Maximising membership value through digital marketing training: MRBTA
Digital Audit | Digital Marketing Training
By providing digital marketing training, MRBTA upskilled their members and launched a co-marketed interstate tourism campaign.
The challenge
As part of the Recovery for Regional Tourism program, an initiative of the $1 billion COVID-19 Relief and Recovery Fund, Margaret River Busselton Tourism Association (MRBTA) were planning to launch a new campaign to attract interstate visitors to the region. The ‘Drive Your Story’ campaign would promote five new drive trails from Busselton to Augusta in Western Australia.
A key initiative of the project was engaging member businesses to actively participate in and promote the campaign through their own digital channels.
MRBTA understood that the more their members engaged with the campaign, the greater impact it would have.
In order to effectively run a co-marketed interstate campaign, MRBTA needed their members’ support to promote campaign assets, hashtags and drive traffic towards an online landing page. MRBTA wanted to ensure that members not only knew why they should market the drive trails, but also had an understanding of how to do so in the most effective way.
Beyond the campaign, MRBTA members needed the skills to market themselves online to reach a newly-available interstate audience. After several years with state borders largely closed, their marketing to interstate audiences was either rusty, or in some cases, non-existent.
What we did
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In-depth training for 9 businesses
For a select nine businesses, we provided a full digital marketing audit, reviewing their online activity and highlighting strengths and opportunities. Then, based on the priorities of the business and the skill level of the person taking part in the training, we recommended two focus topics for training.
With a mix of business owners and dedicated marketing roles involved, both the audit and subsequent training material was designed for each individual. Trainees received online modules accessible 24/7, a selection of digital marketing templates, and follow-up support sessions.
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Campaign training for 85 businesses
To aid the success of the ‘Drive Your Story’ campaign, MRBTA developed a campaign strategy and campaign assets, including:
- Drive Your Story landing page
- Campaign toolkit, including videos, photos and copy bespoke for chosen channels
- Templates allowing members to create their own assets consistent with the campaign look and feel.
Armed with this, we were able to develop bespoke training for members in each of the five drive trails, in the chosen campaign tactics: website & SEO, social media marketing, email marketing.
Marketing support and mentorship
Throughout both the in-depth and campaign training, we set aside dedicated time to support and mentor member businesses in their digital marketing.
This included:
- Platform support and troubleshooting
- Recommendations for additional tools, including reporting, research and automation tools
- Recommendations for service providers including content creators, advertising specialists and marketing agencies
- Marketing strategy advice, including prioritisation of tactics.
How it impacted member businesses & MRBTA
From the get-go, participants in the training were thrilled to be receiving digital marketing training and support as added value from their MRBTA membership.
Those who received the in-depth training were able to use the audit process to gain clarity over their digital marketing priorities and in some cases, use our feedback to inform business cases for marketing budgets. This, combined with the training, helped advance their digital skills to the point they were able to clearly see an uptick in performance.
For example, one winery was able to implement strategic segmentation that ensured a newly launched wine became a fast sell-out and achieved great sales revenue. In other cases, websites and blog content were better optimised for search and led to noticeably more traffic to the website in a short period of time.
Likewise, the campaign training enabled members to engage with the ‘Drive Your Story’ campaign at a very practical level, making it easier for them to actively promote ‘Drive Your Story’ on their own channels. The knowledge they gained was also applied to their wider marketing activities, empowering them beyond the project funding phase.
It has been a pleasure to work with Insourced Digital to develop an in-depth digital mentoring program for members of the Tourism Association. For us, the strongest elements of the program were the comprehensive digital audit process; the dedicated online training platform; the way the training was tailored for our members; the combination of online and 1-1 learning, and that the training materials remain online for businesses in perpetuity. Over 80 businesses were given access to the training, and we received unanimously positive feedback – businesses told us they were delighted to discover digital marketing training they could really action, and that they found Aimee and Carla fantastic to work with.
Jenny Lee
Tourism Director of MRBTA
I just wanted to say a big thank you to the MRBTA team for organising the Digital Marketing Mentoring course. I found it very valuable, the Insourced Marketing team were a pleasure to deal with and the course was really well thought out and full of great tools.
I feel more confident to use SEO & Google Ads in our marketing activity, whether that’s managing it myself at an entry level or if we were to hire someone externally – I feel I have a better understanding of what is involved and how it works.
Maddy Plummer
Direct Sales Manager at Clairault Streicker
With packages suitable for every business, including custom packages, there’s never been a better time to own your digital marketing in-house.
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