Marketing & Digital Performance
Using Datafy as our geolocation data partner, we were able to track over 5.7 million visitor days in 2025. Monthly visitor days remained strong and relatively consistent throughout the year, ranging from 400,000 to 550,000 visitor days per month. Activity increased steadily through late spring and early summer, reaching a clear peak in July, before moderating slightly in August and September and stabilizing again into the fall. This sustained level of visitation across multiple months indicates a healthy mix of event-driven travel (especially sports), regional leisure trips, and routine drive-market activity supporting the destination year-round. Daily visitor trends further reinforce this stability, with baseline visitation remaining consistent and periodic spikes aligning with major events, tournaments, and seasonal attractions. Compared to the prior year, 2025 showed modest but meaningful gains during peak summer and early fall periods, suggesting continued growth in demand during Fargo-Moorhead’s strongest travel seasons. The consistency of daily visitor activity suggests a high degree of repeat and regional visitation, with travelers returning for familiar amenities, ongoing events, and seasonal attractions.
Rather than relying on a single peak period, Fargo-Moorhead maintains steady engagement across much of the year, indicating strong habitual travel patterns that support sustained spending and visitation. These visitation patterns provide clear insight for future planning and marketing, highlighting the importance of maintaining a strong event calendar while continuing to promote shoulder-season experiences. Sustained baseline activity, combined with predictable seasonal peaks, positions Fargo-Moorhead to strategically grow visitation by amplifying high-performing periods and strengthening demand during slower months.
Website Traffic
The traffic to fargomoorhead.org shows a year-over-year decline in active and new users, reflecting broader shifts in search behavior as AI-driven generative search results increasingly answer travel-related questions without requiring a website click. While overall traffic volume has softened, this trend aligns with industry-wide changes in how users discover and consume destination information.
Website traffic is driven primarily by organic search, which accounts for more than half of all sessions, underscoring the continued importance of strong SEO and discoverable content. Direct traffic and paid channels provide additional support, while social, referral, and email sources play a smaller but complementary role in reaching and engaging visitors.
Social Media
Since 2021, Visit Fargo-Moorhead’s social media presence has continued to grow steadily, with an overall 13% increase in followers across all channels. Today, our digital community includes 73,500 total followers across six platforms, allowing us to consistently reach and engage both local audiences and potential visitors in our target travel markets.
Our strongest audience continues to come from Facebook, with 49,153 followers across four managed pages, followed by Instagram, where we’ve built a highly engaged audience of 19,011 followers across two accounts. Additional growth across platforms like TikTok, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and YouTube reflects our continued effort to diversify our content strategy and meet travelers where they are online.
In 2025, our social media efforts generated significant visibility for the Fargo-Moorhead destination, reaching a combined 4,050,000 organic impressions across platforms. Overall, our social media channels continue to serve as a critical tool in promoting Fargo-Moorhead events, attractions, seasonal travel opportunities, and community pride,strengthening destination awareness while supporting tourism growth and engagement year-round.
E-Newsletter Marketing
Our email marketing continues to outperform industry benchmarks, demonstrating strong audience engagement and interest in Fargo-Moorhead content. These results highlight the effectiveness of our messaging, content strategy, and continued growth in subscriber engagement.
Campaign Results
Leads & Conversions Campaign
The Leads & Conversions Campaign drove long-term engagement by increasing newsletter sign-ups through targeted, persona-based messaging. Focused on three distinct personas, the campaign used paid media, influencers, and SEO-supported content paired with landing pages, itineraries, and passport features to guide visitors from discovery to action.
Results:
3,751 incremental trips
$557,221 incremental impact
$15:$1 return on ad spend
$700k impact to lodging & $300k impact to attractions
Sports Awareness Campaign
The Sports Awareness Campaign positioned Fargo-Moorhead as a premier destination for tournaments and sporting events by increasing visibility among sports planners and event organizers. Through targeted search ads, Playeasy promotions, and a featured success story highlighting VFM’s relationship with USA Wrestling, the campaign boosted inquiries, strengthened page engagement, and supported earned media coverage.
Results:
5,171% increase in views to sports-focused pages
10K+ active users on the Sports Planners page (+5,820% YOY)
28,662 new users to sports pages (up from 199 in 2024)
Canadian Shopping Campaign
The Canadian Holiday Shopping Haul campaign rebuilt awareness and drove visitation from the Winnipeg market during the peak holiday shopping season by showcasing Fargo’s mix of major retail, local boutiques, dining, and festive experiences. Running across Meta, Winnipeg Free Press print/digital, influencer, and radio, the campaign encouraged travelers to “make your holiday haul a Fargo getaway.”
Results:
85 nights in local hotels booked
5,239% YoY traffic increase from the target demo (25K vs. 463)
44% CTR from Winnipeg Free Press (vs. 0.08% benchmark)
Influencer content delivered 60,450 impressions and 602 engagements
Influencer Marketing
Through strategic influencer marketing efforts, Visit Fargo-Moorhead partnered with 18 content creators to expand destination awareness and inspire travel to the region. Collectively, these partnerships generated 988,040 impressions, 1,085,842 views, and 75,994 engagements, demonstrating strong reach and meaningful audience interaction across multiple platforms.
Instagram and TikTok accounted for most visibility and engagement, underscoring the impact of authentic, experience-based storytelling in our target markets. These influencer collaborations played a key role in amplifying Fargo-Moorhead’s brand presence, showcasing attractions, events, and seasonal experiences to new and highly engaged audiences.