Like most tourism-based companies, COVID-19 hit Allied Tours hard. They weren’t allowed to fill their luxury motor coaches like normal, and most of their travel destinations were shut down.

Allied also faced another unique challenge — their primary market is seniors, who, at the time, were at a high risk for COVID-19 and very, very cautious about returning to normal travel. As a result, trip booking went from 6-9 months in advance to only a few weeks in advance.

2021 gave Allied some breathing room, but 2022 needed to be a big year to bring in lost revenue from the past two years.

To do this, we created a multi-channel campaign that included print, direct mail, digital, billboards, bus wraps, and emails to help Allied fill more seats.

Once we landed on the headline “See America, go on tour,” the strategy was to control what we can control and focus on heavier short-term, direct response marketing, balanced with a smaller percentage of ad spend going toward long-term, brand awareness.

We introduced monthly direct mail highlighting upcoming tours, and created a lead generation campaign on social media.

This resulted in simultaneous touch-points, postcards were being mailed and emails were being sent out promoting the same trips. This starting approach helped raise awareness of their tours and credibility.

To maximize efforts with this audience, three more channels were introduced. First, Facebook and Instagram ads were set up, highlighting upcoming tours with a direct call to action to book a tour.

Then, adding to direct mail, email and social, we introduced small-town newspaper ads with QR codes to make it easy for the target market to learn more and book tours.

Lastly, to build brand awareness we created a TV spot for the three feeder markets in Lincoln, Omaha, and Sioux City.

Allied grew its email and mailing list by 23%, opening up a new market for them. They increased bookings by 17%, and increased passenger count by 21%.

Additionally in 2023, Allied is increasing their marketing budget by 40% to double down on this multi-channel campaign.