The secret is out. Each year more people are discovering the Eastern Shore of Virginia’s charm. The Eastern Shore of Virginia Tourism Commission has worked hard to share what makes the Eastern Shore so special with new audiences and in 2017 saw huge gains.
Seven digital platforms market the Eastern Shore to visitors, expanded from two in 2013. This broad approach allows the tourism commission to talk to a wide variety of visitors across the web.
The primary platform is its website. In 2012 33,000 unique visitors viewed esvatourism.org. In 2017, the website drew 236,000 unique visitors, an increase of 621 percent. In 2017, 75 percent of visitors to esvatourism.org had never visited the site before.
The top pages on esvatourism.org were Eat, Outside, Events, Stay and Do. Visits to the Stay page are a good indicator that users intend to travel to Virginia’s Eastern Shore. That page had 30,000 unique visits in 2017.
The Eastern Shore Tourism Commission also uses a feature story platform, blog.esvatourism.org, to show visitors all of the unique things they can see and do in the region. Started in 2015 with just 3,000 views, the blog’s 25 posts received 37,000 views in 2017.
Phenomenal growth in social media marketing is key to reaching younger travelers. [Read more…]