We’ve been optimising our digital optimisation

Since joining us in January, Rabea Schwarzmann has been working with director Dan Lukas to formalise and streamline our digital audit and optimisation programmes. This has allowed us to work with even more destinations around the country on improving their digital assets and capabilities. Right now we’re working with Coventry, Stoke-on-Trent, Wakefield, Calderdale, and Bristol & Bath on bespoke programmes aimed at defining digital best practices, training key staff, and supporting digital marketing.

Our digital optimisation process always starts with a close analysis of the points where local partners interact with audiences online, including their websites, emails, and social media. Working with questionnaires, checklists, and Google Analytics data, we determine how each partner is performing in terms of their own digital engagement goals, and where they might improve.

From this, we develop a list of actions for individual partners to address any weaknesses in their own digital strategies. We also look at the bigger picture: how can partners — working together and with support from local or national stakeholders — position their city or region online as a cultural destination. Based on these findings and recommendations, we develop a bespoke programme of digital optimisation.

While getting the technology right is important, we tend to find that the main factors holding partners back are more conventional: they lack skilled resource, clarity on what constitutes ‘best practice’, quality content, actionable engagement data, and local support or coordination.  So the digital optimisation programmes we’re delivering on the back of these recommendations emphasise a holistic approach. Ultimately, the challenge is to ensure that our digital optimisation programmes not only deliver a measurable impact on the cultural and visitor economies, but also nurture a cohort of skilled and motivated digital practitioners.

For example

• Building on 18 months of digital training in Bath and Bristol — we’ve established a series of quarterly partner marketing activities with deliberately tight deadlines and clear goals.
• In Coventry and Stoke-on-Trent, we’ve launched programmes that combine up to 8 separate strands of training activity to ensure a balanced and supported approach.

If you work in a destination marketing partnership and feel that you could benefit from looking at collaborative digital marketing practices then get in touch with Rabea.