Promoting Fort Wayne gets big boost from Google

November 27th, 2017

It’s one thing to have a great new product; quite another to be able to market it at no cost to millions of potential new customers. And that’s exactly what a grant from internet giant Google is doing for a new program to more effectively promote Fort Wayne to visitors and residents alike.

As The News-Sentinel reported earlier this month, Visit Fort Wayne’s web site now includes a calendar of events called Current Fort Wayne that provides a “one stop shop” for events happening in and around the Summit City. As its name implies, Visit Fort Wayne’s traditional goal has been to market the city to would-be tourists, but now local organizations are able to post and even sell tickets there.

The events calendar attracted 586,000 views last year, about 24 percent of all visitors to Visit Fort Wayne’s web page. With the addition of Current Fort Wayne, the potential to boost attendance at local events and attractions is unlimited, Director of Marketing Kristin Guthrie said.

That optimism is based in part on the recent award of $10,000 per month in free ads on Google, a leading Internet search engine. “More people will be able to see events in Fort Wayne than ever before. It’s been amazing,” Guthrie said. Current Fort Wayne was funded with the hep of other grants, including $50,000 from the Community Foundation of Fort Wayne, $20,000 from Old National Bank and $5,000 from PNC Bank. The free ads will be available indefinitely, she added.

An estimated 2.3 million searches are performed on Google every second, and the majority of search results pages include Google ads.

To see the new web page, go to visitfortwayne.com/current/.