Amanda Ferguson is Head of Business Events at Convention Edinburgh. This is part of Marketing Edinburgh which tries to put Edinburgh on the map.
The latest campaign launched just last week aims to bring more business tourism to the capital, a sector that Edinburgh has been strong in historically. But Amanda explained that all sorts of factors such as the many political uncertainties that we have right now mean it is essential that the marketing body works hard to put Edinburgh in the forefront of the minds of those booking conferences across the world.
She began by saying : “Some of the key stakeholders in the city thought there was a need for a more joined up approach.”
Research has shown that business tourists typically spend about double what a leisure tourist will spend, so this appears to be a market worth having.
The campaign that is being run will be run on social media and in trade publications to promote the city as a destination and conference venue.
For the very first time in its history, Edinburgh’s diverse business tourism offering will be presented under a single, cohesive creative and digital strategy.
The overarching strapline, ‘Make it Edinburgh’, ties together an integrated campaign that celebrates and promotes Edinburgh’s strongest sectors of industry, while providing compelling reasons to choose Edinburgh for future events.
We interviewed Amanda in the city centre with one of our iconic meeting venues just behind her.
We met up with Amanda Ferguson to find out about the #MakeitEdinburgh campaign just launched by @conventions pic.twitter.com/ZW0cV2ez1f
— Edinburgh Reporter (@EdinReporter) October 26, 2017
‘Make it Edinburgh’ will also fall into line with VisitScotland’s Business Events’ new national business events campaign, Legends which will be launched soon. By focusing on Edinburgh’s leading sectors, ‘Make it Edinburgh’ can seamlessly integrate with VisitScotland’s planned activation and the Scottish Government’s 2020 Tourism Strategy Delivery Group.
We asked finally how will she know the campaign is a success?
She replied : “Well typically with business events the lead in time can be quite long. We won’t necessarily see a huge spike next week or next month.
“We will be measuring it by looking at the social media stats and who is engaging with that campaign, who is watching some of the digital assets and the films that we’ve created for example. We are also measuring the number of enquiries that we at Marketing Edinburgh will be generating and handling over the coming months.
“Also there are key partners involved. This is very much a collaboration with the Edinburgh Hotel Association, with the Edinburgh International Conference Centre and with ETAG the Edinburgh Tourism Action Group the Royal College of Surgeons and Edinburgh Airport. We are working with them to monitor their level of enquiries and business as well.
A couple of years ago Marketing Edinburgh ran a very successful campaign called This is Edinburgh. This targeted a different market as it aimed to attract more people to the city centre to enjoy the shopping and nightlife.
Amanda confirmed this campaign has different customers in mind : “Business is very different. It is a bit of a niche market in many respects. It represents about 20% of all tourism that comes in so its never going to achieve the same scale that This is Edinburgh achieved. However our ambition is to double the amount of enquiries that we are currently handling and increase usage of some of the assets that we have.”
Find out more about Edinburgh as a business tourism destination here
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
