Introduction

The New Forest Escape presents guests with a luxurious getaway in the picturesque landscape of New Forest, furnished with homey touches.  We specialize in home-baked muffins and chocolates with a variety of flavors to choose from to delight your palate.  Not to mention the stars of our breakfast menu- the English and Irish breakfasts.   

Apart from these specialties, is our ability to make you feel at home away from home. Trip Advisor reviews frequently highlight the warm hospitality and special touches exhibited at New Forest Escape that set it apart from other B&Bs.  

Owners Shane and Keren have created a tranquil escape where one can enjoy all that nature has to offer while not foregoing the everyday electronic essentials. So whether you choose to be off-grid or remain connected- the New Forest Escape ensures the best of both worlds.

Goals and Objectives

The underlying goal of any Bed and Breakfast, like any other business, is to generate an income.  However, the means that are used to reach this endpoint make B&B’s a different experience.  They offer people a break from the fast-paced life and familiar surroundings.

A B&B is a more affordable and cozy approach to taking time off in comparison to a hotel.  It has a timeless aura and charm about it that many grand hotels lack.   

There is a more intimate and engaging feel that helps people to really detach themselves from the world around them. At New Forest Escape we have made it our goal to provide all those that enter our doors with an unforgettable experience that will keep people talking about it for years to come.

We believe that an efficient and effective response when resolving clients’ concerns/grievances is key to our reputation and achieving our goals. We place an emphasis on upholding a trustworthy reputation that always seeks its client’s best interests.  Thus, we believe feedback and recommendations to be useful tools in improving our existing standards and maintaining them.  

Many businesses check the boxes when it comes to exterior design and quality, yet they lack consistency and coherence in this aspect.  This is why, it is our goal to ensure that we stand apart from surrounding competitors whether it be in service, quality, or our prices.

Concerning the ratings of our enterprise, we have implemented the “5/5/55 rule”.  With the aim being to achieve a five 5-star review within the first 55 days of opening our doors (Transparent, 2021). 

Some might consider this far-reaching but we are fully assured of what we have to offer and that it will meet the expectations of its suggested online presence.  Moreover, we have aimed for an occupancy rate of 65% for the first year, and plan to increase it to 80% by the third year.  

Customer Profiles

Photo by Askar Abayev from Pexels

According to Jansson-Boyd (2010), to truly understand your customer, you need to understand the ‘why’ and ‘how’ behind their consumer activities.  Customer data can be used advantageously by retailers.  For example: when creating custom offers and incentives within specific market segments (Synqera, 2012).  

A useful way to understand your consumers is by creating personas. “Creating personas is a powerful technique for developing customer-centered online strategies” (Chaffey, 2012).

New Forest Escape’s customer profile consists of the following three segments:

• Demographic
• Psychographic 
• Geographic

1.1)  Demographic:

Our B&B seeks to target families with 1-2 children, newlyweds between ages 25-35 with no kids, young professional couples ages 24-30, as well as businessmen and women. 

Additionally, there are two groups of empty nesters. The former consisting of those whose kids no longer reside in their home (40-55 y/o). The latter being retirees 50 years old and up. 

Not to forget, groups of friends who are looking for a getaway. Young adults ages 18-24 looking to celebrate with a weekend away. 

Couples are the dominant market segment at Daisybank Cottage. Trip Advisor (2013) statistics show that 110 out of 143 Trip Advisor online reviews were from couples. An emerging market for New Forest Escape has been the ‘Inner City Couples’, especially from Johannesburg. (Maher, 2012)

1.2)  Psychographic:

This section consists of the social class and lifestyle targets that we envision to be staying at our B&B.  These are Social classes A and B, with class A including those in high or managerial positions.  Class B comprises entrepreneurs such as small business owners, or the self-employed, and supervisory and skilled manual workers.

1.3)  Geographic:

With the B&B located in Cape Town, we expect locals and an influx of visitors from the surrounding regions. Namely, Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban, Freestate suburbs, and the Northern Cape (greater Cape Town).  

Key Performance Indicators

Key performance indicators (KPIs), will be used to control and measure the overall impact of the strategy. Chaffey (2012) defines KPIs as “measures that are used to evaluate and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of business processes.” 

The following sections will outline what KPIs could be set by Daisybank to measure the effectiveness of their campaign: 

Customer experience metrics

This is a key component and should be prominently featured in every business strategy.  Our bed and breakfast will measure the positive reviews against the negative reviews after each guest’s stay.  This will give us insight into what we can do to improve our services and gain higher ratings. 

Customer experience metrics such as “rate your stay” with 1-5 stars, polls via Instagram, and questions about the stay via email will be used. 

Social media KPIs

To measure engagement through Social Media channels New Forest Escape could use the following KPIs.

Using social media channels such as Facebook and Instagram, among others, is a sure-fire way to create brand awareness and increase online engagement. Instagram is a popular choice due to its low cost and targeted marketing strategy. 

Users will be able to find basic information about our business as well as view images of the property. In order to increase engagement on this platform, we have set a goal of achieving a 10% increase in likes.  

Moreover, an increase in the number of referrals stemming from the New Forest Escape website to the Facebook page would be useful.

Our Twitter strategy parallels the above-mentioned in that we have set the goal of increasing our Twitter following count by 10%. As time progresses and New Forest Escape captures a greater interest, the targets will increase.  

Furthermore, the objective for our Instagram is to gain greater involvement with guests by sharing pictures on Instagram. Useful features such as stories, highlight reels, and iGTV are effective methods of enhancing the business’ profile and gaining the desired attention. Therefore, we have set the goal of achieving 50% more posts consisting of photos, or short videos using hashtags relating to the B&B.  

2.1) SEO

The goal is to have New Forest Escape rank number one in the organic listings on Google with the search phrase “Bed and Breakfast”. The New Forest website also has backlinks and quality inbound links such as “Guardian.co.za”. These will help to maintain a high search engine ranking (Hibu Business, 2012).

Most visits from the New Forest website are a result of search traffic due to the successful implementation of SEO. Further analysis shows that visitors from Cape Town are mostly reaching the New Forest Escape website directly.  This presents an opportunity to increase visits from paid search traffic.

New Forest Escape has one Google Adwords campaign that has generated 24% of total visits in the time period (Google Analytics, 2013) with the keywords ‘Luxury Bed & Breakfast’.

2.2) Trip Advisor

Trip Advisor is currently a vital and well-established channel for New Forest Escape. New Forest Boutique B&B is currently ranked Number 1 on Trip Advisor out of 32 of their local competitors. This highlights a key strength of New Forest Escape in respect to its online presence.  It extends a rich opportunity to engage with existing customers, as well as attract potential guests. 

Tripadvisor is an immensely valuable online channel for New Forest Escape, as findings by Neilson (2012) suggest. More importantly, travelers in the Cape are more likely to be influenced by travel review websites than other countries in Europe (European Travel Commission, 2013).  Further demonstrating the significance of this platform for New Forest Escape.

2.3) E-Mail Marketing

During the interview,  Keren mentioned that she would like to have more guests staying during the week. Consequently, we have made use of email marketing. It is a more direct means of communication with our community and an effective method of spreading the word.

In terms of Customer relationship management, New Forest Escape currently has an in-house list of customer email addresses, obtained at the beginning of the booking process. The email process is automated and personalized. 

These emails will consist of newsletters regarding specials or promotions, as well as notifications regarding renovations to repeat guests.   For an extra special touch, Christmas greeting cards are sent out each year to those within the New Forest community.

Implementing a strategy to achieve goals:

A bed and breakfast need to utilize a well-rounded mix of online marketing channels.   For instance: Search engine marketing, Online PR, Online partnerships, Social media channels, and E-mail marketing.  According to The Marketer (2012), a multi-channel approach is a key strength in building brand recognition.

Building the Daisychain 

The second tactic to improve engagement and to ‘Build the New Forest Escape’ is to locate all the touchpoints within the sales process and engage with customers at every possible point, offering them links to the New Forest Escape social media channels and information on the website. 

Our third tactic is to generate more social referrals from the New Forest Escape website. We will use more ‘call to action prompts to link their social media, and by installing social media widgets on the New Forest Escape homepage. This will ensure engagement with customers on the website landing page.

3.1) Improving engagement with online and offline tactics

The use of incentives tends to encourage online interest and engagement, and we have used this to our advantage in our strategy.  

With the use of two ‘Prize draw’ incentives, ‘Like us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter or Check-in on ‘. All pictures that have the #Newforestescape and #newforest will be entered into a prize draw. The prize will be for a one-night’s free mid-week stay at New Forest Escape to assist in increasing awareness and interest in the New Forest Escape social platforms, and create valuable user-generated content. 

Connecting with New Forest Escape through their social media at all of the touchpoints in the sales process is a critical step. From the website / booking confirmation email/ check-in/ check-out/follow up/ special holidays e-mail).  

With more followers and more user-generated content appearing on the social media channels, New Forest Escape can continue to grow engagement.  By posting informational and emotionally appealing content that truly connects with the audience.

Apart from using online methods of interacting with the public, we have made use of local partnerships within the community.  To illustrate, we support a local coffee house by using their products in our hot drinks menu.   They, in turn, will keep our business cards in their shops. Moreover, in our efforts to support the locals, we have teamed up with talented local artists to produce posters advertising the B&B. 

Targeted Ad Campaign

To target potential customers in the geographic area of Cape Town, a target Adwords Campaign will be created to generate awareness for our B&B. The Keyword ‘New Forest Bed and Breakfast’ will be used in the Google Ad Display Network for searches in the region of Cape Town. 

Location targeting helps you focus your advertising efforts in the areas where you’ll find the right customers. It also results in an increase in your return on investment (ROI) (Google Adwords, 2013).

3.2) Target Cape Town

We aim to create a Google Ad Display Network advert to target people specifically in London looking for accommodation in the New Forest and other New Forest attractions

This is done by utilizing existing web traffic that is arriving at the Daisybank website from South Africa (2,999 visits (Google Analytics, 2013). By ensuring the website provides all the information people may need for their escape to the Forest and appeal directly to the ‘Cape Tonian Persona’.

Conclusion

We believe that with a digital marketing strategy you are able to create a calculated journey to success.  By implementing the above research, campaigns, and methods, we will be able to effectively market New Forest Escape. 

Social media platforms and the above-mentioned KPIs will boost our engagement and create a community for our clients where we can interact on a daily basis.  With our commitment to quality service and upholding a trustworthy reputation, we trust that New Forest will become the 5 star B&B we envision it to be.