The Skagit Valley Tulip Festival is close to my heart. It was one of my first jobs back in my early 20’s! I worked as a staffer and now I’m the president of the Executive Board of Directors. When I joined the Board, I recognized some areas of improvement that could drive more tourism to the festival. I offered to do a marketing assessment and work with everyone to improve the website and overall marketing efforts.
Skagit Valley Tulip Festival Summary
Skagit Valley Tulip Festival is an international flower festival every April, attracting tourists from all over the world (and a lot of locals!) to admire dozens of acres of tulip blooms. The festival also serves as a marketing umbrella for dozens of events and activities taking place across the valley in April. 2024 marked the festival’s 42nd anniversary.
Fun fact, the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival was born out of the natural growth cycle of an agricultural product – tulip bulbs. Back in the 80’s, there were several tulip bulb growers in Skagit County who grew and sold tulip bulbs as their primary product. For tulip bulbs to mature to where they can be sold, they must be planted, go through a bloom cycle, and then be pulled from the ground. They’re then sorted based on their size and quality in order to be sold.
About 45 years ago, it was recognized that people were coming into town to view the acres and acres of tulip blooms covering the valley in blankets of bright color during the tulip bloom cycle. The Mount Vernon Chamber of Commerce started the festival around it to drive tourism, starting as a one-weekend affair and expanding to a full month of events and activities today.
The Skagit Valley Tulip Festival is a big deal in Skagit County. The festival drives $65 million of economic impact into the community in April every year!
Business Challenges
The community (and the world!) has changed a lot since the festival was born 42 years ago. The Internet, websites, and social media have all been developed since then. With a shoestring budget for festival organization, marketing was historically a challenge to fund. And, as with anything, the longer it goes unaddressed, the hard it is to fix the infrastructure!
When we started the Marketing Assessment, the Tulip Festival had a very simple website that was not mobile responsive or ADA compliant. Additionally, it was hard for people to find information about the festival on the website, such as:
- Directions to the tulip fields (it can be tricky!)
- Buying tickets to the gardens
- The parade, street fair, and other events
- Bloom status updates
The information needed to be shared and easily accessible for visitors on their mobile devices. People travel to the festival and need to pull up directions on their phones. In fact, website data indicated that approximately 80% of the website traffic was coming from mobile devices! Since the website wasn’t mobile responsive, it was difficult to use and find information quickly.
Another issue with the website was there was no way to capture visitor’s contact information to keep them updated on the festival. There was no lead capture or email strategy.
Social media also had some opportunities for improvement. Their Facebook page had a strong following but links to information took users from the mobile Facebook app to the non-mobile website. They had been posting on Instagram for a couple of years but there wasn’t a solid strategy behind either of their social media channels.
Following some discussion, Tulip Festival invested in social media first. They spent $45,000 on a social media campaign with some paid posts. They saw new followers and some great data points, but the effort didn’t help with long-term growth. People were still struggling to use the map on the non-mobile-friendly website and were incredibly frustrated with the experience. Visitors were picking up the phone and calling the office, which resulted in the phones being overloaded.
The Tulip Festival’s goal is to drive more tourism to the valley in April, but their current marketing activities weren’t doing enough to help them reach that goal. They knew they didn’t have a data-driven strategy guiding their efforts and they wanted help getting on the right path.
Strategy and Implementation
When I joined the Board, I utilized my marketing background to make some recommendations. I had just started Woods MarCom and offered to do a full marketing assessment to get their marketing efforts aligned with their goals.
I created a marketing analysis report to identify the following:
- Their target audience
- SEO opportunities to improve website traffic
- How to make the website more user-friendly
- Social media recommendations
- How to capture website visitors as leads
I mainly focused on SEO optimization in my marketing assessment report. You need a quality website before you can invest in other marketing strategies. This serves as the foundation of your marketing efforts and your digital infrastructure, which is what the Tulip Festival really needed.
Once we looked at all the data, it was really clear that the website was the top priority.
Marketing Assessment Results
In February of 2024, we launched our redesigned website, which was mobile-first and SEO-friendly. We dug into the customer research to determine who we’re trying to attract and their main pain points, guiding our thinking on information architecture and customer journey.
A marketing committee was created to focus on data-driven strategies. They focused on driving traffic to the website vs social media because now, the website gave people all the information they needed to come to the festival.
With a new website and strategic customer journey, the festival partnered with the Skagit Tourism Bureau to leverage paid social media, search, and digital display advertising. This work created a holistic marketing strategy that really utilized the benefits of the updated website. They now collect email addresses as a primary call to action on the website, which builds their email list. The festival utilizes website traffic analytics and digital tools to create a better experience and further its business goals, and the marketing committee can now leverage the data to make informed decisions about future marketing campaigns.
“Woods MarCom LLC has been a fantastic partner for our marketing needs. Rachael’s expertise has been invaluable, particularly in spearheading key initiatives for the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. From helping to overhaul our website to spearheading our email marketing, her insights have driven significant improvements. Rachael is strategic, organized, action-oriented, and consistently approaches everything with a can-do, positive attitude. Highly recommend!” – Nicole Roozen, Executive Director
Book a Marketing Assessment with Woods MarCom
The Tulip Festival’s marketing strategy is a work in progress, but I’m so happy I could help them get started and create a better experience for tulip fans. Could your company benefit from a marketing assessment to identify areas of improvement? Explore what’s included in the assessment and book a complimentary call with us today!
