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Marketing & Visitor Servicing Update – February 2023 Insights

Expressions of Interest for April Content

Our full year working content calendar can be viewed here.

Expressions of interest are open for the following blogs. Blogs are free for Primary members and $99 per inclusion for Secondary members. 

  • What’s On April: 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: 

  • New Experiences This Autumn

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

  • Guide To: Hiking & Walking at Meelup
  • How To: Teach Your Groms To Surf
  • How To: Taste Wine Like A Pro
  • The Dog Friendly Guide
  • Best Breakfasts In Dunsborough & Yallingup
  • 7 Days of Autumn (Itinerary)

Additionally, we will be sharing and promoting the page ‘What’s Open This Easter’, so now is the time to make sure that your business information is up to date in your member console to ensure inclusion. You can view the Easter page on the website here.

Social Media

The Drive Your Story social campaign is in full swing, and has reached the halfway point. The Reels have now all been posted to the Margaret River Region social pages, and we encourage all trail participants to like and share the posts to help them reach as many people as possible. The Reels are also being used as ads targeting the east coast market, and so far results have been strong. From the 13th – 28th of February the ads had 170,196 impressions, a reach of 76,480, 5,215 link clicks, and 327 post reactions. From the 27th of February we created a new campaign stream focusing more on generating engagement on the ads, and to date this has been tracking well with an additional 2,327 post reactions.

The organic social strategy had a very successful result in sharing a photo by photographer Hamish Stubbs of the Aurora Australis, or the ‘southern lights’, over Injidup Beach. It reached over 722k and was shared 2,500 times.

Best Performing Facebook Posts

Best Performing Instagram Posts

Margaretriver.com

In February there were 103,057 sessions to the website, an increase of 16% compared to 2022. Engagement metrics of bounce rate and average session duration also both improved, which is great to see. Looking at interstate traffic, the highest number of users are in Sydney, followed by Melbourne and then Brisbane, and all of these states have seen good growth compared to February last year. It’s also great to see that Singapore traffic is up 194%, with 2,466 users in February, indicating that they may be planning winter trips.

Top 5 pages in February (excluding the Homepage) were: 

  1. Accommodation 
  2. Attractions 
  3. Things To Do 
  4. Events & What’s On 
  5. Busselton

Top 5 blog posts in February were:  

  1. Which Cave is Best For Me 
  2. What’s On In February
  3. Guide To Dog Friendly Touring
  4. Family Friendly Wineries
  5. 9 Wineries With Accommodation


FEBRUARY BLOG STORIES
 

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

In total there were 44,664 blog story page views, which is up 31% compared to last year. Visitors spent an average of 2:24 mins on the page.  

NEW

What’s On in February | The Margaret River Region

Local Favourites: Sasha McDonald | The Margaret River Region

The Grand Finale: Busselton Festival of Triathlon | The Margaret River Region

The Best Family Friendly Accommodation | The Margaret River Region

A Sustainable Shopping Trail – The Margaret River Region (MAG)

Restaurant Recommendations: A Regional Food Map | The Margaret River Region (MAG)

All That Sparkles: The Sparkling Wine Guide | The Margaret River Region

REFRESHED

5 Day Luxury Itinerary | The Margaret River Region

A Day in Augusta | The Margaret River Region

10 Of The Best Romantic Experiences | The Margaret River Region

How To Cook and Eat Augusta’s Abalone | The Margaret River Region

Monthly EDMs 

Monthly newsletters to consumers 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 

February Consumer Newsletter
Sent to 36,194 subscribers. 43% open rate and 2.25% click rate (CR). 
 

There were 1,250 sessions to the website from this EDM. 

*CR= Click Rate 

The most popular stories in the EDM this month were: 

  • Restaurant Recommendations: A Regional Food Map For Your Travels
  • The Best Family Friendly Accommodation
  • 5 Days Of Luxury Itinerary
  • A Sustainable Shopping TRail
  • A Day In Augusta

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

What’s On In February
Sent to 441 subscribers. 49.43% open rate, and a very strong 9.84% click rate.
 

Media Coverage

A snapshot of some of the media featuring our region recently.  

Event Support

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

In February we supported the Busselton Jetty Swim.  

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 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.