National Trust
+145% of ticket sales target achieved and a re-engaged local audience
Growth in social following
Increase in traffic
New ticket sales
"Zest took our brand visibility to new level, focusing on a targeted local audience that continues to support the venue."
— Kim Hallett, Head of Marketing & Communications at National Trust (Waddesdon Manor)
Objectives
Waddesdon Manor, a historic National Trust property with beautiful surrounding grounds, attracting over 350,000 visitors per year.
Christmas activities have become intensely competitive due to high profile events and venues in London, as well as other well-known historic properties promoting their own seasonal activities and Christmas Markets locally.
Our objectives were to:
Promote Christmas along with other seasonal family activities to drive 100,000 ticket sales
Differentiate Waddesdon’s offering against competitors to stand out
Target new visitors through engaging digital campaigns
Strategy
Key interests and demographics of Waddesdon's target audience was the key driver of our campaigns. Since time was limited for this campaign, we had to act quickly and look for quick (and significant) wins that we could deploy rapidly.
What our team discovered was a unique opportunity to re-engage local visitors, by tapping into their biggest needs and overcoming their challenges when it comes to choosing a venue.
Here were two key discoveries:
Many visitors were attending in multi-generational groups (children, parents, grandparents). Typically it would fall on parents to organise, who were also the most time poor. Therefore convenience and speed were key.
Events were a choice ‘first date’ venue for a surprising % of visitors, yet almost all targeting was being aimed at families.
Action
Our team launched new campaigns via social channels, tapping into our new discoveries, and refining the message to attract new interest.
One of our parameters for these experiments was to give our client a local advantage. We would become the easy option for our target market; local, easy to book, and promoting easy access for all ages.
In addition, knowing that convenience was a key concern, we tested some ‘things to do’ guides. This made it easy to understand and to book a ticket, knowing that the whole group would be well catered for.
Results
The results were significant. We achieved +145% of the ticket target and our client had to pause their campaign twice in order to fulfil the volume of incoming sales.
As part of that effort, our team increased social following by +133% and delivered a 24x increase in traffic from social channels. Most importantly, this growth was a local audience who continue to support the venue.
In fact, for the feast festival the following summer, our client’s Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) dropped by over 50%, since we were re-selling to a now engaged audience. And so the results were long lasting far beyond this 90-day campaign.
Growth team
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Ollie H
Head of Client Services
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Veronica R
Digital Strategist
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Alex C
Senior PPC Specialist