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Lough Erne Resort Digital Marketing Audit 1
Lough Erne Digital Marketing Audit
Presented by Shane Hickey
Lough Erne Resort Digital Marketing Audit 2
Digital Footprint
Lough Erne Resort Digital Marketing Audit 3
www.lougherneresort.com
User Friendliness:
The site is very easy to read, follow and navigate through.
Images:
Images are bright with good resolution. Includes iconic photographs including G8
Summit and Rory Mcllroy photographs.
URL:
The website just has a .com domain.
Structure:
The landing page has a number of features and
options as well as a prominent online booking
option.
Content:
There is a wide range of content on the site with information on what the hotel offers in
terms of its facilities, specification of the hotel and its rooms, location, gallery of images
and online booking facility.
There is also a newsletter available so that you can receive regular updates on a variety of
the hotels services. There are a number of other sections including careers and public
relations as well as a sitemap for the website.
Languages:
The website and newsletter are
currently only available in English .
Links:
There are 88 links to the website
Source: www.alexa.com.
Keywords:
Hotel facilities and luxury.
Lough Erne Resort Digital Marketing Audit 4
The Lough Erne Resort Facebook page has 8,407 likes with 56 people talking about this.
The Page is liked by International Golf Celebrities including Darren Clarke, Nick Faldo, Grae-
me McDowell and Rory Mcllroy and International Golfing groups such as the Masters and
the European Tour.
Tourism boards that like the page include discoverireland.ie, Discover Northern Ireland,
Discover Ireland GB and Tourism Ireland.
The page is also liked by local food and drink companies such as Belleek Pottery and
Bushmills Irish Whiskey and local and International media including the Ulster Tattler, TV3
and Conde Nast Johnansens.
They also have other Facebook pages such as Lough Erne Hotel and Lough Erne Golf Resort
Which have 994 likes and 1,126 likes respectively.
Lough Erne use Facebook to update
followers with regard to promotions
and offers including:
Hen and Stag parties (see the
Advert)
Weddings
Special Event Menu's such as
Mothers Day and Christmas.
Golf Tournaments
Special Offers
Events that are being hosted.
Competitions
Photographs.
Lough Erne Resort Digital Marketing Audit 5
The following list is a breakdown of the nationality of the Lough Erne Facebook
followers. The greatest majority are from the UK with 79% and Ireland coming a very
distant second on 15.5%. The combination of these two figures show that 94.5% of
the followers are from these two countries suggesting that on Facebook the
company has practically no International following.
# Country Local Fans % of Fan Base
1 United Kingdom 6643 79.0 %
2 Ireland 1302 15.5 %
3 United States 121 1.4 %
4 Australia 60 0.7 %
5 Germany 23 0.3 %
6 Italy 15 0.2 %
7 India 13 0.2 %
8 Spain 13 0.2 %
9 Canada 12 0.1 %
10 Greece 10 0.1 % Source: Socialbakers.com
In comparison to their competitors, such as the
K Club, who only have 1,470 likes this evidence would
suggest Lough Erne are doing a very good job on
Facebook . Fota Island though, another competitor
have 32,065 likes and 1,761 talking about them.
Therefore we can say that Lough Erne are effectively
using Facebook but could do more on this platform.
Lough Erne Resort Digital Marketing Audit 6
Lough Erne Resort ranks very well through the Organic Search in Google.ie The
following terms were introduced and this is how they listed.
Term: Ranking:
“Hotels in Northern Ireland” 4th on Page One
“5 Star Hotels in Ireland” 3rd on Page One
“Luxury Hotels in Ireland” 2nd on Page One
Weddings in Ireland Not ranked on Page One
Weddings in Northern Ireland 2nd on Page One
Spa breaks in Northern Ireland 2nd on Page One
Spa breaks in Ireland Not ranked on Page One
Golf Breaks in Northern Ireland 3rd on Page One
Golf Breaks in Ireland Not ranked on Page One
Best restaurants in Northern Ireland Ranked 9th on Page One
The resort has very good Search Engine Optimisation through Google resulting in a very
high natural ranking on Page One for generic searches including the terms luxury, five star
and Hotels in Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Observations would also include that the company lists very well with searches that relate
to Northern Ireland and the various activities at the hotel but this is not reflected when
searching for these activities with the word “Ireland”.
Their events such as Golf, Weddings and Spa are also well promoted as is their Restaurant.
Hen and Stag weekends which are promoted through Facebook are not promoted through
Search.
Lough Erne Resort Digital Marketing Audit 7
Term: Ranking: Adwords:
“Hotels in Northern Ireland” Not ranked on Page One Yes
“5 Star Hotels in Ireland” Not ranked on Page One No
“Luxury Hotels in
Northern Ireland”
4th on Page One Yes
“Weddings in Ireland” Not ranked on Page One No
“Weddings in Northern Ire-
land”
Not ranked on Page One No
“Spa breaks in Northern
Ireland”
Not ranked on Page One Yes
“Golf Breaks in Northern
Ireland”
Not ranked on Page One Yes
Lough Erne Resort ranks very well through the Organic Search in Google.co.uk
Although not as well as their SEO in Google.ie.
The observation is that Lough Erne resort spend heavily on Adwords within
Google.co.uk to ensure they list on key searches where they do not list
organically.
Examples of this can be see in the above table with the following search terms
“Hotels in Northern Ireland” and “Spa breaks in Northern Ireland” and
“Golf Breaks in Northern Ireland” .
Lough Erne Resort Digital Marketing Audit 8
Youtube has over 1 billion unique visitors monthly and is the second largest search
engine after Google.
Source: socialmediatoday.com
There are 815 videos which have been posted on YouTube relating to the search
“Lough Erne Resort” although there are 5,510 videos under the search
“Lough Erne” with much of this focusing on the lakes and angling.
Mount Juliet have 24,700 results when you search “Mount Juliet” and Fota Island
Have 1,850 videos under the search term “Fota Island”.
The observation would be that Lough Erne Resort are underutilising this incredibly
Powerful search engine and this is an area that could be targeted in future digital
marketing strategies in terms of broadcasting video of this resort to the world.
There are now over 1 billion users
with Google+ enabled accounts .
Source: jeffbullas.com
Lough Erne Resort have a presence
On G+ but with very limited photos,
information and no videos.
Lough Erne Resort have 2 followers
with 4,485 views although Fota
Island has 36 followers but with
18,029 views.
Lough Erne Resort Digital Marketing Audit 9
Lough Erne Resort are listed on Twitter under a
Number of different hashtags including:
@LoughErneResort (2,670 followers, 162 following)
@G8LoughErne (1,424 followers, 19 following)
@LoughErneGolf (38 Followers, 55 following)
Competitor brands include the following:
@mountjuliet (10.1k followers, 5,521 following)
@fotaisland (7,002 followers, 2,050 following)
The observation from the statistics would be that Lough Erne Resort are under using
Twitter as a platform to communicate with both current and prospective customers.
We can see this not only in the number of followers they have, Mount Juliet have over
10,000 followers compared to the 2,670 followers that Lough Erne has but also in the
Tweet Activity.
Wonderful day and round of #golf at the very beautiful
#LoughErneResort #Luxury @Shanehickey2
@MountJuliet has tweeted over 7,031 times versus the 205 tweets that have been sent
out from @LoughErneResort.
Given that Twitter has an estimated current following of 550 million users, albeit not at
the estimated levels of Facebook which has 1.2 billion users, it has to be taken very
seriously as a marketing tool and this is something that Lough Erne are failing to do.
Lough Erne Resort Digital Marketing Audit
SWOT Analysis
Lough Erne Resort Digital Marketing Audit
Strengths
Close to St. Angelo Private Jet airport.
The resort has five Heli pads to
accommodate arrival by Helicopter.
Excellent facilities including and
Authentic Thai Spa and 6 Conference
and Meeting Rooms.
Superb Dining facilities run by
Acclaimed chef Noel McMeel.
120 Bed 5 Star Hotel with 66 Golf Lodges on its very own 600 acre peninsula in
Lough Erne.
Hosted the G8 Summit in 2013.
Only 5 Star Golf Hotel in Northern Ireland and one of only four 5 Star Hotels in
Northern Ireland.
Award winning Hotel including Best Hotel at the 2011 Northern Ireland
Tourism Awards.
Two Championship Golf Courses including Faldo course designed by six time Major
winner Nick Faldo.
Hotel has been endorsed by International sports stars such as Rory McLlroy.
Lough Erne Resort Digital Marketing Audit
Weaknesses
The Lough Erne Resort is currently in
administration and this is being managed by
KPMG. The administrators will not have the
same affinity and passion for the business as
an owner would have and this could affect
business performance.
The resort is around two hours from
Dublin and Belfast airport which could be
argued that it is a negative in terms of ease of
access.
The website and newsletter are only in
English which damages their ability to attract
customers from Asia, the Middle East and
Spanish speaking countries.
The five star golf hotel is an extremely
competitive industry in Ireland with
Internationally recognised competitors
such as Adare Manor, Mount Juliet, the K Club
and Doonbeg Lodge, which was recently
bought by Donald Trump.
Lough Erne Resort Digital Marketing Audit
Opportunities
Target the hosting of International Golf events such as the hosting of the
Ryder Cup, the Irish Open and the EurAsia Cup. The 2012 Ryder Cup in Medinah was
estimated to be worth €150 million to the local economy in Chicago.
Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-19726313
Target American tourists of with 1 million of them visiting Ireland in 2013
Source: http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/tourism-numbers-up-7-
as-the-gathering-exceeds-expectations-1.1630842
Target the hosting of International political and diplomatic summits such as EU
Conferences and United Nations summits.
Target International fishing tourism coming to Ireland. Current Irish angling market
valuation is €750 million. Source: fisheriesireland. ie
Target high profile celebrity weddings. Wayne and Colleen Rooney’s wedding
Was estimated to cost £5 million.
Target International business conferences and Tourism from Asia and the Middle East
by having the website translated to languages such as Chinese where there is huge
demand for luxury brands and increasing International tourism. Source: KPMG
Lough Erne Resort Digital Marketing Audit
Threats
Ireland and the UK have endured a very difficult recession and although both
countries economies are starting to grow and there is very little economic and
employment certainty which is affecting consumer confidence.
A large number of hotels in Ireland were forced into NAMA as a result of their
holding companies going into administration. This coupled with the high levels of
supply in terms of hotel rooms per head of capita has resulted in extreme pressure
in terms of the price of hotel rooms.
Deal websites such as Groupon have resulted in the eroding of margin within the
hotel industry with consumers now looking for luxury accommodation at economy
style prices.
The five star golf hotel is an extremely competitive industry in Ireland with
Internationally recognised competitors such as Adare Manor, Mount Juliet, the K
Club , Fota Island and Doonbeg Lodge, which was recently bought by Donald
Trump.
The wedding market has been affected by economic conditions with couples
waiting longer to get married and spending less on their reception which is bad
news for top end resorts like Lough Erne.
Source: http://www.mrs2be.ie/wedding-business/irish-wedding-survey-2013/
Lough Erne Resort Digital Marketing Audit
PEST Analysis Political:
Northern Ireland has had a devolved Government since 2007 and this political
stability coupled with the Peace Process has effectively ended sectarian violence.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Ireland#Peace_process
Improved political relations with the Republic of Ireland have seen improved visitor
numbers from the south and joint marketing efforts promoting the Island of Ireland.
Economic:
After a difficult last few economic years the UK
economy is expected to grow by 2.8% in 2014
according to the British Chamber of Commerce.
Source:http://www.bbc.com/news/business-26504691
Northern Ireland tourism is targeted to hit £1 billion by 2020.
Source: http://www.detini.gov.uk/ni_tourism_20100308-4.pdf
In 2013 8 million overseas tourists visited the Republic generating €3.64 billion
Source: http://www.tourismireland.com/Home!/About-Us/Press-Releases/2014/
Tourism-Ireland-Welcomes-8-2-Growth-in-Overseas.aspx
Lough Erne Resort Digital Marketing Audit
Social:
How we as a society have embraced the digital era has had a profound impact on
how we review and book our travel and accommodation experience. The consumer
is now extremely well informed, has access to a wide variety of booking mechanisms
over a variety of platforms and will post their experiences online after their stay.
Technology:
Technology is dynamic in the digital era and this therefore presents both
opportunities and challenges within the Hotel industry. Trends indicate an explosion
in Ecommerce through the smartphone. In Ireland over 1.6 million people own a
Smartphone.
Source: http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/over-16m-irish-people-now-use-
smartphones-229121.html
Search engines Yandex in China and
Baidu in Russia are experiencing
exponential growth where Google have
difficulties operating.
Cisco expects 3.4 billion Internet users in
four years, equivalent to 45% of the world
population. Source: Cisco.com
Globalisation has led to increasing levels of
Tourism and it is now one of the fastest
growing and largest industries in the world.
In 2010, 940 million people were recorded
as tourists with the industry valued at $919
billion dollars.
Source: World Tourism Organisation
Lough Erne Resort Digital Marketing Audit
Philip and Gloria:
Philip is a retired property developer and lives in Irvinestown
which is only a short drive from Lough Erne. He and his wife
are both in their early seventies. His wife Gloria has never
worked. They have three children who all are married and live
in England. He has been an avid golfer all his life. He and his
wife are members of Lough Erne golf resort and play golf
there most weekends. They regularly attend social events in
the Clubhouse and dine regularly with friends there.
Buyer Personas
Adam and Laura:
Adam and Laura are an engaged couple originally from
Hollwood in Co. Down. They are both in the their mid thirties
and they work in the City in Belfast. Adam is an investment
banker and Laura is a solicitor. They are both from wealthy
Protestant Backgrounds and met at Queens University. They
will marry this summer in Lough Erne Resort and honeymoon
in French Polynesia.
Emily:
Emily is from Dublin and is in her late twenties. She is single
and works as a Pharmacist. She has high disposable income
and likes to treat herself with regular weekend getaways with
herself and her single girlfriends. They recently had a
weekend break at the five star Monart spa in Wexford. She
has booked a spa break at the authentic Thai Spa in Lough
Erne for the Easter weekend.
Lough Erne Resort Digital Marketing Audit
Digital Summary
Website and SEO:
Lough Erne resort have a very good website with excellent SEO and spend heavily on
Google Adwords promoting the resort and its facilities through Google.co.uk.
Social Media:
Lough Erne is doing a reasonable job in terms of Social Media marketing. They are not
head of the pack but they are far from being late adopters either. They have a good pres-
ence on Facebook and Twitter but have failed to embrace emerging platforms such as
Google+ and YouTube.
Target Buyer Personas:
Lough Erne from the research seems to be heavily reliant on the UK and Ireland as their
two principal markets. They have a fantastic product which has International recognition
From hosting such events as the G8 summit. They also have the Faldo Championship gold
course so I believe their digital marketing needs to take much more of an International fo-
cus.
New buyer personas could include Asian tourists particularly those from China where there
is an increasing demand for luxury goods and International tourism. This can be achieved
by translating the website into Chinese, affiliate marketing in Asia and Paid advertising in
Baidu, Chinas largest search engine.
Lough Erne also need to capitalise on the success of Northern Irish golfers such as Darren
Clarke, Graeme McDowell and Rory Mcllroy to target the American golf tourist. Lough Erne
has a fantastic golf product and coupled with luxury accommodation. Marketing initiatives
could include sponsorship of American PGA tour events and increased use of YouTube golf
tutorials.
Given the success of the G8 summit they could lobby Irish and UK politicians and civil serv-
ants to use Lough Erne as host venue for political conferences and events. This could be
achieved through targeted Facebook and Twitter campaigns.