Speak Creative | The Hermitage Case Study

The Hermitage. Home of the people's President.

Andrew Jackson's Hermitage outside of main house with actor
Boys and Girls Club Logo

Post-Pandemic Ticket Sales Soar

The Hermitage boasts over 1,000+ acres of beautiful scenery and historic architecture. After being closed for much of 2020 and the start of 2021 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage aimed to reopen strong. To push those efforts, we established a paid media strategy focused on generating ticket sales.

The Strategies 

  • Hyper-focused, in-market targeting - implement Nashville-area advertising based on zip codes that have historically generated high ticket sales; push ticket sales and events utilizing local messaging

  • Selective out-of-market targeting - use past purchase data, website traffic data, and social analytics to determine historically high-performing markets for client, then target those markets with paid social ads

  • Tourism-based targeting - utilize Google Grant (as a non-profit) to strategically run PPC and Display ads emphasizing tourist-based keywords at no ad cost to client

  • Database targeting - pull historical client data such as ticket purchases and email lists to retarget past visitors 

The Results

This campaign has delivered five consecutive months of online ticket revenue records, increasing by more than $100K from its first month of full reopening to its fifth month. It also helped The Hermitage see triple-digit percentage growth in online ticket sales compared to pre-pandemic efforts. Google Grant costs $0 per month and generates $7,300 in ticket sales per month, providing a strong ROI.

  • 225% INCREASE IN TOTAL SALES
  • 299% increase in web sessions generated through search/ad traffic
  • 355% increase in the number of total orders
  • 210% increase in online product store sessions
  • 69% increase in returning customers
  • 56% increase in e-commerce conversion
“Speak is an extension of our team. We see them as part of who we are and what we do. They are smart and driven to help us achieve our goals because they view our goals as their goals as well. We can rely on them for expert advice, solid work, and the ability to get things done.”

- Ann Dee Jones, Vice President of Marketing and Communications

Ann Dee Jones, The Hermitage