Promoting Summercamp Heino, Dinoland Zwolle, Elbobus, and more to generate more conversions
Introduction
During my time at Leaped I had the opportunity to work for Summercamp Heino, Dinoland Zwolle and Elbobus. During my time there, I was solely responsible for all online activities. The main focus was on DInoland Zwolle.
| Project duration | Type | Role | Deliverables |
|---|---|---|---|
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1.2.2023 – 31.7.2023 |
Temporary job |
Designer & marketer |
Social media posts |
|
6 months |
|
|
Landing pages, plan |
|
|
|
|
Website |
Plan
An important part of my time at Summercamp was creating marketing plans for the 3 main companies (Summercamp heino, Dinoland Zwolle, Elbobus). These plans consisted of an analysis of the current situation, determining a starting point, creating concrete goals, and creating a plan to get there.
Analysis
To start off, I collected data from different available sources. Unfortunately, the data of these sources didn’t contain things like conversions. Conversions weren’t tracked until I added them. To get an insight in sales, I asked a colleague for this info. I used Google Analytics 4 and Search Console to get insights into the audience, technology, and traffic. For the UX, I looked at Hotjar (which I had implemented on day one) and GA4. I also included an analysis of the active vacancies of Summercamp.
This data led to several insights and points of improvement. For example, the lack of CTA’s, the lack of a clear path to conversions, and that some of the forms are very long.
Starting point
To determine a starting point, I compared data from different periods in 2022 to the same periods in 2023. I looked at conversions, SEO, Google Ads, (paid) Social, and email. By looking at these different areas, I determined how the companies were doing, it helped me create realistic goals, and it helped me see where things could be improved. I also looked at competitors in this step.
Based on all of this, we determined that SEO, Google Ads & Paid Social would be the areas to focus on.
Goals
The info I gathered from a colleague were important to make goals. The hard part was knowing exactly where the conversions came from and what the worth is of each conversion. I had to make educated guesses on which conversions came from where and the value of the conversions. Having made these guesses, I could determine how many conversions were needed to achieve the predicted growth.
Plans
After completing all the previous activities, I could go to work on creating plans. In these plans, I put concrete steps for each channel to achieve the set goals. As part of the plans, I also made content calendars and for Dinoland a social media strategy. These content calendars contained important events and what to post where (including e-mailing). What some important events were, was discussed during meetings.
After making these plans, I presented them. Unfortunately, there seemed to not be a lot of interest in plans. I feel like I should have probably put more effort into involving more colleagues into making the plan. There was an offline marketer, but I didn’t involve them enough. Involving more people could have gotten me more ambassadors, which might have increased interest. We did however decide to use Trello to help track progress on projects.
website and webapp management
As mentioned, I was solely responsible for all online activities. This also meant managing the different websites (more than 10 in total). For these websites I created content and pages, setup and optimized tracking tools, fixed bugs, and I even created a new website. Most of this was done using WordPress. Apart from the websites, I was also responsible for their web apps. These web apps were made in Guest Compass (a sort of CMS).
When I started at Summercamp, barely any tracking was done on the websites. So right from the started I installed Hotjar on all websites, created new Search Console properties, and created new GTM tags. A problem I ran into was with tracking conversion value for the Dinoland store. We used an external party, called Avayo, to handle ticket sales. In Avayo, we couldn’t track the amount of conversions and their value. Because of these tracking issues, I contacted them in order to find a solution. A temporary solution was directing users to a thank-you page, this solved the issue of conversion value.
To fix bugs, one of the tools I used was Screaming Frog. It helped me find technical SEO issues on all the websites. I managed to fix most of those issues, but I did have to contact the web host to fix some domain related issues.
I fixed the issues discovered in the analysis part of the plan as well. Some of these issues did require some internal discussions as they could have had a major negative effect.
As part of the park experience, Summercamp and Dinoland offered web apps. These web apps were not used a lot when I arrived. The target audience for these web apps were visitors. In the case of Summercamp the audience is children ranging from 6 to 15. In the case of Dinoland the audience was similar, but the app was mostly likely used by the parents of these children. Because there was a lot to do, it took some time to improve the apps. I managed to create several new features, such as an interactive dino encounter map, and a calendar of special events.
Throughout my time at Summercamp, Dinoland had several events which required landing pages. Some of these events were a job night and “zomeravonden”. I created these pages mostly using Elementor.
Finally, I also created a new website. This website was primarily focused on getting locals to play minigolf at a local park. In order to create this website, I did work together with other colleagues. We had several discussions about how the website was going to look. The end result was a first version of the website. I unfortunately didn’t manage to finish this project.
Social Media
Another important activity was managing the social media channels (Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn) of Summercamp, Dinoland, Elbobus, and more. For these companies I created many social media posts and paid campaigns based on the plan and important events. Besides that I also managed the community and the pages.
I created posts using different formats: video’s, polls, giveaways, still images, and multi-images. The most important tools I used to create these posts were: paper (sketching), Photoshop, Canva, and Premiere Pro. In general, the video’s performed best.
Campaigns
During my time at Summercamp, I also ran a lot of different campaigns. Paid advertisement was a big source of traffic on the 3 main websites. When I started, the Google Ads campaigns were run by a separate party. A lot of the campaigns also had an offline component. An offline marketer was responsible for this. We had to work together on several occasions for these campaigns to be successful.
I made sure to present the results of the campaigns and to keep the company aware of the budget that was spent.
Before actively creating new campaigns, I did a SEO keyword analysis. The conclusion was that most of the traffic came from people already familiar with the Summercamp and the other companies. I created new, more specific (funnel based), campaigns in order to get more results. Since this was the first time I actually had control over paid ads budgets, it was challenging. With help from Leaped, I learned to more effectively target and spend budget.
Employee acquisition campaigns I arrived at Summercamp when it was temporarily closed. To get new seasonal employees we ran several campaigns, both on Google, social media and through external parties. I was responsible for creating the content of our own campaigns, and for the contact with some of the external parties. Through these campaigns, we managed to get more than enough people for Dinoland. Getting employees for Summercamp proved more difficult.
E-mail campaigns Before I arrived, e-mail wasn’t used a lot. At the start, I did create an e-mail campaign for a giveaway. I made this campaign in Mailchimp. The focus of this campaign was schools, and we made sure to get consent for sending these mails.
After doing this campaign, we moved on to a different program. We chose Brevo, this was based on research I’d done. I studied different factors such as, fit, costs, functionality, and ease of use. Using Brevo I created a more general e-mail campaign. This e-mail campaign was focused on people who had consented to receive marketing communications from us. The goal was to get them to buy tickets again.
Learnings
- Do not mix display and RSA ads. It muddies the data.
- Do not use auto recommendations in Google Ads. By enabling auto recommendations, you use control and let Google decide on “optimizations” that it thinks are best. What’s best for Google isn’t necessarily what’s best for you or your company.
- Gather ambassadors within the company. Having people that also support my plan might have convinced the decision maker (in this case my boss) to accept my plan. I should have more actively involved other people within the company, such as the offline marketer.