For decades, tourism marketing has been a series of postcard-perfect stills and generalized messages of “we’re the perfect destination for you.” The modern traveler is looking for more personalized experiences, with Skift’s 2023 Trends Report finding that campaigns targeting niche consumer segments are seeing 27% higher engagement rates than mass marketing campaigns.
Knowing this, Visit North Carolina flipped the narrative, asking, “which travelers are perfect for us?” Paranormal tourism is a $30B industry in the United States and growing. With hundreds of years of history and haunts, we sought to take advantage of our natural– and supernatural–assets and drive increased tourism and engagement through integrated storytelling.
With this mission in mind, we told the story of how North Carolina is not only First in Flight but also First in Fright.
To raise awareness of North Carolina’s haunted happenings, Visit North Carolina created a robust ecosystem of spine-chilling content to generate awareness for the state’s spooky sites and capture highly engaged leads. To capture this audience, we made sure the devil was truly in the details.
Podcast: Recorded real travelers’ haunted experiences across the state, from camping experiences at Devil’s Tramping Ground to close encounters with Demon Dogs. This 8-episode series was launched across traditional platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcast but also extended to a nontraditional podcast platform—YouTube. There, we connected with spooky searchers by uploading podcast episodes complemented by custom, atmospheric animations filled with easter eggs to reward the curious.
Web content: Constructed North Carolina’s first-ever digital Haunted Trail, creating a map of scare-worthy adventures and stays across the state. To accompany the trail, we intentionally developed the trail into evergreen, snackable road-trip-style itineraries by region, alongside seasonal haunted content and spooky stays to maximize search value year-round.
Email: Built a custom email segment for haunted tourism enthusiasts, tapping into a new highly engaged traveler group and feeding their fervor with haunted content throughout the year.
Paid social: With dual goals of generating listenership and leads, we engaged spooky adventure enthusiasts through a combination of in-feed podcast ads and lead generation forms for the email segment.
Influencer: Collaborated with two influencers for the podcast launch to highlight haunted destinations tailored to varying degrees of audience investment, from out-of-state creators specializing in haunted tourism like The Ghoul Guide (@theghoulguide) to local creators like Lauren’s Suitcase (@laurenssuitcase), highlighting family-friendly destinations for an in-state audience.
Organic social: Dove deeper into the stories behind spots along the Haunted Trail through static and short-form video posts across social platforms, driving traffic to the website and podcast.
Launched on Friday, September 13, the First in Fright campaign gained quick traction. In an unexpected and tragic twist, Hurricane Helene devastated much of Western North Carolina just weeks after the campaign launched. This caused us to pause or cancel all paid activations.
Normally, this would be a significant hurdle for a campaign with results hard to recoup. In the case of First in Fright, it revealed the power of storytelling, owned channels, and significant—primarily organic—results.
Podcast: In 6 months, the First in Fright podcast has amassed 23.3K listens across platforms, gaining a spot in the Top 30 on Spotify and Top 50 on Apple Podcasts. YouTube uploads generated over 61.5K impressions and a watch time of over 528 hours.
Website: Content supporting all owned channels gleaned over 89.7K organic views on the web with 62.1K new users.
Email: The First in Fright email segment grew to 9.6K users, with an average open rate 41% higher than the industry benchmark and email users seeing an average 3:28 spent on First in Fright content.
Influencer: Haunted adventures with content creators captivated new audiences and North Carolina travelers alike, earning 103.8K impressions during launch and generating valuable content for future use.
Organic social: Content across channels amassed over 392.8K impressions and 17.9K engagements.
Beyond quantitative success, First in Fright was an opportunity for Visit North Carolina to serve a new niche of travelers and a valuable opportunity to connect with North Carolinian communities of all sizes and tell their stories.
