Marketing Case Study - The Deer Park Hotel

The Deer Park Hotel in Honiton is an 18th Century Georgian house situated within 80 acres of grounds.

In April 2010 the Deer Park proprietors appointed us to take control of their marketing strategy which included a whole host of activities.

In February 2011, the hotel closed for 2 months to complete an extensive refurbishment which involved renovating the whole of the ground floor, including its two lounges, restaurant and reception area, plus the hotel’s principle bedrooms and bathrooms.

Objectives

To create a clear marketing strategy with recommendations to increase occupancy, weddings, utilise customer data and overall increase revenue.
To re-brand the hotel and improve all existing literature.
To increase contact with the customer database, encouraging customer loyalty and retention.
To increase local trade to the restaurant.
To increase traffic to their website.

WHAT WE DID

A Co-ordinated Marketing Strategy

Clockwork developed a marketing strategy which contained a range of online and offline marketing activities including the following:

Re-branding: Clockwork re-branded the hotel with a new logo, hotel brochure, corresponding hotel literature and new signage.
Website Design: As part of the re-branding, Clockwork designed and developed a new website. The website has been designed with a Content Management System so that any content (special offers, latest news) can be instantly updated.
Marketing Plan: We developed a clear marketing plan with a variety of planned campaigns, from advertising, email marketing, events, press releases, awards and direct mail.
Data Cleansing and Direct Mail: The hotel’s database had been stale for a number of years so we wanted to make the most use out of it by communicating with customers who already knew about the hotel with direct mail. We continue to manage and cleanse their data, removing duplicates, deceased and updating incomplete addresses therefore making direct mail as effective as possible.
Digital Marketing: As part of our marketing retainer we also undertake their online marketing strategy, including search engine optimisation, link building, article writing, email marketing and suggesting online channels/directories.

RESULTS

Significant Business Growth

Clockwork continues to maintain and support the Deer Park Hotel as a retained client and has so far achieved the following results:

The hotel is significantly up on sales compared to last year. August 2011 was their best August in 3 years.
Their occupancy has also increased with July 2011 being their best July in 5 years.
Bookings for Christmas parties doubled in 2011 when compared to the same period in 2010; the majority of which are from new customers.
Direct mail and email marketing has proved to be very successful attracting existing customers back to the hotel and local residents to the restaurant.
The Deer Park’s website has seen a dramatic increase in visitors and more importantly a big increase in unique visitors. The website has also seen increased ranking exposure for high volume generic terms in the travel sector.