Across regional Australia, tourism marketing budgets have shrunk and the dependence on volunteer labour has grown.
We know firsthand how destination marketers have been scratching their heads at how best to support their region's operators and other stakeholders in the face of shrinking budgets and overworked volunteers. It takes the concept of "marketing on the smell of an oily rag" to a whole new level.
The outback destination that could
At WOOF Media we have been supporting the volunteer-run Flinders Ranges and Outback Tourism Marketing Committee Inc. (FRO TMC) for the best part of a decade. This is the kind of long term partnership that agencies dream of: the perfect combination of an incredible destination, wonderful people, and a willingness to collaborate and think big picture.
Over our incredible (and ongoing!) relationship, we've taken a remote destination with a fragmented and disorganised marketing footprint and turned it into a forward thinking, digital-enabled destination.
A regional destination marketing journey to be proud of
These hard-earned results were not achieved with lavish budgets - far from it, in fact.
Every year, with the support of their industry members, the FRO board has had to be more and more creative and resourceful to fund its marketing activities.
Doing more, with less.
The Opportunity
In 2025, the region's marketing budget stretched to maintaining their website and little else. Fortunately, their multi-year investment in content and brand building via their website and social media meant they had several valuable channels available to them.
For nearly a decade, the Flinders Ranges and Outback Facebook page has built a following of more than 15,000 people. Its Instagram page, while younger, has also surpassed 15,000 followers. What this means for the region's operators is that their local tourism body has access to an audience of highly relevant potential visitors.
Together, we designed a range of digital advertising packages, giving participants an array of options for social media advertising and content. Most operators wouldn't have such a deep social media footprint, or access to the expertise of WOOF Media's specialists in campaign management. When multiple organisations can share the costs of a campaign launched from the Flinders Ranges and Outback Meta accounts, they all receive the benefits of wide but highly relevant exposure for a fraction of what they'd spend trying to reach the same numbers from their own accounts.
Putting The Campaign Together
The ads, social posts and articles that brought the campaign to life
Organic social media content, single-image and carousel ads, and videos formed the backbone of our campaign. Since the timing was several months ahead of the peak tourism season, we focused on accommodation options and itineraries. All the content was sourced from campaign participants and each ad linked back to the respective advertiser's ATDW listing.
Our talented wordsmith, Holly, penned an article titled “Your 2025 Must-Do’s in Flinders Ranges and Outback” featuring the participants of the 2025 Marketing Campaign.
We're always happy to collaborate so each operator specified the key points of their section of the story and then reviewed the copy before publication.
The piece was published to social media channels ahead of the busy winter season, then further amplified by the ad campaign. During the course of the campaign, there were 4,236 visitors to the blog.
This article is a permanent fixture on the Flinders Ranges and Outback website, meaning participants are still receiving clicks and phone calls long after their initial investment in the campaign.
Since Meta rules restrict advertisers from linking to a different site than the one listed for their account, we linked advertiser posts back to their ATDW listing pages on flindersandoutback.com.au. By doing this we also grew the key marketing audience of "People who have visited the destination website and engaged with our website content".
Keys to a Successful Co-Operative Marketing Campaign
Grow at the speed of trust
*** UPDATE *** core idea - trust is everything in a world where marketing is filled with big promises and empty pockets. Get the results at a smaller scale first, prove the concept, gain the confidence of your industry and then scale it up as resources permit.
Build the essential foundations first
*** UPDATE *** core idea - when we first started working with FRO, we didn't recommend running co-operative marketing campaigns in year one. Or year two or three. It took five years of "smell of an oily rag" marketing investments to get the fundamentals in place / website, visitor guide, industry confidence through forward-thinking leadership
Make ATDW work for your region
Powered by the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse, operator listings on FlindersandOutback.com.au provide contact information and brief promotional descriptions for each business. The system is widely used across Australia and at WOOF Media, we have come to be very familiar with how to best use it.
For destinations, having a strong ATDW game involves rallying as many of your operators as possible to be present and active on the platform. The regions receiving the biggest benefits are coaching their operators to update their listing regularly, invest in quality photography and make use of the opportunity to offer promotions.
In return, using ATDW as your website's directory of choice is exponentially more convenient than building one yourself. Site visitors are easily able to find the hotel, restaurant, airport transfer or other tourism service they need, in a format that doesn't require expensive data management by your region.
So what is an "ATDW lead"?
We measure how many people visited an ATDW listing, if they clicked to the operator’s website, book now button, or phone number. Each of these is recorded as an ATDW Lead.
For Flinders Ranges and Outback, the results of the 2025 campaign were very positive: a 90.2% increase YoY in total ATDW leads across the FRO website during the campaign period (March-June 2025). While all ATDW listings received more leads than usual, nearly half of the 7,500 generated by the campaign went to the advertising participants.
This YoY growth underlines the value to a region of consistent, regular investment in marketing.
The Results
During the campaign period, the website's traffic surged 35% YoY, as potential visitors browsed through the itineraries, blogs and operator listings of the Flinders and Outback site.
Despite a tight budget of <$9,000, we are still able to achieve a very low cost per link click, thanks to several years of past campaigns, and cunning and strategic optimisation. The data on FRO's Meta account was in top shape.
For the ads, more than one million people across Australia were reached and nearly 46,000 people clicked through to the website.
Plenty of daydreaming about a trip to the region also occurred...people 'saved' one of the ads 1,157 times. And then 261 people shared one of the ads - either via direct messaging or to their feed.
Most importantly, each participant was happy with their investment. ATDW leads were double or triple what they usually experience - a welcome number of enquiries, phone calls, and site traffic for the competitive entry cost of joining the campaign.
How can we help?
We'd love to hear about your marketing challenges and see if we could be the right fit to help you get results like these.