Digital Marketing Toolkit

We want to help you maximise your exposure online and one of the easiest and most powerful channels you have access to is the English Riviera destination website. 

This guide has been put together by the English Riviera BID Company to give you all the information you need to help promote your business through the official English Riviera BID digital channels.

English Riviera Website

WEBSITE STATISTICS

• Over 1 million users per year
• Over 3.5 million page views a year - including your own business pages!
• Spending 2 minutes on average browsing, searching and booking.

YOUR BUSINESS

• Every business has a page on the website with an image gallery and the option to add a video
• Direct link to your website, email, phone number
• TripAdvisor rating display
• Availability, awards, opening times, facilities and directions

THIS GUIDE WILL HELP WITH:

• How your page should look
• Min 300 words of descriptive and up to date copy
• Good quality, hi-res images
• The importance of alt text
• Submitting your own event/s

1. HOW DO I UPDATE MY WEBPAGE?

1) Request username and password from enquiries@englishrivierabid.co.uk

2) Log on here

3) When you log in you should see your business/product name

4) If you own multiple businesses then make sure you have selected the correct one.

5) You will see an ‘Edit Details’ tab below which will allow you to make the following changes:

• General business/product information
• Detailed business description
• Images and/or video
• Facilities
• Business opening times
• Room availability (if applicable)
• Any special offers you want to promote

2. WHAT DOES 'GOOD' LOOK LIKE?

The English Riviera website is a very powerful piece of technology but is only as good as the information uploaded and a lot of this is your business information. So what should your website page look like?

• Does your page have 300 words of up to date, descriptive copy about what you offer and what people can expect?
• Does your page have good quality images and video which really helps to sell your business?
• Have you highlighted all of the facilities available?
• Do you offer themed breaks or facilities, such as dog friendly, accessible, walking etc. Include anything that in your description and facilities that will help to differentiate your business.
• Images need to be: 1220 x 720 pixels
• Images need to be hi-res, not stretched or pixelated and every image should include ALT TEXT to describe to Google exactly what the image is. Find out more about Alt Text in the next section!

3. THE IMPORTANCE OF ALT TEXT

This is important so that when Google bots crawl our website they know exactly what is displayed on the page and can help us to rank better when people are performing searches within Google. It also displays if there is a problem with the image loading or someone is using a plain text reader.

Follow this template: [Name of the business] [Describe what is in the picture] [in town location] [in Devon]

4. ONLINE ACCOMMODATION BOOKINGS

The English Riviera website operates an integrated online booking platform paid for by the English Riviera BID Company.
This platform offers the opportunity for accommodation businesses to ‘hook up’ their live availability from any of the systems below:

OTA Providers:

booking.com
Expedia
Hotel Planner
Sykes Cottages

PMS Providers:

Eviivo
Freeonlinebooking
FreeToBook
SuperControl
TXGB

 The English Riviera BID Company takes no commission on these bookings, but the Online Travel Agent (OTA) will take their commission.

Contact us to discuss your individual availability integrations!

5. PROMOTING YOUR EVENTS

All English Riviera BID businesses can promote their events free of charge on the English Riviera website.

To do this you need to submit your event using the online form. The form is easy to complete. Once submitted, if its relevant and appropriate we will approve and upload to the What’s On section on the English Riviera website.

The What's On pages is one of the most popular sections of the website; receiving 700,000 page views a year!

The event form is very self-explanatory and includes the following;

• Event name & venue
• Directions
• Event category - Christmas, family, festival, exhibition
• Description - 300 words required
• Images
• Ticket types and cost
• Openings - if different times or shows

6. ACCESS TO AMAZING CONTENT

The English Riviera BID company is always investing in assets for you to use free of charge. These include:

• 1000s of high quality images
• Lots of videos
• Official logos

ALL partners can have free access to the English Riviera image library which houses all of this amazing content. This content can be re-purposed for a number of activities:

• Your website
• Your printed leaflets
• Social media posts
• Paid social media campaigns
• Email newsletters
• Brochures
• Information packs

Access the image library and set up your own free account here.

7. SOCIAL MEDIA

We want to encourage as many members and local businesses as possible to engage in our social media activity - by liking and sharing our content you are supporting us in promoting the destination.

Please keep an eye out for our latest social media campaigns and help spread the word by sharing our posts with your followers. Please also use the #englishriviera hashtag whenever you post on your social channels and encourage your customers to do the same. You and your customers photos and video could be featured on the English Riviera website!