The France Show 2008 took place at Olympia in January 08.
It was the first time our client had organised the entire show - the UK's largest celebration of France and French living in the UK - following the demise of the previous 'Vive la France' event after many years. The question was whether there was still enough appeal amongst the UK public to justify such a show.
Back in September 07, Further were tasked with creating the brand and website - and starting an online marketing campaign to drive visitors to the site to register for Show tickets.
Strategy
Primary:
Use of carefully-selected, high traffic, specialist interest blogs and forums
to drive potential visitors to site to gain ticket registrations and build profile database.
Secondary:
Create, test and implement Pay per Click campaign, including making use of 'Vive la France' search term to capture visitors of the past Olympia event.
Search Engine Optimisation to gain search engine position for key terms, although with a new domain this would take time to gain so could not be relied on to achieve the objectives.
Results
• Website designed, built, tested and live in just 5 weeks
• Over 55,000 unique visitors - of which 69% came via search engine or referral traffic.
• 47% of all unique visitors registered for tickets.
• A single blog post delivered 1404 visits to site within 24 hours.
• Pay per click attracted and converted at less than 20p per ticket registration.
• New domain achieved 'no.1' in google worldwide for key search term within just 10 weeks.
• Built profiled database of nearly 13,000 francophiles online.
• Reached a new audience - 49% of ticket registrants had never been to a previous Vive La France event.
• Actual show visits were over 30,000 (27,000 adults) - more than double the previous
year's attendance.
Exhibitors across the board registered their best show in terms of business for almost a decade, with many making booking enquiries for 2009 before the 2008 event had ended.