Objective: Create relevant and innovative branded content around ARIA Resort & Casino's new Mixology Program. ARIA is a 5-diamond luxury property on the Las Vegas strip, with 17 restaurants and expertly trained culinary talent. Internet Marketing Inc. (IMI) knew that ARIA's target audience was interested in the Las Vegas night life, the food, the entertainment, and of course the cocktails. The goal was to find a way to build strong brand identity and brand awareness among ARIA's target audience through their various entertainment and luxury amenities.
Strategy: Use the innovative Mixology Program and dynamic Mixologist to tell the story of ARIA Resort & Casino's unique and one-of-a-kind offerings. IMI produced and promoted a brand driven 1-minute video series that highlighted Master Mixologist Craig Schoettler, a signature drink "Smoke Missing Mirrors", and ARIA's own custom beer, Cabaletta.
IMI's understanding that visual marketing is extremely effective and easier to understand, we knew ARIA's target audience would respond positively. Website visitors are 50% more likely to purchase a product or want to experience something after watching a video. IMI wanted to include the video series as part of ARIA's content, social, email and digital marketing campaigns to increase conversions and allow the brand to highlight different areas of the resort in a unique way.
Outcome: The fresh, engaging, and share worthy content helped drive brand awareness by creating a buzz around ARIA's unique culinary offerings and creative cocktail libations.
There are so few innovative ideas in the Hospitality industry these days, but ARIA Resort & Casino stands out from the rest, consistently coming up with new and unique ways to promote their brand. Their Mixology Program is one such revelation.
The Mixology 1-Minute Video Series gives a captivating behind the scenes look at their latest initiative. The first video, "Mixology Minute – Introducing Master Mixologist Craig Schoettler," gives visitors a glimpse at the man who is behind these artistic and inventive programs and cocktails. Schoettler was asked a series of interesting questions, allowing the visitor to feel like they aren't just enjoying a drink, but enthralling themselves in the experience. The best part, the questions that Schoettler answers, were gathered through ARIA's social media channels by their fans.
The second video, "Learn to make the Smoke Missing Mirrors Signature Drink" is a fun cocktail tutorial giving you the step-by-step process to make this exciting drink on your own. The Smoke Missing Mirrors drink is at Sage Restaurant and is as tantalizing as it is mysterious.
The third video, "Introducing Cabaletta, ARIA's Custom Beer," gives Master Mixologist, Craig Schoettler an opportunity to explain the inspiration and concept behind their Signature beer.
The video series created a strong demand for the ARIA brand and in 2 weeks' time, generated almost 3,000 total social shares including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and StumbleUpon. The increased engagement and links to ARIA's website (13 total links from authoritative sites and 10 referring domains), created great brand awareness and boosted conversions.
The 1-minute videos gave IMI and ARIA an opportunity to speak directly to the target segments of ARIA's target audience including the foodies, cocktail enthusiasts, and the appreciators of culinary art. Being able to connect directly with these individuals allows ARIA a great opportunity to build a connection. The individuals interested in this content are more likely to visit ARIA to experience all their unique offerings.
It was important to the IMI team to have a custom landing page created for the 1-minute video series campaign. A dedicated landing page made it easier for IMI to promote the content as well as track the engagement. ARIA's content management system didn't allow ARIA to incorporate social sharing because of their open graph tagging issues. IMI got around this issue by grabbing YouTube's social sharing button capabilities and coding them directly into the landing page. This allowed IMI to gather valuable data regarding likes, shares, and comments, which originally couldn't be captured.
ARIA received some great local authoritative sites linking back to their website including, The Tasting Panel, Bev Force, Nuzzel, Frequency, Sugar Loco, The Jax Beer Guy, and Las Vegas Eater. With more sites linking back to ARIA, it increased ARIA's search ability and online presence which increased their domain authority. It allowed IMI to introduce new keywords to the site so ARIA was able to rank higher in the search engines for more keywords.
This campaign was a tremendous success for the IMI and ARIA team. ARIA was so happy with IMI that they want us to continue creating and promoting brand focused campaigns to highlight all their outlets and to create a content marketing hub with video campaigns, Infographics, blog, and more, on their website.
