Visit Lake Charles Uses Smart Data to Fuel Smarter Marketing

Located in Southwest Louisiana and leading the way in data-driven decision-making, Visit Lake Charles (VLC) puts integrated data insights at the center of their marketing strategy. Early on, the team used Zartico insights to cook up an award-winning ad campaign. Now they’re placing continuous data optimization at the core of all of their work. 

Managing multi-faceted marketing demands

Led by Chief Marketing Officer Timothy Bush, VLC uses Zartico insights to inform their marketing strategy, drive visitor economic growth, and communicate the measurable impacts of their marketing efforts to their community.

The team faces many of the challenges common to destination marketing organizations. They need to effectively target and engage quality visits, then distribute the benefits of tourism across the entire community — all while balancing short- and long-term marketing needs and proving the impact of their efforts.

“Every piece of data I can pull to help me build a better strategy and story, that’s where I'm focused. That’s how we deliver impact to our community.”

Timothy Bush, CMO, Visit Lake Charles

Yielding a fruitful harvest with balanced marketing strategies

For a vibrant, all-season destination like Lake Charles, a single successful campaign won’t bring home the bacon. Brand-building efforts are vital for sowing the seeds of future visitation, while the marketing team takes a more targeted approach for focused impact.

VLC’s data-driven strategy balances these two approaches, employing both “hunting” and “farming” to meet destination goals.

• “Hunting”-type initiatives are focused, timely campaigns designed to deliver specific, measurable results in a short timeframe. They target immediate or discrete opportunities, such as VLC’s “Chuck Eats” restaurant week.
• “Farming”-type initiatives cultivate long-term brand awareness and sustained growth. They require consistent nurturing but yield reliable results, and may include things like ongoing content development, continuous market presence, and sustained stakeholder engagement.

Check out these two examples:

1. Targeted campaign execution: Chuck Eats 

To drive incremental visitation and capitalize on the growing culinary scene throughout their community, Visit Lake Charles offers their version of restaurant week, called Chuck Eats. 

In 2024 VLC launched a Meta campaign targeting foodies in regional drive markets across Texas and Louisiana. The campaign drove a 116% increase in landing page views, demonstrating a strong intent — but Zartico insights revealed the full impact of the promotion.

Chuck Eats drove a 41% YoY increase in visitor patronage, and...

• Generated 18% of restaurant spending from visitors
• Created a 9% overall lift in restaurant spending during the event

🍽️ Sharing these success insights with stakeholders also helped drive a 16% increase in participating restaurants for the following year.

2. Year-round success: Content strategy and market targeting

To maintain a stable visitor economy, VLC supplements targeted campaigns with general brand awareness efforts throughout the year. 

They leverage takeaways from targeted campaigns — such as new opportunity markets — to optimize their continuous efforts. Their year-round marketing strategy incorporates regular data-driven optimization and reporting, including:

• Using visitor spending patterns and website engagement metrics to inform content development. For example: Seeing food rank first among visitor spending categories sparked the development of new culinary-focused creative assets and podcast topics. 
• Leveraging Zartico’s Quality Visit Index to identify high-potential markets. (It’s like knowing which crops grow best in specific conditions.)
• Customizing content based on market-specific behaviors. Markets that engage with retail content on the website may receive targeted shopping content, while another market showing higher spending in outdoor recreation may see adventure-themed content.

Applying data-driven optimizations throughout the year allows VLC to…

• Achieve a 44% increase in overall visitor spending year-over-year
• Direct 26% of visitor spending to local businesses, with top overall spending in food, accommodations, and gas stations

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Aligning stakeholders around common goals and metrics

Data-driven decision-making is written into VLC’s strategic plan, including a specific call to “share VLC-owned data with partners… to enhance their marketing and product development.”

VLC understands that knowledge is power and that communicating insights with their industry creates opportunity and strengthens relationships.

The CEO includes Zartico insights in his monthly newsletter…

• Insights from VLC’s Executive Pulse module provide a real-time view of what is happening in lodging, visitation, and spending.
• Regularly sharing this data has given VLC a seat at the table in local, state, and national discussions.

Using marketing performance to map a clear path forward

With a focus on always improving marketing ROI, the VLC team is taking data-driven optimizations to the next level by digging into the data of marketing attribution. After participating in Zartico’s pilot program, Timothy saw the potential Zartico’s Digital Campaign Optimization could offer. 

“My job is to be the best steward of my marketing budget and to deliver the best for our destination. I think DCO is creating a more visible picture of attribution… It's clearing away the clouds and presenting a clear picture of our campaign performance. That allows our agency to make optimization decisions and pivot at a much better pace.”

Timothy Bush, CMO, Visit Lake Charles

With the insights from DCO, VLC and their agency will be able to:

• Analyze conversion rates by market, medium, and vendor to see what sticks and which tactics are delivering visitors
• Discover higher conversion opportunity markets and reallocate resources to drive improved ROI
• Understand the interplay between digital ad campaigns and destination lift, and communicate campaign impact back to stakeholders

Key takeaways for data-driven marketers

1. Balance short- and long-term strategies: Combine focused "hunting" campaigns with sustained "farming" initiatives, and use data to inform both approaches.
2. Measure real community impact: Look beyond campaign metrics to understand destination lift, including visitor spending to key categories and local businesses. 
3. Optimize through active management: Use campaign performance data to adjust tactics and budget allocation, focusing resources on high-converting, quality visit markets and continuously refining your targeting and content strategies.
4. Share success with stakeholders: Build credibility and align community objectives through transparent data sharing.

Visit Lake Charles’ ongoing marketing success demonstrates how a data-driven approach to destination marketing can deliver measurable results while supporting broader community development goals. Their experience shows that combining strategic data use with targeted execution creates a sustainable model for tourism growth that benefits both visitors and residents.

Data fuels successful marketing — here are 10 Ways Destination Marketers Use Zartico Data to Achieve Success.