Go Ape! is a dynamic outdoor adventure business with numerous outdoor adventure high ropes courses around the UK. With a major site in Thetford Forest, here's how they've integrated e-marketing and social media into their marketing mix.
26. Thank you Questions? Emma Andrews Online Marketing Manager E: emma.andrews@goape.co.uk
Editor's Notes
Combination of direct, traditional and online media
All in-house
Pull – visitors have not only selected your listing but also chose the search query that resulted in your listing being shown
Many PPC services: Google, Bing, Yahoo....We use Google There are a range of metrics on which you can base your measurement. Google ranks ads higher that have a good click through rate. So if you have many impressions and very few clicks then you’ll get a lower quality score – so high impressions is not always good. IMPORTANT: Is the keyword phrase used in the search query, appearing in the ad results? I.E. RELVANCY Other factors that google see as important: landing page, metadata and metatags, page title, overall website ranking. Ongoing optimisation is crucial
ON PAGE: Make sure that all of your web pages can be indexed by search engines - make sure that they all have at least one link from somewhere on your site. Make sure that you have unique content on every single page. Make sure that your meta-tags are arranged correctly - your page title tags and description tags should describe the content of your different web pages. The page title tags should be less then 68 characters and the description tags more detailed but less then 148 characters. Make sure you label the different headers on your web pages using H tags. Make sure that your web page URLs are SEO friendly Make sure that you use descriptive URLs for your images i.e. use blue-widget.jpg as apposed a bunch of numbers and or letters .jpg. Make sure that you label all of your images with descriptive alt attributes. OFF PAGE:
Update more frequently = spiders come more regularly unique content is key to the success of any search engine optimisation campaign
Sticky content
Go Ape established a social media presence at the beginning of 2009 It’s important as part of our integrated activity. 67% of web users are visiting social media sites 40% of email recipients use social sites to gather product information 78% of people trust the recommendations of other consumers Users are connected to 150-200 friends 93% of users believe companies should have a presence on social media
This is our Twitter page. Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates, known as tweets. Every day 2000 new Twitter accounts are created (users double every month) GoApeTribe was set up at the end of march 2009 and we currently have 1,052 followers. When I started this presentation it was 363 Both the Twitter and Facebook accounts/profiles are managed by the marketing team with a combination of planned and spontaneous posts including: -special/celebrity customers to the course -staff news/charity events -special discounts for followers -adventure-orientated news posts The impact has been positive. We receive positive feedback from customers and can respond to their queries. We can get an insight into our customers – free research tool! We also search for non-users through searches of other, similar types of product.
Net effect Brand exposed at no additional cost, connection to a wider, like-minded market - Third party endorsements - Buzz - Brand awareness - Word of mouth Page needs substance to give a reason for people to come back and engage.
Tweets with pass-along value, important for marketers hoping to get their messages distributed as far and wide as possible, were highest on Mondays and Wednesdays, when they made up about 10% of the tweets per day. GoApeTribe RT things too in order to tap into more audiences Build relationships with others and RT.
Facebook is a free-access social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. June 2009: Facebook – women 35-50 – seeing big sign ups When I started this presentation in June/July, we had 982 fans. Now we have 3,184.
7 – 90 tweets in a day is average Measure Special offer codes Referrals to website Number of comments Number of fans/followers Bookings
Blogs attract search engine attention. And in today’s connected world, we all understand the importance of our brand perception within Search Engines such as Google. Blogs are search engine friendly, they can help get you noticed. Blogs help you develop a relationship with people. Presenting a human face to your organisation, the blogging Netiquette encourages a response. And feedback is a good thing. Listening to your audience, you can tweak campaigns, answer issues and predict market trends. An honest and unselfconscious focus group, that will help you improve and shape your communication. Blogs can drive visitors. Of course, your blog needs to be well written and comprehensively linked. But an open, conversational and insightful blog will indeed increase site visits. http://www.immediatefuture.co.uk/why-blog?/
Wordpress Functionality to make content sharable and interactive
Monitoring social channels
Wolfstar recommended a targeted blogger outreach programme to raise the profile of Go Ape in the blogosphere Wolfstar identified key influencers across a broad spectrum of blogs who were already in established networks or communities This meant the messages would reach a wider audience via satellite outreach. Lots of positive word of mouth gained
Can then directly attribute activity to business gained
“ When it comes to enabling consumers to share a brand or offer with their personal network, email remains an effective power house for getting the word out and driving conversions
Time and effeciency – how long does this take/administrate your e-marketing activity? Did anyone help you?