QACVB targeting St. Louis in increased marketing efforts

QUINCY – Quincy Convention and Visitors Bureau Executive Director Holly Cain said the increase in marketing support for her organization has enabled better outreach.

Cain gave a report at Monday night’s Quincy City Council meeting which focused on QCAVB’s marketing efforts.

Cain said the www.seequincy.com had 20,000 users during the last quarter, which was a 46 percent increase over 2020. July was also a record month for traffic on the Website.

The said the organization’s social media presence had also increased greatly.

“Our social media channels in the last 90 days have reached 124,000 people on Facebook alone,” Cain said. “Instagram reached 43,000. Those are very cost effective and very trackable forms of advertising for us.”

Cain said while much of the advertising is done in a 60 mile radius, QCAVB has targeted the St. Louis market in an attempt to bring people north, as the Missouri city is less than a two hour drive.

“We have used NPR (National Public Radio) radio marketing in St Louis,” she said. “The results have been immediate. We’ve done 55 spots in June and July. I know the effects have been immediate because I have spoken to visitors who drove in their car (from St. Louis to Quincy) that morning and I spoke to them at the Villa Kathrine that afternoon, so those were immediate. That doesn’t always happen with advertising but that was great to see and hear.”

Cain said they also purchased ads on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s website (www.stltoday.com), which had 44,000 impressions and 5,600 click-throughs to the SeeQuincy website.

Cain added hotel and motel revenues are up 39 percent over 2020 and are slightly behind 2019, which she said was a record year.

“We are very optimistic and we feel we are positioned to grow the city,” Cain told the aldermen in her closing. “We have been working diligently and I look forward to our continued partnership to properly market our city.”

The one percent food and beverage tax was created to increase the city’s marketing efforts.

In other action, aldermen approved three infrastructure projects with a price tag of $1,038,755:

• $329,548 to County Contractors of Quincy for the 2021 Sidewalk Replacement Project for the repair and replacement of sidewalk at 28 locations.
• $243,348 to Laverdiere Construction of Macomb for the 2021 Sewer Repair Project which includes the repair and improvement of sanitary and storm sewer at six locations.
• $465,859 for the resurfacing of North 48th Street between Maine Street and Columbus Road. The city will reimburse Adams County for its share of the project.