josh Scheer: And if you were collecting devices at a small enough region like you know they came to this specific spot within your destination, your ads should be encouraging them to come back and go to a different spot. Adam Stoker: Wait, now it's getting interesting for me. I haven't thought about this, but the way you worded that, so if somebody came and they went to the Fair, but they didn't go to the amusement park, well the amusement park is kind of like a fair, so maybe that's a bad idea. The shopping mall, right? Let's use the shopping mall. So, I've got an outlet mall within my destination. You're saying that if I've got the tracking that they went to the Fair, I can say I want everybody at the fair to come back for these major discounts at an outlet mall 30 days later. Josh Scheer: Yes. Adam Stoker: Ooh. Okay. I hadn't thought about that exact use case. Josh Scheer: The one limitation to be aware of is that I think Simpli.fi refreshes data every 30 days, so it's not like we could collect devices today and then serve ads at them six months later, we would lose that. Adam Stoker: How long can I postpone displaying those ads after someone's left the destination? Josh Scheer: Simpli.fi keeps the data for 30 days. Adam Stoker: 30 days. So I can say, "Okay, I want these ads to run 30 days later." Josh Scheer: Yes. Adam Stoker: Interesting. I like that. Alright Josh, I'm going to keep it going. Josh Scheer: On rapid fire here. I love it. Adam Stoker: Convention and trade show, we talked about if I have a booth at a trade show, right? I can encourage people to come to my booth. Josh Scheer: 20:36 Right. Yeah, I was just going to say, what we've done in the past is, like I already said, we geo-fence the whole convention center, encourage people to show up at the booth. Most places have booth numbers, so make sure that's on the ad. If you've got appointment setting capabilities for your show, have that on your landing page so that people can just do that after they see your ad, but then beyond that and just like most trade shows have a map of booths, right? You can get really specific in tracking who shows up at your booth because you should be able to find it and draw that smaller geo fence. After that you should also be collecting devices during the event so that you can re-target them afterwards. Adam Stoker: Okay, let's say I can target anyone at the event regardless of whether or not they came to my booth, but then I can also have a unique message for people that actually attended my booth, right? Josh Scheer: Correct. Adam Stoker: Alright Josh, this is interesting. Josh Scheer: It's amazing. Adam Stoker: I don't know that for a tourism destination to book with tour operators and stuff like that, I don't know that we've been able to use it that way for that specific purpose, but I could see this as a huge opportunity for any of our listeners that have convention and event space and a sales staff targeting that convention and event space. If you're at a trade show, Simpli.fi is a great technology for that, right? Josh Scheer: Yeah. It's a game changer. Adam Stoker: Alright. What else? What have I missed? What are other used cases for a destination? Josh Scheer: 22:20 I think one of the biggest recommendations I'd have if a destination was going after this, if you're wanting to ensure you're not wasting ad spend because you are still buying ads on this thing, you're still serving impressions. I think the most efficient strategy is to prospect elsewhere. Keep doing your SEO and keep doing your social media, get people to your site, but then use Simpli.fi for retargeting. Use Simpli.fi to reinforce your brand message to people who know you and encouraging them to actually take that step and show up because it's a more specific audience. You're not going to be spending wild CPMs on people who may never show up. Adam Stoker: Yeah, so this isn't your awareness and branding mechanism. This is once you've defined an audience, use this platform to continue to engage them in a much more targeted manner. Josh Scheer: Absolutely. Adam Stoker: Okay. You've given us theoretical use cases, tell me some of the ways our clients are using it right now. I know we've got an outlet mall that's using it right now. Tell me what they've been doing. Josh Scheer: What we've been doing there is a lot of specific event-oriented advertising. We're doing a lot of ads trying to encourage people to show up to a specific sale or an event that's on a specific day, and what we've been doing is we've been doing some conquesting with it. To define that, we have been geo-fencing other malls, other shopping centers, and serving ads to people who have been there to encourage them to come to our client’s mall. Adam Stoker: That's where you start to get into the competitive opportunities there, right? So if I have a destination that is a heated competitor of, let's say we're going after the same audience, we've got similar products, I would compare maybe Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia. When I was in Savannah, I was telling people I loved it there, and everybody said, "If you love Savannah, you've got to try Charleston." It's like, if I was Charleston, I would consider geo-fencing Savannah and say, you've been to Savannah, now come and see what they refer to as the classier side. It was a more upscale experience. It would be interesting to see those types of messages targeting people who already took the other trip or visited the other destination. Josh Scheer: 24:58 Yeah, I think that would be really cool. I would again, to keep your audience super unique and targeted, pick those high-volume destination attractions within Savannah and then target those people to come to Charleston. Adam Stoker: Interesting. Alright, so we're doing that for the mall. I love that idea. You know, if you're an attraction within a destination and let's say you know that a certain restaurant is very likely to have people leave their restaurant and come to your attraction, why not geo-fence the restaurant, right? Josh Scheer: Ooh, absolutely. Adam Stoker: What else? What are other ways that you feel like, either ways that people could use it or other stuff that you've been doing for our current clients? Josh Scheer: Another use case that I could see this being really cool for destinations would be targeting specifically hotels and motels in the destination, and then serving people at those addresses with messages about things you can do while you're there, events that are happening that day, all sorts of cool stuff like that. Adam Stoker: Yeah. The hotels, I mean we know they're from out of town. We know they're visiting, let's serve them ads that get them to come out to our restaurant or to our attraction or activity or whatever. Josh Scheer: Concert that night. Adam Stoker: Events. Yeah, I love it. Josh Scheer: Something else we've been doing is another benefit. I can't believe I didn't mention this earlier, but Simpli.fi allows you to do addressable geo-targeting. Adam Stoker: What does that mean? Josh Scheer: That means I can upload a list of physical addresses to the platform, it will draw geo-fences just around those addresses and then serve ads to the devices that are in those geo-fences. Adam Stoker: If I have a list of all the restaurants within my destination? Josh Scheer: Yeah. The way we've been using this is as a support to direct mail campaigns. We will take the same list that we're sending direct mail pieces to reinforce that message with digital ads that have the same messaging and then serving ads to those devices at those locations. Adam Stoker: I love it. Okay, so with Simpli.fi, what are the drawbacks? What do people need to be careful? We're getting people excited about Simpli.fi. What do you need to know if your destination is looking to start using it? Josh Scheer: 27:34 I think a couple of things. One, it sounds creepy and that's because it is a little bit. We're using GPS data from devices in order to target these ads and then track the conversions. I think where Simpli.fi does a great job of making sure that none of that really personal information is available to the advertiser. It's very safe for the end user. But where it could get creepy is if your messaging is way too specific. Adam Stoker: Like uncomfortably specific. Josh Scheer: Like uncomfortably specific. I would caution to not get like, I think the exception would be trade shows, people are expecting trade show messages, but man, if you're targeting this attraction like, "Hey, we saw you went to the Fair, now come to our thing." That might be a little too heavy. Adam Stoker: That's fair. Okay. Josh Scheer: Then with any sort of display platform, there's an opportunity to spend a ton of money on a ton of impressions. You could blow it up really quickly. Being specific with your targeting and your message will improve your spend, just be careful. Adam Stoker: Yes. Keep your audiences small. Josh Scheer: Yeah, keep right at scale tight. Adam Stoker: Now Simpli.fi has minimums, right? That you have to be willing to commit to. So that's another, I wouldn't call it a drawback, but something you have to be aware of. Josh Scheer: Sure. They do ask for it. I think it's $10 or 15,000 a month that they want advertisers to spend in order to keep using it. Adam Stoker: For our larger destinations, I would say, make sure you're prepared to spend $10 to $15,000 a month. For our smaller destinations. I would say you need an aggregator of some sort. In our case, it's the agency, it's us, right? In other cases, other agencies, if they're not, they should be using it. Go to your agency if you have a relationship with one and ask for it. Or there are Simpli.fi boutique agencies out there too that are focused on that programmatic type. I don't know how many of them are using it specifically for the tourism industry or if it's tailored to that, but you either need to be prepared to spend $10 to $15,000 on a monthly basis, or build, or already have a relationship with an aggregator or an agency. Right? Josh Scheer: Yeah, exactly. Adam Stoker: Okay. Any other drawbacks or hesitations that people need to be aware of with Simpli.fi? Josh Scheer: No, honestly, I love it. It's pretty simple to use. If you're doing it yourself and not through an aggregator, the platform is a little ugly. If I'm being super honest. Adam Stoker: You're saying the back end. Josh Scheer: The backend of actually doing the work, it's a little obnoxious at times in there. Adam Stoker: Takes a minute to get in and learn. Josh Scheer: It takes a minute to learn it, but it's not horrible. I've seen worse. Adam Stoker: You've seen worse. Josh Scheer: I've seen worse. Adam Stoker: Well that's good. Tell me, for our listeners, if they could have one takeaway today and say, "Okay, I like this Simpli.fi idea. Where do I start? What type of buy, would I start with?" Or what's your action item for anybody looking to use this, what do I do tomorrow? Josh Scheer: 31:01 Yeah. If you haven't done anything like this before, I would start with something around a specific event. I would find an audience at an event that you want to target and market to them specifically and encourage them to show up to your destination, or start with a site retargeting campaign, retarget people who have been to your site and know your destination and then encourage them with ads to show up and track that visitation. Those would be the two places I would start. Adam Stoker: I like it. Is there anything I haven't asked you, Josh, that you feel our listeners need to know? Josh Scheer: Oh man, I think we've crushed it. It's such a fun platform and it's new and I think it's something everybody needs to be trying out. Adam Stoker: Yeah, great technology, great product. I think what I would say is don't let the minimums scare you because there's lots of aggregators out there that are going to be able to knock those minimums down and it can work out to be much less expensive than in Adara or in Arrivalist. You just have to have the right partner and if you're a large destination, you need to use this tomorrow. Josh Scheer: Absolutely. Adam Stoker: Josh, thanks for coming on today. It's been good to have you. Josh Scheer: Yeah, it's been fun. Adam Stoker: Yeah. I appreciate it. We'll have to watch for that picture of your wife and your dog at The Wave. Josh Scheer: Oh yeah, you got it. Adam Stoker: Alright everybody, this has been another great episode of the Destination Marketing Podcast. Thank you so much for being with us. A couple of reminders, we post content that's relevant to the show in the Destination Marketers LinkedIn page. Please make sure that you go in, you add yourself to the Destination Marketers LinkedIn, and get in and see some of the supporting content that goes along with the show. The other thing, leave us a review. If you're enjoying the content, we'd love to get a review from you and continue to help us climb up the charts and be more find-able for people that are searching for great podcasts within the destination marketing industry. Other than that, thanks everybody, and we'll talk to you next week.
Page of
We recommend upgrading to the latest Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge.
Please check your internet connection and refresh the page. You might also try disabling any ad blockers.
You can visit our support center if you're having problems.