Campaigns and Programming

MUSCLE SHOALS BACKSTAGE PASS

The Muscle Shoals Backstage Pass, a visitor-value program, is aimed at driving more business to our music studios and music attractions. Patrons of the program receive a free, large-size VIP concert type badge and lanyard from any 3 locations in The Shoals.

Visiting any 3 of the venues, patrons will receive a free Muscle Shoals Backstage Pass t-shirt from the Florence-Lauderdale CVB, and if they visited all 6, will have the opportunity to enter and win the grand prize drawn at the end of the year. From the beginning of the program, launched on July 15, 2020, we have driven over 1000 patrons to the 6 venues which has resulted in over $10,700 of incremental business to these partners. Over two-thirds of that number resulted in 2021.

Nashville’s Big Backyard (NBBY), 13 communities in the Tennessee natural watershed region, including The Shoals is a “back to the land” movement which o ers big city dwellers a slower lifestyle with modern city amenities.

After one year of building the NBBY brand, 968 Associated Press outlets were reached including CSPAN, Fox News, CBS News Radio, CNBC.com. Articles were produced in Forbes, Travel + Leisure, Atlanta-Journal Constitution, Fodor’s Travel, AAA, National Geographic, CBS News and many more. Since June 2020, the Nashville Big backyard awareness campaign has reached an audience of over 121 million.

The Florence-Lauderdale Convention + Visitors Bureau contracted with Epsilon, the global leader in outcome-based marketing for a digital ad campaign in 2021. Destinations can use the power of machine learning to drive nancial outcomes for their communities. Economic impact begins with inviting high value visitors through highly targeted digital media, seeing those people arrive, and then measuring the actual money they spend in destination. We can see where visitors spend, how much tax revenue the marketing campaigns directly create, and understand the characteristics of high-yielding visitors.

We can also help message local markets to keep the destination product visitor ready by encouraging restaurant retail, attraction visitation. The six-month campaign produced great results for our destination and resulted in a $21:1 return on ad spend. The overall performance of the 2021 campaign was a tremendous success! We generated over 5.5 million impressions with 2,533 messaged visits and a click-through-rate of 0.15%. In 2022, we will launch another campaign over a longer period.

TALKING TOURISM

To bolster our public relation e orts, we created Talking Tourism which was designed to inform media, elected o cials, industry partners and community leaders on how the Florence-Lauderdale CVB is working within our industry to drive more visitation and visitor spending. Segments are constructed to be 3-4 minutes in length and presented by our CEO, Rob Carnegie.

WEBSITE/NEWSLETTER

A state-of-the-art website was constructed by Tempest to provide the best responsive website design and relevant content on The Shoals area in a format that is best suited for today’s traveler. Due to a very comprehensive CMS platform, we can make feature/design changes to the site quickly and add more content in a wide range of sections. We now have a more diverse and broader footprint because of the new content and how this content will align with travel behaviors today to motivate and engage a visitor.

TOURNAMENTS

The scenic Tennessee River owing throughout Florence and the Shoals is divided by a series of dams into three di erent lakes: Pickwick, Wilson and Wheeler. These lakes o er some of the best sport shing in the country and in their blue waters can be found trophy Small and Largemouth Bass, Cat sh, Crappie, Salt Water Stripe, Sauger and Bream. With as many as 15 tournaments per year, the Florence-Lauderdale CVB is committed to this strong segment of our visitor economy and ensuring that every shing association is treated with professionalism and care. Expect to see a strong line up of tournaments in 2022 including the High School World Championships and BassNation.

PARTNERSHIP SERVICES

Further to our sales and marketing e orts, there are several ways that tourism stakeholders can ensure guaranteed maximum exposure. Whether it’s an enhanced listing on our website or learning from industry professionals in a workshop, we are looking to provide the tools our partners need to be successful in this competitive landscape. Watch for some new enhancements in 2022 to our Partnership Program which include video, graphic design and more.

NATIVES

Mobilizing our community to be more visitor-aware is part of making everyone a brand in uencer for Visit the Shoals. In 2022, we will launch the Natives which will be an active and engaged group of individuals who are passionate about The Shoals and how we can expand our reach to support our visitors. Whether that’s providing information for a festival, photography, event support or being part of the visitor experience in our visitor center, the Natives team will take on a creative aspect of how we shape our brand and use the talents of locals to become a signi cant part of our greater CVB team.

SINGER/SONGWRITER SHOWCASE

The music scene is at the core of who we are as a destination. It’s in our DNA. Building upon the great history of music in our community is essential. Our rst Shoals Singer/Songwriter Showcase at the WC Handy Music Festival was a huge success with standing-room crowds. Expect to see this showcase again in the Summer of ’22 and more showcases throughout the year.

SHOALSFEST

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit has brought Shoalsfest to the Shoals! This two-day festival has created new demand in the community and during a time of the year when it’s well needed. Hotels sold out across The Shoals with an enormous amount of media to boot. The Florence-Lauderdale CVB was proud to be the o cial main stage naming sponsor.