4. Press Coverage By the end of March 2010 over £230,000 worth of press coverage generated by LBTB
5. From April 2010..... BBC Lancashire – interviewed Rachel at Gawthorpe Hall Practical Motorhome – Into the Shire (May) Worth £18,000 Birmingham Mail – Lancashire’s just lovely! (August) worth £44,000
6. A final thought... Just to let you know my husband & myself had great fun doing your Blackpool & Lancaster Heritage Treasure Trails. We have had a caravan at Knott End for over 50 years & have literally visited Blackpool 1,000+ times & we both learned lots we had no idea about. How about some more for next season? Thanks, Marilyn (From Bolton)
7.
Notas del editor
I spoke at the last meeting back in March just as the campaign was starting to gather momentum. And I explained about the four trails we were working on, as well as all the different activity we had planned. I’m briefly going to update everyone on the response so far...
Starting with the off-line activity..... We devised and created Four heritage themed treasure trails, designed, printed and uploaded to the website – Lancaster, Blackpool – walking trails; Pennine lancs & Industrial powerhouse - the two direct mail pieces included two trails – 7% and 5% response to a prize draw (Malkin Tower offered a three night break) Trails available to download – no printed copies available anymore unfortunately Brochure still available via TICs/tourism businesses and brochure requests The new photography continues – we spent a day in Lancaster (at the castle, along the canal, in the town centre, williamson park), in Preston at the Harris – other heritage locations planned
On-line activity Website – included the trails, information on partner buisnesses (attractions, accommodation and places to eat), yesterdays news, day in the life stories, video footage of heritage attractions, information on different towns/areas of Lancashire with a heritage angle, special offers and links with industrial powerhouse, on-line brochure. Website - from June the site is still getting over 300 unique visits a month even though it isn’t being actively promoted. E-newsletter – average open rate of 10-12% Tweets – linked the tweets to the yesterdays news stories and partners involved in the campaign – the more intriguing tweets and ones involving ghosts - gained the most click-throughs (e.g. the white lady spotted at Samlesbury hall / where in lancashire would you find the straight mile?) Blogs – LBTB members can continue to supply guest blogs – send them through –Each blog averages around 40 views All the content from embarkonajourney.com including the trails will be moved onto visitlancashire.com - The legacy from the campaign is the fact that The trails will continue to be available from the site
This included coverage in Heritage magazine – 7 page feature on Lancaster Women’s Weekly – double page spread Sunday Mirror Also more regional titles such as Yorkshire Post Bolton Evening News Lancashire Telegraph Blackpool Gaze We promote businesses involved in the campaign as priority but very often journalists have their own agenda and we have to tailor things to their needs (whilst putting a heritage slant on their visit)
Coverage has continued to be published in the following months – and will continue to come in These are just a few of the publications covered Press releases don’t always result in a feature – Lancashire heritage product might end up in 10 best / top 10 lists We also brought the heritage theme into press trips from overseas journalists (we have hosted three press trips for Irish journalists in the past 6 months – each included some element of Lancashire heritage.
The best kind of marketing – word of month from a very happy treasure hunter! A final thought from a visitor.....
Halloween campaign – visitlancashire.com, the visit lancs blog, facebook fan sites and twitter – have turned to the dark-side during Oct. Businesses were invited to promote their spooky events – this sold out within a week as their were only 9 slots. Activity will includes a dead-icated Halloween e-newsletter to 30,000+ contacts, banners, event promotion on the homepage, editorial, blogs, tweets and more... (last year Oct scored one as one of the best months of unique visitors looking for Halloween related events – there is a real thirst for this type of events Lancashire Day (27 Nov) – all businesses can promote their Lancashire day event FREE Christmas campaign – will follow a similar style to the on-line Halloween campaign. Only be 9 slots available. Building on the success and popularity of the 2010 Visitor guide – the 2011 will be bigger and better – we’ll also be increasing the print quantity to 30,000 – lots more opportunities to advertise and all LBTB members do get a free listing as part of their membership. We’ll be including articles about our award winners and the new things happening in 2011. Heritage wise, we are working with Industrial Powerhouse/Modern History to support relevant organisations. Copies get distributed via TICs, brochure requests and lancashire businesses – more hotels than ever have request copies this year to have in their rooms for guests.] 4. Last but not least , the main short breaks campaign for 2010 is our Country escapes themes campaign running from Jan to June 2011. We will be producing a number of car free itineraries/trails for the campaigns (following on from the success of the heritage trails), we will be sending out a direct mail and e-newsletters to new And existing contacts, generating PR, developing the country escapes sections of visitlancashire.com. We’ll be engaging in conversation with our visitors asking them ‘what they take home from a visit to Lancashire’ – where it be a memory or something they bought or collected. This campaign will be targeting a similar demographic to the heritage campaign