the great waterway 09/16€¦ · 02 the great waterway monthly oerview september monthly highlights...

THE GRE AT WATERWAY MONTHLY OVERVIEW01

09/16The Great Waterway Monthly Overview


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sFall creative and content updates. Updates to fall imagery, fall copy, social media content and development of fall packages for promotion on site.

Negotiated, finalized and booked fall media buys including Google AdWords, Display, TripAdvisor and social media buying strategy.

Planning and creative layout of e-newsletter campaigns for OTMPC and Wonderlist. Release of Wonderlist mailer at end of September.

Support, training and process development with new TGW Marketing Manager, Dee Prescott.

Planning, copywriting, voice-over and video production of TGW “Year in Review” video for presentation of AGM.

1 3 5

4 6Establishment of destination focused booking engine website landing pages to promote all packages, accommodations and activities available and to generate more sales on booking engine.

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Key Project Highlights

September Monthly Overview

A. Fall Creative & Media Buys

In preparation for the fall season, an overall creative update was undertaken by 1dea on the consumer website, fall media creative, social, email and more. Without change to the overall campaign theme, our focus was to re-shift marketing efforts to zero in on audience and assets within the region that exist during the fall. These include:

• Shift more towards couples

• Highlight events as a key regional events as driver of tourism visitation

• Fall beauty and fall scenery. A connection to outdoors.

• Promotion of booking engine and option to now book on thegreatwaterway.com through the regional booking engine

Many of the summer media initiatives have now concluded and fall’s media presence will be more limited to paid social media, Google AdWords (display and search), TripAdvisor, e-newsletter deployments and print presence in Best of Ontario - Fall magazine with OTMPC.

B. Booking Engine Landing Pages & Marketing

As an expansion upon the media efforts and social media campaigns, 1dea is just finishing the development of 8 unique destination-focused landing pages for thegreatwaterway.com. These pages will offer a central place to drive advertising and other traffic to and allow visitors to see all packages, accommodations and attractions available to book in that destination. The pages will be well optimized for usability and conversion in an effort to try and push as many visitors as possible to book (or visit) the booking engine as possible.

In support of this, 1dea will further incorporate this into online digital media buys including Google AdWords (display and search), paid and organic social media and other places as appropriate. A strategy is being implemented to optimize for SEO through strategic keyword research, unique “book” website URLs and other.




C. Social MediaThe Great Waterway social media team continued their paid social media efforts into September. These paid ads consisted of a boosted post (blog content), and website traffic posts. Overall paid interactions were slightly down from that of the summer months, which is expected to happen when moving into the slower tourism months. It is also important to note that the paid social media budget is significantly reduced in September than that of the other summer months. As a result, reach and engagement will be less significant the peak summer months and will continue to be the case till the peak tourism season surfaces again in the spring.

Organic growth and reach on Instagram has continued to grow. Post interactions will naturally slow down this time of year as well. This slow down, like Facebook, was expected moving into the Fall months.

In recent months the decision was made to spend less time and budget on Twitter, as it was not seen as a large contributer to website traffic, or a massive factor in general interactions with potential influencers or tourists.

Moving into October, TGW will:

• Decrease the frequency of posts across all social channels to better align with the Q4 budget.

• Continue to curate high profile, relevant content to engage with current and perspective fans alike, as the internal blogging frequency slows.

• Focus on Facebook and Instagram as the main social networks.

• Shift paid social media buys to Facebook only, as results from instagram paid promotions have been largely unsuccessful.




E. BloggingMoving into September the blogging budget was reduced to align with the Fall season. Blogging frequency went from four per month, down to two per month. The team of bloggers reamins the same, but each blogger will not get the chance to contribute content each month moving into Q4 based on budget.

With the reduction of paid social media, the September blogs did not have the luxury of their predecessors in regards to paid boosts on Facebook. While one September blog did enjoy a paid boost, the amount of budget allocated to it was far below that of any boosted blog through the heavier summer months.

Two blogs were written in September, one by Jordan Whitehouse and the other by Mike Hector. Jordan’s blog focused on the Festival of Small Halls, which is a unique event that happens throughout several DMOs in The Great Waterway. Mike wrote a blog about key heritage locations spread across The Great Waterway. Compared to the summer blogs, these two did not see the high volume traffic, but they performed reletively well given the slow down moving into the Fall months.

D. AGM Year in Review

& Marketing ProcessOn Sept 13th, The Great Waterway hosted its annual AGM at the Tett Centre in Kingston.

In preparation for this event, 1dea prepared a “year in review” video summarizing this year’s campaign theme, marketing efforts, platforms/tools and overall results YTD. 1dea supported TGW by developing all creative copy, completing voice-over and all production of the video for the event. The final video can be viewed here https://youtu.be/1DTW1Q5sqcQ.

Furthermore, September was also greeted with the introduction of Dee Prescott to her new role at The Great Waterway as Digital Marketing Manager. 1dea undertook the opportunity to work closely with Dee to help integrate her into her new role and to establish workflow process and procedure for ongoing Great Waterway workflow. A solid procedure is now in place to handle all creative and marketing initiatives.




Further changes to all inner pages including destinations, explore, activities await and more are currently in development. It will offer natural tactics to help keep site visitors interested longer on the site and provide them options for further engagement. We expect the final rollout to be complete by end of October on the website.

F. Website Usability

AdjustmentsSince the launch of the consumer website on April 25, 2016 and on the heels of a very busy summer marketing season, 1dea has now turned towards focusing on overall usability changes to the site to help increase conversions, time on site and the ability to tease site visitors to increase movement around the site.

The home page was the first plan of attack with the hero call-to-action on the home page enticing visitors to “See Traveller Photos”, which supports a strong trend towards users wanting to see more user-generated content. The grid and framework of the photo gallery on the social page (as curated by Hashtagio) teases users to visit other parts of the site.


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Google AnalyticsGoogle analytics offers a seemingly endless stream of information about The Great Waterway’s website. This section of the report will outline the key findings, and relevant information regarding web traffic, habits, referrals, demographics, and social information.


Campaign Performance


A. Audience OverviewThis section provides a snapshot of the complete audience overview and their time spent on The Great Waterway website.

1 KEY TERMS

Sessions Total number of sessions for the website. It is important to note that multiple sessions can be completed by one user.

Users Total number of users/visitors to the website over a specified time frame.

Page Views Total number of page views over a specified time frame.

Pages/Session The average number of pages visited per session.

Avg. Sessions Duration The average amount of time for each session.


32,645SEPT. 2015 TOTAL

305,6812016 YEAR TO DATE

94,473SEPT. 2016 TOTAL

Totals To-Date

2016 Sessions Users Page Views

August 41,591 33,986 61,768

Sept. 94,473 55,998 108,501

YTD 305,681 226,016 469,522


August 33,883 29,291 69,641

Sept. 32,645 28,194 71,900

YTD 156,493 132,367 333,087


August 47,852 39,794 103,696

Sept. 24,572 21,231 45,170

YTD 190,419 156,197 412,387156,4932015 YEAR TO DATE


Top Performing Pages - Average Time on Page - September 2016

Page Page Views Unique Page Views Avg. Time on Page (Seconds)

/pt-destination/prince-edward-county/ 37,589 35,602 277

/pt-destination/land-olakes/ 15,408 14,718 363

/pt-destination/kingston/ 12,858 12,365 289

/pt-destination/brockville/ 10,645 10,234 360

/pt-destination/gananoque/ 4,951 4,549 181

/pt-destination/cornwall/ 4,528 3,910 125

/ 4,236 3,088 131

/pt-destination/bay-of-quinte/ 3,756 3,549 228

/activities-await/ 529 380 82

/events/ 437 286 121

/haunted-waterway-13-locations-ghost-hunting- paranormal-intrigue/

230 209 171

/destinations/ 224 160 40

/blog/ 178 96 54

/insider-rewards/ 163 60 140

/explore/ 145 83 49

/pt-destination/rideau-heritage-route/ 135 111 156

Major Pages - Overall Avg. Time on Page 2:53

SEPTEMBER 2016

TOTAL TRAFFIC (MAJOR PAGES) 96,012 89,400

TOTAL (ALL TRAFFIC) 108,501 100,068

MAJOR PAGES AS A PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL MONTHLY TRAFFIC 88%


Top Performing Pages - Average Time on Page - September 2015

Page Page Views Unique Page Views Avg. Time on Page (Seconds)

/ 12,107 5,900 9.71

/prince-edward-county/ 5,918 4,819 116.07

/1000-islands/ 4,471 3,663 87.50

/on-the-water/cruises/ 2,990 2,206 52.06

/kingston/ 2,436 2,025 115.68

/camping/ 2,422 1,646 122.01

/on-the-water/cruises/kingston-1000-islands-cruises/ 1,402 1,111 214.90

/on-the-water/cruises/gananoque-boat-line/ 1,373 1,085 184.16

/map/ 1,122 954 103.04

/wine-food/ 997 749 128.57

/events/ 964 640 66.11

/blogs/wine-food/10-things-to-do-in-september/ 903 823 125.37

/festivals/ 878 650 45.02

/on-the-water/cruises/1000-islands-seaway-cruises/ 794 634 137.75

/on-the-water/beaches/ 755 632 181.50

/blogs/active-adventure/5-family-day-trips-to-take-this-fall/ 687 615 78.17

Major Pages - Overall Avg. Time on Page 1:50

SEPTEMBER 2016

TOTAL TRAFFIC (MAJOR PAGES) 40,219 28,152

TOTAL (ALL TRAFFIC) 71,900 53,600

MAJOR PAGES AS A PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL MONTHLY TRAFFIC 56%


Age & Gender A breakdown of the age groups and gender of visitors.

Age 18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65+

% of Total 14% 20% 17% 16% 16% 17%42%

58%FEMALE

MALE

2016- September

Note: 1dea Inc. enabled demographics on Google analytics on Feb. 8, 2016. No prior data exists due to the option being dormant before that date.


Location – Country & City

Sept - 15 % Sept - 16 %

Canada 89.03% Canada 46.51%

USA 7.62% USA 44.09%

UK 0.49% Iraq 1.03%

(not set) 0.48% (not set) 0.61%

Germany 0.46% Saudi Arabia

0.61%

Australia 0.17% Indonesia 0.49%

India 0.16% UK 0.43%

France 0.11% Turkey 0.39%

Brazil 0.11% United Arab Emirates

0.32%

Russia 0.09% Algeria 0.27%

Other 1.31% Other 5.25%

Sept - 15 % Sept - 16 %

Toronto 19.29% New York 17.14%

Ottawa 11.29% Toronto 8.73%

Kingston 9.58% Montreal 6.89%

Mississauga 3.93% (not set) 3.16%

Montreal 3.13% Boston 2.69%

Laval 2.48% Philadelphia 1.87%

Brampton 2.13% Ottawa 1.77%

(not set) 2.04% Quebec City 1.56%

Belleville 1.81% Washington 1.37%

Hamilton 1.62% Kingston 1.36%

Other (850+) 42.70% Other (850+) 53.46%

A snapshot of the top countries and cities that have visited The Great Waterway website over a certain period of time.

Country City

89% 19%47% 17%CANADA NEW YORKCANADA TORONTO

SEPT. 15 SEPT. 15SEPT. 16 SEPT. 16


Acquisition by Medium 2016

Source September 2015 Sessions - Total 32,645

Source September 2016 Sessions - Total 94,473

Google - CPC 8,738 Google -CPC 83,645

Google - O 7,677 Google - O 3,590

(direct)/(none) 5,505 (direct)/(none) 2,853

Chango - (not set) 1,920 m.facebook.com - R 1,193

Facebook - Promoted Post 1,675 facebook.com - R 615

Facebook - SocialAd 906 ontariotravel.net - R 396

FacebookWEST - Carousel-Parents 816 OTMPC Content Partnership - CPC 366

FacebookEAST - Carousel Mainstream

795 I.facebook.com - R 259

FacebookCENTRAL - Carousel Mainstream

583 Im.facebook.com - R 156

TripAdvisor- Geo-ALL-Banner 464 t.co - R 122

m.facebook.com - R 357 OTMPC Content Partnership - (not set)

118

facebook.com - R 301 TWN 2016 - History and Culture Campaign - CPC

81

yahoo - O 271 northernontario.travel - R 76

Bing - O 250 Star Media - CPC | Smart Audience 73

t.co - R 171 yahoo - O 63

m.thegreatwaterway.com - R 150 bing - O 62

FacebookEAST - Carousel-Parents 143 Star Media - CPC | MOBL 56

Twitter - PromotedPost 142 bookings.thegreatwaterway.com - R 46

How consumers were able to find The Great Waterway online.

O – Organic | R – Referral | E – Email | S – Social


Social Overview

Social Network Sessions % Sessions

Facebook 820 72.31%

Twitter 186 16.40%

TripAdvisor 101 8.91%

Pinterest 15 1.32%

Blogger 3 0.26%

Google+ 3 0.26%

NetworkedBlogs 3 0.26%

Social Network Sessions % Sessions

Facebook 2,239 94.04%

Twitter 123 5.17%

Instagram 8 0.34%

LinkedIn 7 0.29%

Blogger 2 0.08%

Pinterest 2 0.08%

An overview of the total conversion value of each type of social media channel. Once a digital campaign is in place, and Google analytics goals have been set, this section of Google analytics can also provide a monetary value to the social stream.

2015 – September 2016 – September


Campaign Performance B. Paid Social Media OverviewDuring the month of September, the social team continued the paid social media strategy on both Facebook and Instagram. Adjusting for the fall season, the paid social media budget for September is significantly lower then that of August and the peak summer season, however, still ample room has been planned to keep the paid social promotional efforts moving. Overall interactions (compared to that of August) have been reduced and is naturally expected at this time of year.


219,917Total Facebook &

Instagram Reach

Organic: 80,099

Paid: 139,818

40New Facebook Likes

(Sept. 2016)

Organic: 40

4,141Total Website Clicks from

Facebook & Instagram

Organic: 2,575

Paid: 1,566


+1,300 Total Engagement on Facebook in September, 2016

+40 Facebook Likes in September

+ 42Followers on Twitter in September

+ 101Followers on Instagram in September

+ 2Twitter Retweets in September

Other Key Social Media Highlights

The Great Waterway’s social media efforts continue to generate positive increases in engagement, likes, fans, website traffic and general online sentiment month over month in 2016.

With peak summer activity slowing things down, the rate and rapidness of growth in September is not as significant. However, still some positive overall engagement on all channels.

With a lighter overall budget for the fall and winter seasons, traffic and engagement will be more modest.



Media Campaign Performance

*Media Buy Type Campaign Period

Visits to Website (to Aug end)

OTMPC Co-Branded E-Newsletter

Email April 27 40.8% open rate (228,147 subs)

theweathernetwork.com Digital May 1 - Aug 31 15,200 visits

Star Metro Media Digital Jun 6 - Oct 31 920 visits

OTMPC Content Partnership

Native Ad May 9 - Jun 19 33,863

Bay of Quinte Regional Guide

Print* end of May (1 year) 284 direct URL key-in’s

Attractions Ontario Summer Passport

Print* May 15 - Sept 11 272 direct URL key-in’s

Trenton Air Show Program

OTMPC Summer Tip-In

Social Media Advertising

Google AdWords

Print*

Print*

Social

Search & Display

end of May

Summer

June - Mar

July - Mar

261 direct URL key-in’s

273 direct URL key-in’s

1,460,661 total paid reach, 30 ads

124,722 visits, 25,569,102 total impressions

*Special Note Regarding Print Print media buys presents an interesting challenge in that it is not trackable. We’ve established a system with unique website URLs that redirect to pages on the website. Those unique URLs allow us to track how many times people type in the direct URL shown on the ad. Most people will likely conduct an organic search of The Great Waterway website or see the ad only. However, the results above (although very low) provides us with a rough gauge on how print ads are performing relative to other print ads bought. This allows for better deci-sion-making in the years to follow.


Campaign Performance D. Social Media Advertising - Paid

June July August Sept.

Total Reach 337,769 604,235 378,839 139,818

Ad Placement (location) GTA, OTT, MTL, NY

GTA, OTT,

MTL, NY

GTA, OTT,

MTL, NY

GTA,OTT,MTL, NY

Number of Ads 9 8 8 5

Medium FB & I FB & I FB & I FB & I

The following is a month to month view of some key parts of the paid social media campaign.



Campaign Performance E. Wonderlist.ca Email Campaign - Paid

Date Sent Total Sent

Unique Opens

Total Click

Through

Open Rate

of (%)

Click

Through

Rate of (%)

June 27, 2016

22,500 5,177 786 42% 2.5%

July 29, 2016

22,503 3,742 602 24% 2%

August 31, 2016

September 28, 2016

22,503

22,500

2,278

3,241

43

215

15%

23%

0.2%

1%


A newsletter was deployed in late September through the Wonderlist email database.

Kingston Accommodation Partners purchased the top section of this newsletter. Their goal was to promote haunted attractions and experiences leading up to Halloween. The remainder of the newsletter focused on fall attractions and bookable fall packages.


Content and Creative


A. Editorial Calendar – Social The editorial calendar has been updated to better align with the fall strategy and efforts to tighten up hours during the fall and winter seasons.

B. Editorial Calendar – Blogging A total of two (2) blogs were created in the month of September. Moving into the Fall, blog frequency has decreased from four/month down to two/month. Jordan’s Festival of Small Halls blog did receive a boost, and performed reletively well on a low allocation of advertising funds.

a. Ontario Festival of Small halls 2016: A Preview 333 Page views

b. 10 Incredible Heritage Gems You Must See in Southeastern Ontario 895 Page views

the great waterway 09/16€¦ · 02 the great waterway monthly oerview september monthly highlights...

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