Our 2022 Escape The Everyday campaign, part of the national marketing campaign with Visit England, has been hugely successful, obtaining great reach and engagement and producing some evergreen content we can use for years to come. There is still time for your company to get involved as we will continue to run the campaign until the end of the summer holidays. Read on for more details…
Background
Over the last couple of months, we have collaborated with our colleagues at Visit Gloucester to encourage people to ‘Escape the Everyday’ in Regency Cheltenham and our neighbouring historical city of Gloucester, using the £80K funding awarded by Visit England. The campaign has focused on attracting 25-44-year-olds within 2-2.5 hours of the region to discover some of the two destinations’ outstanding visitor experiences, from paddle boarding around Gloucester Docks to sightseeing and festivals in The Festival Town.
Elements of the Campaign
Campaign Video & Imagery
As part of the campaign, we commissioned local Cheltenham video production company Squashed Robot to create a promotional campaign video and accompanying imagery, showcasing some of the best ways to Escape the Everyday in both Cheltenham and Gloucester.
We encourage our members to download and use the promotional video on your social media channels and websites over the summer to further encourage people to visit Cheltenham & Gloucester. The website version is available here. And the square Instagram version here. Promotional images, which we also encourage our members to download and use, can be found here.
Landing Pages & Inspirational Content
Visit Cheltenham and Visit Gloucester created brand new landing pages for the Escape the Everyday campaign, featuring activities you can book directly through TXGB.
www.visitcheltenham.com/escape and www.visitgloucester.co.uk/things-to-do/escape
Heaps of new content was created for the two tourist board sites too. Including a Cheltenham & Gloucester weekend itinerary, ladies weekend, and stag weekend guides on Visit Cheltenham and reasons to visit Cheltenham and weekend break ideas on the Visit Gloucester site. As well as insider highlights such as Cheltenham hidden gems, local breweries & distilleries, and local businesses owned by Cheltenham & Gloucester celebrities.
Press Releases
Several press releases were created by local PR agency, Encore PR, for the campaign and were distributed across 70 local, regional, national and niche publications.
They were also distributed across the TravMedia and Food4Media networks, further increasing the reach to thousands of journalists, writers, editors, publications and industry contacts.
Total estimated OTS (opportunity to see) across the 31 published posts – 456,665 people.
Digital Audio Campaign
Pre nesters were also targeted using podcast adverts via the DAX ad platform and Acast podcasts plus Spotify adverts. Total impressions: 1,356,110 with 1,222 click-throughs to websites.
Out Of Home Advertising (OOH)
Digital adverts in Birmingham and Bristol shopping centres aimed to inspire shoppers to book staycations in Cheltenham and Gloucester over the summer. Total Impressions: 428,387.
Digital Marketing Campaign
£15,000 of the £80,000 was allocated to a digital marketing campaign. £7,500 on each destination. Cheltenham received 17K+ Google ad clicks, 2.63M Google ad impressions, 13.7K Facebook advert clicks and 1.75 Facebook advert impressions which is a great ROI and has attracted a new audience for both destinations. The campaign video was viewed by over 26.5K people on YouTube.
Social Media & Newsletters
Escape the Everyday has also been extensively shared with Visit Cheltenham’s 50K+ social media followers and Visit Gloucester’s 40K+ followers. In addition to consumer and member newsletter subscribers (20K+ Visit Cheltenham subscribers and 1.5K Visit Gloucester subscribers).
Social Media Takeover on Visit England
We had the rare opportunity to take over the Visit England Instagram and Facebook account for one day midway through the campaign. Sharing inspirational content with distinct calls to action and links to the two websites. View the Instagram takeover here and the Facebook takeover here.
Press Trips
And last but certainly not least, we were delighted to host four weekend press trips by award-winning travel bloggers and influencers who produced authentic content and shared with their online followers.
Many thanks to all of our members who hosted/engaged with our travel bloggers. Your support of us, to help us support you, is very much appreciated!
Emily Luxton – who produced a highly search engine optimized blog post and Instagram videos featuring a bike ride and festivals plus her luxurious stay at Cowley Manor.
Italian Trip Abroad – who produced blog content and Instagram videos featuring – a steam train ride & guided tour in Cheltenham and sightseeing in Gloucester.
Sharon Yap – a digital creator with 137K followers who shared numerous videos to Instagram stories during her visit and Instagram posts featuring travelling with GWSR, riding a bike along the Honeybourne Line, her stay at the new Neptune Apartments & afternoon tea at Memsahibs Lounge.
You Could Travel – who produced three blog posts including things to do in Cheltenham and Gloucestershire plus social media content generating an impressive 234K impressions.
The Escape the Everyday campaign will continue to run until the end of the summer holidays. View our Call for Content page to see how your company can get involved.
Marketing Cheltenham 