The ‘GRABIT’ winter promotion, run by Destination Great Lake Taupō (DGLT) in conjunction with local businesses and community organisations, has proven to be a success and a similar campaign is planned for next year.
Over 140 local businesses brought into the destination marketing campaign to stimulate trading during a traditionally quieter period for the region.
Traffic to GreatLakeTaupo.com is up 50% on the same period last year, largely due to the ‘GRABIT’ campaign. An additional 22,500 hits were generated, 232 new ‘likes’ on the Facebook page and 274 text entries were received for the ‘Daily Deal’s text promotion. Over $16,000 of online accommodation and activity bookings were made during the campaign period off the regional website with a further 1100 referrals to business websites.
‘GRABIT’ included a new landing page on the GreatLakeTaupo.com website, deals and offers displayed by businesses across all sectors of the community with tiered buy in and a month-long social media campaign using text as the entry mechanism. The promotional period coincided with the sale of 200 Grabaseat flights at $39 between Auckland, Wellington and Taupō. Electronic direct mail, TV, print, radio, social media, online banner advertising and billboards were used to drive the campaign message.
Councillor Chris Johnston, co-owner of Plateau Bar and Restaurant said the ‘Grab One’ deals were a sellout. “GRABIT’ certainly created awareness of Great Lake Taupō and the incredible offers available in our region. We were overwhelmed by the response to our Grab One deals, which were sell outs. Many of the customer’s were new ones too which was a desired result. We are looking forward to next year!”
Hukafalls Jet Sales and Marketing Manager, Ruth Crampton said they were really pleased to be a partner in the ‘GRABIT’ campaign. “GRABIT’ provided us with a great opportunity to leverage off the campaign, not only by investing with DGLT, but also via our own marketing channels using the ‘GRABIT’ brand. Working alongside the campaign worked really well for Hukafalls Jet and this was a great example of true industry cooperative marketing. DGLT get them here and then it’s up to us!”
Scott Pearson, General Manager DGLT said the campaign achieved its objectives and that it would be definitely worthwhile running again next year. “From the statistics and feedback we have received to date, we are confident that our industry partners would invest in this type of promotion again. We’ll do it even better next time thanks to the comments and suggestions we have received and we hope to see twice the number of businesses involved.”
Campaign Marketing Manager, Donna Jarden commented that “Partnering with popular brands like Grabaseat and Grab One proved very successful for driving traffic back to the Great Lake Taupō website. Working collaboratively and engaging with a wide range of local businesses and providing different levels of buy-in to the campaign was well received.”
Other successful attributes included the timing of the promotion, the distinctive ‘GRABIT’ branding, the campaign launch at Winterfest and the use of social media to promote the campaign.
“Now ‘GRABIT’ is over, we are excited about heading into another busy period with the Rugby World Cup 2011 only a few days away!” she said.
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For more information contact Donna Jarden, Marketing Manager at Destination Great Lake Taupō on (07) 376 0403, email donna@greatlaketaupo.com or visit our website www.greatlaketaupo.com
