Skip to main content

Marketing & Visitor Servicing Update – August Insights

Opportunities

With the launch of Tourism Western Australia’s new global tourism brand, there is the opportunity for our region to leverage the emotive and aspirational ‘Walking on a Dream’ concept. 

The Margaret River Region is dreamlike and otherworldly, and we’ll be thinking creatively about how to share the Walking on a Dream (WOAD) brand across our own channels in the coming months. It’s a brand that belongs to all businesses and tourism operators, so we encourage you to share the dreamlike wonders of our region with your own audiences. 

Here’s some ways you can leverage the brand. 

Expressions of Interest for October Content

Our full year working content calendar can be viewed here. Blogs are free for Primary members and $99 per inclusion for Secondary members.
Expressions of interest are open for the following blogs:

  • What’s On November: The guide receives around 2,000 hits per month, is promoted on our social channels and included in our monthly consumer email marketing with 30,000+ subscribers. For consideration, your event must be submitted and published on margaretriver.com no later than the 15th of each month to appear in the following month.

The following new articles are available for EOI’s:

  • Guide to Diving in the Margaret River Region 
  • Star Gazing in the Margaret River Region

We will be refreshing the following evergreen articles, which are available for EOI’s.

  • Itinerary: 7 Days of Summer 
  • Amazing Artistic Adventures 
  • Guide to the Region’s Farmers Markets 
  • The Local Summer Beers You Need to Try 
  • The Best Family Friendly Breweries with Playgrounds 
  • 10 of the Best Things to Do in Yallingup 
  • The Ultimate Margaret River Region Gift Guide 
  • How To Holiday with a Light Footprint

MRBTA Marketing & Visitor Servicing Channels

Margaretriver.com

August Insights

In August there were 166,491 sessions to margaretriver.com. This is a significant increase of 53% compared to August last year, for the most part due to the strong interest and uptake in South West Wanderer Pass vouchers.  

However, even if we exclude the Wanderer Pass redemption page there was still an increase in overall page views, up 17% compared to August 2021. 

Member page views were down 5.4% in August, with 87,356 compared to 92,341 in July. This dip could be attributed to the July school holidays ending. 

Top 5 pages in August (excluding the Home page) were: 

  1. Wanderer Pass Redeem 
  2. Things To Do 
  3. Accommodation 
  4. Attractions 
  5. Busselton

Top 5 blog posts in August were:  

  1. Delicious Degustations 
  2. Which Cave is Best For Me 
  3. Night Time Dining 
  4. Best Breakfasts 
  5. Winter Walks in Yallingup & Dunsborough

AUGUST BLOG STORIES 

There were 11 new and refreshed blogs curated by MRBTA in August. 

In total there were 53,232 blog story page views. Website visitors spent an average time of 2:22 minutes on the page.  

NEW  

What’s On in August | The Margaret River Region
Local Favourites: Leon Pericles | The Margaret River Region
Spotlight On: The Margaret River Discovery Co | The Margaret River Region 
Open Studios: 10 Must See Artists | The Margaret River Region
2023 Results: Halliday Wine Companion Awards | The Margaret River Region 

REFRESHED 

6 Delicious Degustations To Indulge In | The Margaret River Region
8 Incredible Winter Wine Experiences | The Margaret River Region
Augusta’s Best Kept Secrets | The Margaret River Region
Winter Walks in Yallingup and Dunsborough | The Margaret River Region
10 Things To Do These School Holidays | The Margaret River Region
Cabernet For a Day | The Margaret River Region 

Campaigns

Drive Your Story

The Drive Your Story campaign promoting our five iconic drive trails has received 12,060 page views on margaretriver.com. The paid social component of the campaign delivered 1,728, 565 impressions and 7878 clicks. The Google Performance Max stream of the campaign targeted consumers who had shown interest in Melbourne to Perth flights/ Melbourne to Busselton flights, and key word search terms around the Margaret River Region. The click through rate for this part of the campaign averaged 6.95% which is a positive result for industry standards.  

The next phase of the Drive Trails marketing will focus on creating five original reels that will be shared via Facebook and Instagram in November.

South West Wanderer Pass

The South West Wanderer Pass campaign accelerated quickly over August, after we increased the value to $200 and opened up to intrastate visitors. The 200,000 vouchers have now been exhausted, and the landing page updated to reflect the closing of the campaign.  The Visitor Servicing team will process the remainder of the vouchers manually for visitors who were unable to redeem these.

Spring Deals

Following the success of the Winter Deals page, we are inviting members to submit their spring deals for feature on margaretriver.com. Your deal must include the following:

  • Heading (8 – 10 words)
  • Description (up to 50 words)
  • Link (this should direct people where to book)
  • Any applicable T&C’s

We encourage members to consider value adding rather than discounting, for example ‘stay 3, pay 2′ or free inclusions’. Send your deal through to us at [email protected] for consideration.

Social Media

While Facebook Impressions and Reach saw a dip compared to July, August’s organic Impressions are still higher than last spring and summer last year, a solid result considering winter tends to be a quieter season.  

Instagram’s August figures were lifted by a successful Open Studios competition, and an algorithm update partially reversing the move away from photos to Reels which has worked in our favour. 

Instagram: Gained 580 new followers. Impressions and reach were up 17.8% and 24.2% respectively compared to July, with the Open Studios Competition delivering good results.  

What we learnt: Impressions were about 20% higher in August than January, February or March. The Reel Remix feature is a winner, and we’ve been using it to share some member and visitor Reels. 

Facebook: Gained 577 new followers. Impressions were down compared to July, which was a very strong month, but Engagement saw a 36.5% increase. 

What we learnt:  Repurposing Reels from Instagram into short Facebook videos has been working well, and the total Reach of posts across the month is over double that of Instagram.  

Most followers on our platforms are Perth-based and female, between 25-44 years of age.
Reach is the number of people who may have seen your content, while impressions are the total number of times your content was displayed to people. 

Monthly EDMs 

Monthly newsletters to consumers and media have maintained high engagement. The industry benchmark for Travel & Leisure is an open rate of 20.2%.  

 You can read more about reporting of open and click rates here 

August Consumer Newsletter 
Sent to 38,789 subscribers. 41% open rate and 3.34% click rate (CR). This is the highest open rate we have seen in the last 12 months.
 There were 1,841 sessions to the website from this EDM. 

The most popular stories in the EDM this month were: 

  • Delicious Degustations 
  • Augusta’s Best Kept Secrets 
  • Open Studios: 10 Must See Artists 
  • Winter Walks in Yallingup & Dunsborough 
  • 2023 Halliday Wine Companion Awards 

Hot tip: Consider sharing these stories to your email database.  

What’s On in August
Sent to 426 subscribers. 45.48% open rate, and 5.24% click rate.
 

Media Coverage

A snapshot of media coverage featuring the Margaret River Region across August included:

Event Support

The MRBTA annually supports over 30 major events to drive off-peak visitation to our region.

In August we supported CinefestOZ with a dedicated blog post that was shared across our EDM and social channels, along with social posts and Stories during the event, and the billboard on Bussell Hwy 

Marketing Resources 

Margaret River Region Snapshot: A three-page document in presentation format that can be used for media and trade. The summary includes a regional map overview, top 10 natural attractions, town anchor points, signature experiences and iconic drive trails.

2020/21 domestic market profiles: These have been recently updated and published by Tourism WA, and reveal insights into our interstate and intrastate visitor behaviour.

Spring / Summer Image Library: Members can access our Spring / Summer image library and share inspirational visuals of the Margaret River Region. Please always credit the photographers when using images.

How to Leverage Your Events:  MRBTA regularly supports major events in the region and have noticed a growing demand from members hosting smaller events wanting to gain leverage and build their audience. In response to this, we have put together a guide with useful tips on promoting your event.

Rediscover Videos: The regional Rediscover compilation video shares inspirational messaging for a domestic and intrastate market. Members are welcome to share the video across their channels.