MARKETING OVERVIEW 2017
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Visit Lincoln – benefiting everyone who lives and works across Lincolnshire
Lydia Rusling, Head of Visit Lincoln:
“Visit Lincoln is doing an incredible job bringing visitors, investment and business into Lincoln City and the surrounding area. Our website VisitLincoln.com and marketing campaigns have supported the growth of the visitor economy by 24% meaning visitors to the city are spending over £190million a year and £1.3billion across the county.
Visit Lincoln has had a fantastic year and with the help of our partners we brought the Knights down to London King’s Cross train station, Launched the Cathedral AR app, won ‘Best use of Multimedia’ in this year’s Lincolnshire Digital and Tech Awards for our videos and took Lincolnshire to the British Travel and Tourism Show.
“We are on the cusp of being a top UK destination with international recognition and as a not for profit organisation every penny we get goes back into attracting visitors and investment to Lincoln”.
STEAM Data
The local visitor economy continues to grow with official data showing a 20% increase in visitor numbers to Lincoln over the past five years and now sits at £190 million. The data shows that since 2011 the number of people visiting the city per year has increased from 3.4 million to 4.1 million in 2016. We are thrilled that since Visit Lincoln’s launched in 2011 there has been such a tremendous increase in the number of visitors and wider economic impact for the city. We'd like to thank all our partners who support Visit Lincoln and work together to make Lincoln a great place to visit; the growth is a testament to everyone's hard work which has attracted over four million visitors to Lincoln every year.
Partners In total, 29 partners have joined the Visit Lincoln partnership since the beginning of March. This means that in 2017 partnerships have increased by 35%.
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Partner Breakdown Types of Partner
26%
74%
Partners Corporate Partners Partners in 2016 New partners in 2017 Destination Partners
Digital Marketing
Website – visitlincoln.com Around 1.2m page views across the Visit Lincoln website between January and June 2017.
The homepage has been the most popular landing page during this period: followed by What’s On, Things To Do and Discover Lincolnshire Weekend.
The Visit Lincoln website attracted a significant increase in web traffic during the success of Lincoln FC in the FA Cup. During February there was a150% increase during the game played, with the Cathedral in the background, 60% of the increase was from new visitors to the site.
Visits have increased by 6.4% compared to 2016. Visits have decreased by 3% compared to 2015, explained by the significant traffic for Magna Carta 800 and the British Cycling Championships in the city. 74% of traffic came from organic search, evidencing the strong SEO of the website. 92% of visitors were from the UK. The next highest traffic came from the US (3%), Australia (0.5%), and Canada (0.3%).
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Visit Lincoln total website stats:
Organic Unique Month Visits Visits Pageviews
January '17 57,471 46,707 176,718
February 60,142 48,575 178,624
March 79,359 61,770 223,969
April 77,858 61,192 225,502
May 87,163 67,659 233,160
June 70,688 56,682 193,008
91,909 71,962 255,164
July
August 114,038 88,646 304,149
September 92,329 73,457 231,406
Unique Website Visits 100,000 80,000 60,000 40,000 2017 20,000 0 2016 2015
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Social Media
Facebook - 14,068 followers, 5.8m impressions (over six months), average of 960k per month, 30k referrals to website (over six months), average of 5k per month.
Facebook Likes
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Twitter - 14,824 followers, 1.8m impressions, average of 309k per month referrals, average of 1.1k per month.
Twitter Followers 20,000 15,000 10,000 5,000
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Instagram - 4,191 followers, more details are unavailable without paying for a subscription.
Instagram Followers 6000 4000 2000
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Video Marketing
Launched three new videos promoting the city using the themes – Take Time and Discover (Heritage), Events and Festivals and Experience Cultural Lincoln. They won the Best Use of Multimedia at the 2017 Lincolnshire Digital & Tech Awards and have been viewed and shared by hundreds of thousands of people. The reach is currently 1 million.
Doomesday- New video announcing the Doomesday Book is coming to Lincoln, a coordinated launch between Visit Lincoln, Lincolnshire County Council and the National Archives. (See below)
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PRINTED LITERATURE
WHAT’S ON GUIDE – 40,000 print run
There was a need for a more comprehensive events listing in print, so Visit Lincoln joined the Bailgate Independent to produce a What’s On Guide, funded through Lincoln BIG, Lincolnshire Heritage Services and venue sponsors.
The first two editions have been a huge success. The autumn/ winter edition has had 40,00 guides distributed throughout the city centre, direct door drops and high profile retail racks in Waitrose, M&S, Co-Op & Virgin Trains.
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2017 CITY & COUNTRYSIDE VISITOR GUIDE - 70,000 PRINT RUN
To date around 50,000 city guides have been distributed, with 20,000 remaining for the rest of the year. Plans have begun to begin production on the 2018 guide.
LINCOLN LOVES KIDS – 15,000 PRINT
The 2017/18 edition of Lincoln Loves Kids brochure was printed and delivered in June. It officially launched at The Lincolnshire Show (21 June 2017) with a media photo call and press release. The booklet is a partnership between Visit Lincoln, Lincoln Mums and Lincolnshire Heritage Services (LCC) – all who identified a need to have more tailored family information.
MOLLY’S GUIDE
Molly’s Guide is an established family focused A5 magazine which has a strong and successful distribution through Greater Lincoln, most significantly this includes 115 schools which place the magazine in pupil’s bags to take home. Molly’s Guide and Visit Lincoln have teamed up to help each other reach families across greater Lincoln.
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BEDROOM BROWSER
A stylish hard-backed A4 book for hotels to display in their guest rooms.
Produced by Kingfisher Media and sponsored by Visit Lincoln the 2018 Welcome to Lincolnshire Bedroom Browser is now available.
In addition to the hotels Welcome to Lincolnshire is also circulated to leading restaurants, bars, salons, spas and visitor centres. The guide also helps encourage inward investment and relocation to the area by showing it off as a great place to live, work and do business in – as well as visit. Copies are also distributed to local councils and development agencies. The publication is also online and available as an app.
See the current version https://kingfishervisitorguides.com/lincolnshire/visitor-guide/. If you haven’t received a coy but would like to enquiry about getting one, please email [email protected] or call 01522 842705.
Distribution includes: Bail House Duke William Hotel Lincoln The Limes Country Belton Woods Elm Tree House Hotel Brackenborough Hotel Golf Hotel & Aqua Sante Spa The Rest Branston Hall Hotel Hall Farm Hotel The Savoy Skegness Best Western Angel & Royal Hambleton Hall The Stallingborough Best Western Bentley Hemswell Court Grange Hotel Best Western Kenwick Park Holiday Inn Lincoln The White Heather Best Western North Shore Humber Royal The William Cecil Best Western Oaklands Hall Eden House Hotel Grantham Urban Hotel
Best Western Vine Hotel Kings Hotel Grantham Washingborough Hall Carre Arms Millfields Hotel White Hart Castle Hotel Lincoln Petwood Hotel White Hart Lincoln Charlotte House Poachers Country Hotel Woodlands Hotel Cley Hall Royal Hotel Skegness Ramada Resort Grantham Crown Hotel Skegness San Pietro Winteringham Scunthorpe Page 9 Crown Hotel Stamford Stoke Rochford Hall Wyndham Garden Grantham
Double Tree by Hilton The Bull and Swan Forest Pines The Hope and Anchor
Thanks to the help of partners Visit Lincoln also produce:
A3 Map Pads Joint Ticket to Castle and Cathedral leaflet Tour Lincoln Leaflet
Visit Lincoln partners can collect Visit Lincoln literature from the Lincoln BIG office, please contact [email protected] to do this.
CAMPAIGN & MARKETING:
Lincoln 2017 - Raising awareness of Lincoln & Lincolnshire through a coordinated branding toolkit, commemorating the Battle of Lincoln and Charter of the Forest 800th anniversaries.
Business Toolkit - 2017 branding toolkit was available for businesses and partners to use in the own marketing, helping to strengthen the Lincoln 2017 brand and coordinate activities. We’ve had 370 unique visits to the toolkit page.
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Street Dressing – delivered through Cultural Destinations funding in partnership with Lincoln BIG; highlighting events and activities across the city and driving traffic to VisitLincoln.com.
National Advertising
Kings Cross Ticket Barrier - advertising using 2017 branding – reach 3 million+. See infographic below.
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The Event – supplement distributed with The Sunday Telegraph on 28th May. A4 landscape ad (1/2 tabloid) in the Sunday Telegraph supplement, Culture and Days Out section, plus editorial recommendations featured. 255,000 printed copies and 250,000 digital copies + weblink to visitlincoln.com.
Lincolnshire: It’s Faster by Rail with Virgin Trains East Coast & East Midland Trains -
A5 Map Fold was created for
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the London Kings Cross event in May. It was also displayed in the train carriages of Virgin Trains East Coast and East Midland Trains promoting Lincoln as a place to visit by rail this summer. (5,000 printed). A competition postcard to win a Shortbreak also captured 300 new email addresses.
London Kings Cross Event (see infographic) - As part of the 2017 Campaign, Visit Lincoln coordinated with Lincolnshire County Council’s Community Railways Partnership for an event at London Kings Cross in May 2017. Visit Lincoln coordinated the exhibition stand and all promotional literature.
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Community Rail Award
After the successful event at London King’s Cross Visit Lincoln and Lincolnshire County Council’s Community Rail Partnership attended AcORP’s Community Rail Awards after being shortlisted. The partnership won silver for best marketing campaign.
Virgin Trains familiarization trip
Visit Lincoln showed managers from Virgin Trains East Coast around Lincoln in September- many had never been before, but they left full of ideas about how to promote Lincoln by rail.
Visit Lincoln is not just thinking about 2019 when the increased rail service begins, but also next year as the RAF centenary is commemorated across Lincolnshire. Virgin Trains can help put Lincoln on the map as a place to Visit by Rail and already has a strong relationship to Visit Lincoln.
Thank you to all the partners who supported the day.
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Lincoln Loves Kids at Lincoln by the Sea
At the end of July the very first Lincoln Loves Kids 'Family Fair' was held at the beach in City Square. Nearly 1,000 people joined in throughout the day. It was the perfect chance to remind people about things to do in and around Lincoln over the summer holiday. Thank you to all partners who supported with stalls and donated prizes, and Lincoln BIG for hosting the event at 'Lincoln by the Sea'.
Lincoln Loves Kids at Scampton Airshow
After the success of The Lincoln Knights Trail, there were lots of questions about plans for 2018.
Scampton Airshow was a perfect place to softly launch the 2018 Aviation Campaign, with over 50,000 visitors it was really popular with 1,000 leaflets being handed out.
The family-friendly airshow was also a great place to let visitors know how great Lincoln is for families; the hook-a-duck game raised money for a local children’s charity.
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CONTRACTS & PROJECTS
Media / PR Press Trips:
Mamas Spot, May 2017 (200,000 monthly subscribers / 1million reach on Facebook) Mummy Travels, June 2017 (family blogger & award winning journalist ) Travel GBI, May 2017 (UK leading group travel publication 12,000 subscribers) Visit Britain UK Cathedrals, June 17 (Visit Britain travel journalist) Candis Magazine, September 17 (leading women’s lifestyle magazine)
Press Coverage
Three highlights in 2017: The Telegraph – Let’s Visit Lincoln Waitrose Weekend – August 2017 Circulation – nationwide 40,000 Exclusively British Magazine – April 2017- international 100,000
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England’s Heritage Cities
Visit Lincoln continues to play an active role in England’s Heritage Cities consortium meetings, by attending we continue to gain valuable insights into the operational framework of other heritage DMOs and their activities.
Lincoln Cathedral augmented reality (AR) app launched in June and was only made possible due to the £40m Discover England. A share of £250,000 was invested in the Lincoln App and shows investment in new technology to enhance the experience people have in Lincoln. It is free to download – for residents and visitors, mainly those from overseas.
Meet Lincoln
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LINCOLN CORPORATE
Corporate website update
The new pages of the corporate section of the website m
New Insights corporate newsletter A new corporate e-newsletters has been set up in February. The aim to keep Partners and potential Partners up to date with activities and progress made by Visit Lincoln team, plus business opportunities.
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