September Destination Marketing Snapshot

It was fantastic to get a boost of support from Tourism WA this month to address the struggling tour operator sector within the State. Off the back of the Wander Voucher scheme, we launched our own campaign ‘30 Days, 30 Ways’ to inspire West Aussies to redeem their vouchers within the Margaret River Region. Traffic to margaretriver.com has spiked since the campaign launched, and we look forward to sharing the final results with members.

We hope that our new targeted marketing newsletters will allow us to share MRBTA marketing opportunities, major campaign work, and web and social stats with you in an easier to digest format.

As always, please reach out to the marketing team if you have any questions, niggles or ideas that you’d like to chat through.

Contact: Sophie Mathewson, Acting Marketing & Communications Manager | [email protected]

Marketing Snapshot Overview

Campaign Activity
Insights
Media
Expressions of Interest for November Content
September Content
Monthly EDMs
Web & Social Stats
Spring/Summer Image Library
Event Support
What’s Coming Up?

Campaigns

For an update on recent campaign work, view here.

Insights

Wotif.com: A dramatic interest in Busselton and Margaret River as a school holiday destination. Interest for Busselton was up over 360% while Margaret River up 330%. Most popular school holiday destinations in WA for the same study listed Busselton and Margaret River as numbers 4 and 5 respectively.
9 News: Top trending Summer Destinations. South West WA accommodation interest up 250%, Busselton up 125%.
Podcast: Flight of Fancy: Australia’s Best Wine Regions with Ben Groundwater, Traveller. Great insights into the best wine tourism offerings in Australia and a nice plug on the Margaret River Region (skip to 23:50).
Instagram Reels 101: Learn more about Reels, with Instagram’s Strategic Partner Manager Zaac D’Almeida who will highlight how-to tips, explore how Reels can fit within your content strategy, and share a collection of creative small business examples.
Tourism WA: The latest Visitor Experience and Expectations Research (VEER) results for 2019-20 have been released.

Media

Excellent national coverage for the region continued across September with some great pieces of content.

Expressions of Interest for November Content

Free of charge inclusions in November blogs can be registered with the marketing team by Friday October 9th. Blogs scheduled are:

What’s On November & December
Top 10 Farm Stays
Augusta’s Sublime Seafood Scene
Affordable Accommodation to Book Before Christmas (note that this blog will be published w/c October 12th)

Contact Acting Marketing & Communications Manager, [email protected] with your EOI.

Paid Advertising

Please get in touch with the membership team for paid opportunities such as web ads, TV advertising in the Visitor’s Centres, or a top listing on margaretriver.com. Email: [email protected]

Photo: Tim Campbell

September Content

New Blogs

148 members were featured across 8 new blogs curated by the MRBTA in September.

Visitation to blog stories on margaretriver.com are up 56% (32K pageviews this month) in comparison to September 2019. Want to leverage your brand with additional exposure from the MRBTA? See here for opportunities to be involved in upcoming content.

A few ideas to help you share these stories with your audience:

Share via social media
Add a link on your booking confirmations
Include in your EDM’s

New TV Screen Ads

New ads for spring pointing visitors to refreshed blog content on margaretriver.com, and member buy-in ads also updated on the screens in Margaret River, Busselton and Dunsborough.

Monthly EDMs

Monthly newsletters to consumers and media have maintained high engagement over winter and into spring. The implementation of A/B testing has significantly increased our open rate. The industry benchmark for Travel & Leisure is an open rate of 15.7%.

Consumer Newsletter Sent to over 30k subscribers. 29% open rate, and 15% click-through rate
Media Newsletter Sent to over 250 media contacts. 29% open rate and 13% click-through rate.

We love knowing about new things! We regularly pitch angles to media so keep us informed of any new products or developments in your business.

Web and Social Stats

Website

September continues to demonstrate the importance of margaretriver.com as the internet’s number one authority on the Margaret River Region, with sessions increasing by 21% to 129k.

The restaurants & cafes landing page is up 90% and breweries, cideries & distilleries up 81% in comparison to 2019. There is a strong desire for consumers to research and visit your establishments. We encourage you to review your business listing and ensure details are up to date, including trading hours.

Visitation from Perth Audiences is up 60% in comparison to 2019, and contributes to 77% of all visitation to our website in September.

Social Media

With the introduction of Sked Link, Instagram Reels, and our new 30 Days 30 Ways campaign, there has been a lot going on via @margaretriver social media channels in the last month.

Popular posts over September included coastal locations which is indicative of the season.

We recently adjusted our digital strategy to feature more blog stories via our social channels. Since implementing, the shareable content has increased social referrals to margaretriver.com by 33%.

The blogs curated by the MRBTA are a great opportunity for members to receive more exposure for your business. See here for opportunities to be involved in upcoming content.

Australia.com featured Busselton and Dunsborough on their social channels, with a combined reach of 13.6 million followers across Facebook, Instagram & Twitter.

Spring / Summer Image Library

We encourage members to access our spring image collection here and continue to share inspirational visuals of The Margaret River Region. Please always credit the photographers when using images.