Australia's South West
Winter Down South
Drove high-quality winter tourism traffic to WA's South West through the "Winter Down South" campaign — delivering a 3.9% CTR on a significantly reduced budget.
Category: Destinations · Services: Meta Advertising, YouTube Advertising, Campaign Management & Tracking
Results at a glance
Big Head Digital’s destination marketing for Australia’s South West’s Winter Down South campaign delivered a 3.9% CTR on the top-performing ad and a $0.20 average CPC. Meta and YouTube campaigns ran on a budget approximately 46% lower than in 2023; these are traffic results, not attributed booking sales.
- Top-ad CTR: 3.9%
- Average CPC: $0.20
- Budget vs 2023: Approximately 46% lower
The challenge
Winter Down South is an annual campaign by Australia's South West, designed to encourage locals to explore the region during quieter tourism months. The campaign had to serve multiple regional stakeholders, each with unique goals — from driving traffic to the main Australia's South West site to sending visitors directly to member websites. With a tighter budget than previous years, creative testing and optimisation options were limited. The campaign needed to perform strongly on first execution.
Our solution
We split the campaign between Meta and YouTube, leveraging the strengths of each platform. YouTube ran engaging video ads to build brand awareness and showcase the region's winter experiences, while Meta focused on traffic objectives to both the Australia's South West site and direct member websites. Each stakeholder received a dedicated ad set highlighting their offers, experiences, or events. Where tracking beyond the click wasn't possible, optimisation was set for link clicks rather than landing page views.
Strategy
- Dual-Platform Split — Split budget between Meta and YouTube — YouTube for brand awareness and immersive winter video, Meta for direct traffic to the destination and member sites.
- Stakeholder-Specific Ad Sets — Each stakeholder received a dedicated ad set highlighting their offers, experiences, or events for fair representation across the campaign.
- Optimisation by Constraint — Where tracking beyond the click wasn't possible (traffic to external member sites), optimisation was set for link clicks rather than landing page views to keep performance signals clean.
- Best-Of Creative — With limited budget for A/B testing, we deployed the best-performing creative — including several new videos — to ensure maximum impact on first execution.
Results
- Big Head Digital’s destination marketing for Australia’s South West’s Winter Down South campaign delivered a 3.9% CTR on the top-performing ad and a $0.20 average CPC. Meta and YouTube campaigns ran on a budget approximately 46% lower than in 2023; these are traffic results, not attributed booking sales.
- Strong, efficient cost-per-click across the campaign
- 3.9% CTR on the top-performing ad
- Maintained engagement on a significantly reduced budget
- All stakeholders received individual performance reports
"Even with the smallest budget we've had for Winter Down South, the campaign still delivered fantastic traffic and engagement across all member ads." — Marketing Manager, Australia's South West
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