Seven Strategies to Elevate Your Co-op Destination Marketing

Co-op destination marketing is a strategy that most any destination can embrace to boost its brand and attract visitation. It allows a destination to partner with other cities or states to share the cost of marketing during a dedicated campaign.

When you’re ready to take the plunge, these seven practices are key to supporting your co-op destination marketing campaign—and to ensuring success with your partners!

1. Align on Goals and Metrics

All parties in a co-op must have clear, shared objectives for the campaign, whether it’s increasing brand awareness, driving bookings or enhancing customer engagement. Setting up consistent metrics to track success from the start is essential to maintaining momentum toward success. Get your research teams on board if needed to be sure that you’re measuring everything with the same metaphorical ruler.

To enhance transparency and accountability, implement a shared dashboard or reporting system that allows all partners to view real-time campaign performance. This enables quick decision-making if adjustments are needed.

2. Leverage Shared Data and Insights

Cooperation is at the heart of a co-op. No surprise there, so pool your data and customer insights from all partners to create a more targeted and personalized marketing strategy. Understanding mutual customer behavior can enhance the effectiveness of your campaign and can shed light on blind spots that any party may have had. You don’t know what you don’t know, after all!

Always make sure to implement secure data-sharing protocols and obtain necessary permissions before sharing customer information to maintain trust and legal compliance.

3. Maintain Open Communication

Keep that line open. Regularly communicate with partners to align on progress, share feedback, and make necessary adjustments. Like in any relationship, this helps avoid misunderstandings and keeps the campaign on track. 

Designate a primary point of contact for each partner and establish a recurring meeting cadence with structured agendas to streamline communication, so that all partners know what to expect in terms of touching base.

4. Offer Exclusive Promotions

Create special deals or offers available only through the partnership, incentivizing customers to choose your joint offering over competitors. These exclusives will drive more traffic and sales and generate a bigger return on your co-op destination marketing investment. 

To accurately measure the impact of these offers, develop a unique tracking system such as a special promo code or a dedicated landing page to enter. This approach serves a dual purpose: it allows you to quantify the success of your promotion while also capturing valuable user data for targeted marketing in future campaigns.

5. Create Attractive Assets

Like any good marketing strategy, ensure that you and your partners have attractive visuals. Creating engaging videos for social media, for example, are always a favorite for audiences. Synergy between the partners’ teams can lead to some really great storytelling through visual assets. This is a great chance to experiment and consider what your partners have to bring to the table creatively.

At the same time, consistency is key. Align on the campaign aesthetic early on, and for long-term campaigns, you may even consider developing shared brand guidelines specifically for the co-op partnership. This ensures everyone is on the same page visually throughout the campaign.

6. Streamline Strategy Behind Message

Just as visual consistency is crucial, maintaining a cohesive message across all platforms is equally important. It’s obvious, sure, but many partnerships lose sight of it early on: have a strategy behind your shared message. It’s important that partners are generating messaging that is linear across all platforms and that they communicate the same thing. It’s important to have a uniform voice, tone, and goal in the partnership to avoid confusing potential travelers. 

A shared content calendar that outlines when and where each partner will share campaign messages will help to ensure a cohesive narrative across all touchpoints and prevent oversaturation in any one channel.

7. Evaluate and Iterate

After the campaign concludes, conduct a thorough analysis with all partners. What worked well? What could be improved? What are the lessons learned? Use these insights to refine your approach for future co-op marketing initiatives. Consider running A/B tests during the campaign to optimize performance in real-time .

This continuous evaluation and improvement process ensures that each co-op campaign builds on the success of the last, maximizing your marketing efforts over time.

Looking to launch your first co-op destination marketing campaign? We support the choice! Get in touch with Vanessa Gonzalez-Hernandez at vanessa.gonzalez-hernandez@aboutdci.com to learn about tapping into our 60+ years of destination marketing experience.