2012 Bronze Best use of search, natural or paid-for

Client Visit Wales

How did the campaign make a difference? Highly relevant and shareable content was combined with a well optimised and designed landing page to drive traffic to Visit Wales. Reaching out to carefully chosen partners encouraged further sharing.

What details of the strategy make this a winning entry? Wales is known for breathtaking scenery and activities in the great outdoors, but less so for its wealth of boutique hotels and romantic hideaways. Visit Wales wanted to build awareness in this sector and drive traffic to their site. Initial search term research identified popular terms in the romantic breaks sector. These were used as part of a competitor analysis to determine the feasibility of gaining visibility. Content was adjusted to help cover a wider range of terms, and some headings and internal links were tweaked to cover more popular search terms. The campaign also needed to engage the 200,000 existing Facebook fans, give them ownership of the content and generate buzz. Fans’ Top Ten romantic hotels formed the basis for the website’s Romantic Hotel page. As scenery also plays a key role, a Flickr competition was created.

How did creativity bring the strategy to life? The hotels map was promoted on the blog and by contacting the chosen hotels to offer badges for their sites, with SEO links built in. The map was made openly available to others, to promote sharing. Key blogs that discussed romantic travel breaks were contacted and provided with free content and low-cost prize giveaways. These offered natural search links back to Visit Wales and involved the brand in conversations with the audience rather than waiting for them to visit. The conversations were taken even further by selecting a key media partner. Luxury hotel specialist, Mr and Mrs Smith, was the perfect fit. A competition was included in the Mr and Mrs Smith newsletter, circulated to 300,000 members, as well as through their social channel and homepage.

Results This campaign delivered First-page rankings for ‘romantic break’ within four months and for ‘romantic hotels’ within seven. ‘Romantic holidays’ and ‘romantic hotels’, which weren’t ranking before optimisation, moved to 7 and 5 respectively, while ‘romantic breaks’ moved from 70 to 5. The campaign delivered a 1,000% increase in romantic-related natural traffic between October 2011 and June 2012, improving search visibility and building brand awareness. The Mr and Mrs Smith partnership received 809,015 impressions, with 51% of competition entrants opting in to hear more from Visit Wales.

http://www.visitwales.co.uk/romantic-breaks/

Team Lucy Hancock, Charlie Peverett, Jeremy Head, Claire Eden, Dan Adam, Jon Munro, Craig Goodwin, Amy Cromwell, Ceri Thomas