Land and Wave’s key aims were to make it easy for customers to find and contact them; to present SIMPLE information; and to raise profile of activities and make it easy for customers to advocate/ talk about the operation. This included improved web presence, better branding, improved opportunities for customer engagement and user generated content, and links to review/referral sites.

1. DIGITAL DESTINATIONS
Dr Philip Alford
Bournemouth University
www.digitalhub.co.uk
www.pinterest.com/digitaldest
www.slideshare.net/DigitalHub
ddp@bournemouth.ac.uk
@schooloftourism | @philipalford
#DDBU

2. Digital Destinations project is an ESRC funded research project,
delivered by Bournemouth University,
with an overarching aim to:
‘capture change in the adoption and use of digital technologies
and to develop a strong, competitive local tourism economy.
Through increased understanding and use of emerging digital
technologies, visitor economy businesses will be in a position to
increase their marketing and management effectiveness, and
develop new products and services that will provide an
enhanced experience for visitors to their destinations’

3. The businesses benefited from 4 workshops which covered:
 Background to on line marketing
 Individual Business objectives
 Developing the strategy
 Measuring impact
 Reporting outcomes via case studies
All course material can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/DigitalHub
All business outcomes and blogs can be found at http://www.budigitalhub.co.uk/

4. The following presentation is the case study provided by Land and Wave.
Land and Wave’s key aims were to make it easy for customers
to find and contact them; to present SIMPLE information; and to
raise profile of activities and make it easy for customers to
advocate/ talk about the operation. This included improved web
presence, better branding, improved opportunities for customer
engagement and user generated content, and links to
review/referral sites.

5. Digital Marketing 2013 Onwards

6. www.landandwave.co.uk – ‘Parent Site’
www.dorsetcoasteering.co.uk
www.dorsetkayaking.co.uk
www.dorsetbushcraft.co.uk
www.dorsetadventure.com – ‘Satellite Sites’
www.coasteeringindorset.co.uk +
www.bournemouthstagactivities.co.uk – Historic sites

7. (In order of effectiveness...)
Trip Advisor
You Tube
Facebook
Blog – currently being reviewed/ updated
Twitter – Historic/ no investment planned

8. Visitors last month, www.landandwave.co.uk – 2800
(+20%)
Visitors last month, all other sites – 700 (+20%)
Traffic: 50% organic, 25% referral, 25% direct

9. Key words (in order) – Land & Wave and Variations
(450), Coasteering (100), Dorset Coasteering (100).
Referral...
Facebook (220), Satellite Sites (220)
Direct...
Everyday email traffic (almost all)

10. Strengths
 Search Rankings for all key words e.g ‘Dorset
Coasteering’
 Quality of website compared to competition 1, 2, 3
 Trip Advisor, approx 3 times the reviews of
competition.
 Quality and speed of response to enquiries, especially
compared to the competition.
 Being bloody good at what we do.
 All staff understand the importance of presentation,
communication and feedback, everyone strives for
reviews, videos etc.

11. Focus of digital marketing
 To make it easy for customers to find us
 To present SIMPLE information
 To make it easy for customers to contact us
 To better establish the companies ethos of ‘Adventure
for Good’
 To make it easy for customers to advocate/ talk about
us

12. • Increase visitors 20%
• 250 + ‘excellent’ reviews on trip advisor
• Dominate Google, ideally occupying 4 out of 5 of top
Google rankings across all key search terms.
• Increase free resources and information online,
encourage teacher traffic.
• More clients, more profit, more fun.

13. Strategy 6 – 12 months
 Budget for 10 hours of web updates per month,
equivalent of 4 new pages or major revamp of current
pages.
 Push, push, push Trip Advisor
 Maintain Facebook updates by restricted staff.
 Ignore twitter
 Distribute free SD cards to encourage client video/
photo sharing.
 Constantly adapt and improve photos and videos

14. We’re going to focus on constantly generating new and
improved content
We will support our own websites with trip advisor,
you tube and, to a lesser extent, Facebook
We are going to make it really easy for clients to talk
about post experience (video, images etc).

15. For more information on DIGITAL DESTINATIONS contact:
Dr Philip Alford, Bournemouth University
ddp@bournemouth.ac.uk
@schooloftourism | @philipalford
#DDBU