Become a DESTINATION MARKETING PARTNER With East / South Devon COAST & COUNTRY / The DIARY magazines and EVENT HUB websites for East & South Devon Tap into an enhanced marketing package at no extra cost! Speak to Nigel Jones 01395 513383
Display size
Advert size booked for minimum series of 4 inserts
Unique Destination Header in the relevant magazine
You get your own mini-header, under which your events are listed (subject to your allocation)
Events included in WHAT’S ON website
Events Included in Magazine (allocation)
This refers to the number of events you can add into the website
This is the amount of events you can get included under your Destination Header in each issue of the relevant magazine. (The public are charged £14 per to guarantee their event entry insertion in the magazine)
Pecorama Your events under here
Quarter
Fastlink on category menu
Main Events Scrolling Banner
This enables a permanent presence for your destination amongst the fastlink event sub categories allowing enhanced presence
Your designated event would appear in the scrolling banner that appears on the main and sub pages (normally £30/ month)
yes, header included
unlimited
4 Events per issue
none
none
Half
yes, as above
unlimited
7 Events per issue
yes
none
Whole
yes, as above
unlimited
10 Events per issue
yes
yes
Why create a WHAT’S ON website for the East Devon/Exeter region? The new ‘HUB’ type websites have come into being as a result of the lack of comprehensive events information provision for the region. Many people want to tap into the myriad of events that occur across the year, but fragmentation has meant that there are many bits of event information at many website sources, which is far from ideal. We, as a magazine company, know this from first hand experience, because one of our ongoing tasks is to source accurate and interesting event information to include in the magazine event listings. Our compilers spend many hours skipping from one website to the next to gather this information, which is extremely laborious and time consuming. Now there’s one single website with comprehensive coverage from the smallest to the largest events. These websites cater for both locals and tourists alike, providing an invaluable resource. Our ‘open door’ policy means that it’s open for every ligitimate organisation to use for event promotion and free to use. There are currently (15/02/13) nearly 1,800 organisations (between East Devon / Exeter / South Devon) now registered to use our database driven website system. Organisations can tap into totally free and instant marketing. The websites have been configured for desktop, tablet and smartphone platforms. The growth of the tablet market along has led to an estimated 10 million users alone (post Christmas), additionally smart phone ownership is extensive, most couples/families leaving the home carry at least one, so it’s a very important marketing consideration.
What’s important to you as an Event Organiser/Promoter These new websites (one for East Devon and one for South Devon) have been a 11/2 years in development, involving our web designer and two programmers and two data compilers. The interface has been kept very simple and easy to use, and it’s important to point out that these websites are dedicated purely to delivering event information. As an Event Promoter, it’s important that you can get into your organisation’s page quickly and easily on this platform to add events. We’ve created a simple interface that allows very rapid event creation. When you enter an event, it will carry a postcode check, and list any other events at the postcode given for your chosen dates, this helps you to ensure that the event hasn’t been entered twice into the website. There’s are many other features on this website, one of which is the public Event Feed, where members of the public can keep abreast of their chosen event by receiving regular weekly emails from all the event categories they’ve chosen to follow.
Smartphones are now an immensely important consideration. Most families on the move have one of these or a tablet, or both. Our smartphone version of the site is easy to use, very fast (even where there’s low signal strength), and allows searching by a range of categories, or even down to town/village level.
What’s important to the public browsing the websites All the experts confirm that overly complex websites are a big turn-off. What’s really important is to have a web interface that is simple and easy to use, particularly where people are sourcing information. We’ve logically arranged information in a very straightforward way. There are Fastlinks for all the major event categories, which allows you to dip straight into your chosen interests. The website also has advanced search facilities, allowing you to search by date range, event category and town/ village. So it’s possible to check what’s happening say in Sidmouth at the weekend, when you’re visiting family or friends. Also great if you’re coming down for the weekend from London or the Midlands, you can be fully informed of events for the time of your visit.
Long-term promotion of the websites Both websites will be promoted on a permanent basis in all magazine titles we produce (readership 150,000 per issue across all 4 titles), which should ensure extensive public awareness of this new facility. Additionally, we have 900 distribution outlets for the COAST & COUNTRY series of magazines across East Devon / Exeter / South Devon / West Dorset, most of which are retail businesses with public access. We’ve received particularly strong feedback not only from businesses catering for the local population, but also from tourist related businesses - particularly from the accommodation sector, many of whom have commented that one of their regular chores is to source What’s On information for customers, which is time-consuming and can be a burden to reception desks. They’ve commented that a smartphone version would be particularly useful. We’ll be providing plastic window stickers with QR code so that customers can self-serve in terms of event information - this is particularly useful for outlets servicing a steady stream of customers. We also have strong links with Tourist Information Centres across the region. Traditionally, when compiling the magazines, we contact them to check for any events they wish to ensure are included in the magazines. They respond to us by emailing events that need including from their area. The websites have a dedicated login for TIC’s. So , say for example that Lyme Regis TIC log in, they get to view an event list solely for events occuring in their area, (we set their jurisdiction of villages and towns), ensuring they’re happy that nothing important is missed out. Any events they add, instantly result in the event entities being notified by email that an event has been entered for them and that it needs checking to complete their event entry.
The setup Both websites share a mysql database and utilise .php server language. Being installed on our own dedicated mirrored server ensures maximum bandwidth and server resources, ensuring that online event delivery is rapid. One of the big advantages to our magazine titles is that we can extract event data directly from the website database for use in our magazine What’s On sections. Usually, in order to compile events for the magazines, a couple of people working part-time compile and supply us with event lists as text documents. With the new platform, they’ll get an overview of all events and they’ll check and enter what’s missing. When our event compilers enter new events, they fill in a skeleton entry for the event and submit. An email is then automatically triggered off from our server, which goes directly to the Event Organiser for the entity in question. This informs them that an event has been added on their behalf - it also prompts them to log in to check the details and complete the entry. Once they have done this, the event moves from “pending” to becoming “live” on the website. This means that Event Organisers have the final say over their event details, which will help to ensure a very high level of accuracy. So, as well as our event compilers checking and adding events, all Event Organisers have the ability to add their own events, instantly and at any time. All Event Organisers will receive our automated emails, notifying them of deadline dates for inclusion of their events into the magazines (inclusion into magazines will depend on their organisation’s allocation and also whether these carry guaranteed for inclusion - this is all set by our Admin for each entity at registration and depends on the event and organisation type as well as relative public appeal of the events that the organisation holds).
We’ve been careful to make public access to event information as easy as possible. The Fastlinks (appearing along the left vertical side) basically divide all the events into carefully defined categories, so the ability for the public to be able to dip into their chosen event type is very direct. Additionally, we’ve separated out the smaller club/society/charity events from more mainstream events into the Community category, so that it’s not necessary to wade through these if you just want to see just the main events. We’ve built a lot of flexibility into the system. Because the websites have been developed with our own programmers, rather than going for a pre-defined modular setup, our web platform is totally flexible in terms of the ability to change and evolve, so fine tuning is available at any point in time.
Free marketing for businesses We have a couple of functions that you could potentially tap into: • Dining Offers - to give businesses with cafe/restaurant facility increased early and mid week trade. Post your offers, for instance, to bring in new customers, why not offer a “Free Coffee” ? You can add these and also set a promotional code to monitor response. It’s all done in the Organiser Console and it’s dead easy and free. • Promotional Events - say you have a new product range, or perhaps a new facility you wish to broadcast. Again, it’s easy, just add the promotion and set your promotional code so you can monitor. • Promotional Ticketing - when logged into the Organiser Console, see the ‘promo box’ menu option, generate your promotions at any time and allocate any codes you wish for tracking purposes.
An extensive community facility The websites also have additional functionality to enable us to forge strong community links: • A Databse of Organisations - these websites provide the added benefit of serving as community resources containing all the clubs / societies / charities / organisations for the local area. If your organisation is involved in say charity and also volunteering for instance, then under your profile, by setting these 2 activities, members of the public will be able to search on “charity”, and “volunteering”, and hence, your organisation will be found. There are over 50 categories for ‘Activity’ that you can choose from. Many members of the public want to know what clubs, charities and organisations are available to access locally, and by the same token, these organisations wish to gain more members/users. Free to use. • Rooms to Hire - village and parish halls, in fact if your organisation has rooms to hire, you can use this facility free to broadcast your available room vacancies. You can add your own room calendar so that people can see if slots are available, but more importantly, a “search for vacancies” facility will make the task of finding a room for workshops, training, leisure, simple, etc, quick and very transparent. Many organisations are being pushed harder to get higher occupancy of rooms, particularly important with costs such as insurance and maintenance being increasingly burdensome. This services is totally free. • Volunteering - many members of the public would like to volunteer, but finding organisations that offer this service is very difficult. Additionally, many organisations are keen to source volunteers, so this will provide a matchmaking facility on the websites. Again, free to use. • Courses/Classes - again we provide a matchmaking facility for both organisations and individuals. There are many members of the public looking for evening classes and local courses. By the same token, there are many organisations that wish to broadcast their forthcoming courses and classess. Free to use.
Both websites launched on
24th January 2013
There are now nearly 1,800 organisations registered to promote their events on this free platform.
Prestige Media can provide a totally joined-up solution for destination attractions, both on paper and the internet