Mindy Simons, executive director of the Hayward Lakes Visitor and Convention Bureau, presented a fall marketing report showing measurable increases in website engagement and campaign performance.

Simons said overall website traffic from Aug. 1 through Oct. 13 was up roughly 16.3 percent, with organic searches, direct visits and referral traffic all higher than the previous comparable period. "We have really high engagement," Simons said, noting the fall and winter activities page received more than 3,000 clicks and about 2,900 engaged sessions this fall compared with a few dozen the previous year.

The bureau tested two YouTube campaigns with identical $1,200 spends. The awareness-focused campaign produced about 123,847 views and strong impressions but limited site engagement. A conversion-focused campaign produced approximately 10,008 engaged views and yielded close to 10,000 clicks into haywardlakes.com, Simons said.

Simons identified paid referrals from partners and advertising platforms — Google, Star Tribune, Facebook and Midwest Outdoors — and described target markets as Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota and Iowa. She agreed to follow up on a question about differences between Sawyer County and neighboring Vilas County metrics after attending a statewide destinations conference in Madison.