London West End

Retail Sector

"We really appreciate the work you've done to build the West End Twitter community. Within 3 months, you hit our target of 5,000 Twitter followers and drove footfall to London West End by promoting events, offers and activities." 

Ros Barclay, Head of Marketing, Covent Garden London

Increase footfall, spend and awareness using a digital platform

New users signing up to WEMA website increased by 116%

CLIENT: The West End Marketing Alliance (WEMA)

The objective was to support WEMA’s partners’ events & promotions in the West End of London to increase spending, awareness, footfall and frequency of visits among the key target audience on a digital platform.

The West End Marketing Alliance (WEMA) was looking for an online marketing agency to promote information of value and engage with visitors to the London West End. We won the pitch for WEMA over several top name West End media agencies because we demonstrated that we understood the target audience and channels to reach them, while remaining focused on the overall objective of increasing footfall to the West End.

This is how it worked:

  • We identified that customer insight was important to the project, and twitter was the most popular channel with the target audience
  • Utilising this platform we created a voice for the London West End itself, where followers and WEMA can engage with each other, and offers and events could be sent out in real time
  • Once set up and starting to generating interest from the initial followers, we then targeted new potential followers who were interested in the West End and encouraged them to join the community
  • We felt that it was important that we only got in touch with people who were tweeting relevant questions and mentions so that the content remained relevant
  • Using search tools we found any questions that were relevant to the West End, answered them and chased it up with a follow
  • Once we had a good following and a buzz amongst our followers, we started getting influential tweeters re-tweeting the events, thus exposing us to more relevant twitter users
  • The Twitter feed was also announced on www.allinlondon.co.uk and on the relevant Facebook groups to maximize exposure and potential followers

Measurement and Evaluation:

The campaign was a great success, thanks to focused audience targeting, and promoting information of value. Because of this, the twitter campaign now has advocates in several specific interest areas in the London Area: theatre, shopping and music, these relationships are continuing to grow and strengthen.

Advocates that attended the WEMA events gave constructive criticism which enabled us to constantly adapt and develop our approach to the activity on the Twitter feed. We also received photos of the promotional events on Twitpic, highlighting the successful user interaction with the West End Twitter feed.

Examples of  Twitter Feedback:

deejaypang: Sod the gym, my thursday night's sorted..RT @londonwestend: Don't miss out - 20% off in bars, restaurants & shops around Carnaby St. TONIGHT

deejaypang: @londonwestend went a bit crazy in Diesel, All Saints, Dahlia and many more... Shopping was GREAT! And the atmosphere was fab!

myretailtweets: @londonwestend Thought last night was great. Good to see so many people having fun

Results at the end of the Campaign:

  • 24,077 new users signed up to the London West End website. (116 % increase)
  • At the end of the campaign over 5,000 new users followed WEMA on twitter. The followers figure today is now over 7,000 and continuing to grow rapidly.
  • 222 new fans joined the WEMA Facebook group during the campaign. (85% increase)
  • @LondonWestEnd was re-tweeted and @talked about with an overall reach of 194,010 people

Strategy: Revenue Potential, Persona Insight, Raising Awareness, Consideration, Commitment

Delivery: Online PR, Social Media

London West End