Guinness Storehouse: 10 Years & 1 Million Visitors

Today, Guinness Storehouse made the monumental announcement that it's 1 millionth visitor has crossed it's doorway. Not only does this go to re-enforce the Storehouse's position as Ireland’s No. 1 visitor attraction, but it also solidifies it as the 3rd biggest brand experience in the world (Source: Economic Research Agency 2008).

Speaking at today's announcement, Managing Director, Paul Carty said; “We are delighted that we had the opportunity to welcome over one million people through our doors in 2009. It was no mean feat with the year that was in it. The Irish tourism industry is under severe pressure, closing the year with a 12% fall in overseas arrivals. Within this context, it is reassuring for us at Guinness Storehouse to record a positive performance that still achieves and surpasses 1 million visitors.”

Mr. Carty continued, “ If we zoom in on our performance, up until October last year, Guinness Storehouse had actually increased visitor numbers exceeding the past year by 1,000. November and December delivered a weaker influx, hence generating an overall total of only –1% visitors in 2009 on 2008”.

Considering the current economic climate, and even more so the climate of the last year, this achievement is made even more noteworthy. Certainly one of Guinness Storehouse's strongest contributors to this success is its aggressive and highly coordinated PPC activity. By driving PPC advertising across a global platform, Guinness storehouse targets visitors who are in a "shopping" frame of mind, searching for things to do when they come to Ireland. In 2009 the Storehouse saw US visitors increase by 12% and European countries increase by 19% - within Europe, France, Italy and Spain showed the highest increases in visitor numbers with +26%, +21% and +23% respectively.

2010 will also see another huge milestone for Guinness Storehouse as it celebrates 10 years since first opening its doors in November 2000. To mark the anniversary, Guinness Storehouse has issued 1000's of ''Ambassador Cards, which allow fans to gain free access for the year. Furthermore, the Storehouse has also promised that 2010 will be jam-packed with even more photographic exhibitions, food demonstrations, live music and interactive tours then ever before!


A few interesting Guinness Storehouse facts:

• Guinness Storehouse building was erected between 1902 and 1904 for use in the fermentation process
• The building is 125 feet high, 170 feet long and 151 feet wide.
• It would take 14.3 million pints of Guinness to fill the giant glass atrium in centre of the Guinness Storehouse building
• Gravity Bar is the highest bar in Dublin located 46 metres off the ground

Google Wonder Wheel

I posted on Thursday about Google's new Options for Search. Google produced a nice video about the new features, and hopefully you all watched it, so I didn't go into a great deal of detail. However, having had a good play around with the new features, I thought that the new Wonder Wheel function deserved a bit of elaboration.

Wonder Wheel is one of the new tools allowing you to refine your search and find alternative keywords. Once you've performed a search, click on the new 'show options' link in the top left hand side of the results window. Towards the bottom of the list is Wonder Wheel. Clicking on the link will reveal a keyword cloud. In the below example I searched for 'Marketing'.

The main reason I thought that Wonder Wheel deserved a bit more attention is because I realised it's a great tool for developing SEO and PPC keyword alternatives, through Google's own suggestions. Obviously you can pop into your AdWords account and use the kyword tool but this is a fast and simple way to generate keyword lists in seconds. Definitely worth keeping in mind, especially when preparing initial proposals.

11 Essential Skills for Digital Marketing

I was sent a link to Ian Lurie's post, 11 Internet Marketing Skills That Must Be Second Nature, yesterday by a friend. Not only do I agree with everything Ian says, but he made me laugh. So I thought that I should share his insights with you.

1. XHTML and CSS. You don't have to be a god(dess) of web programming. But so help me God the next 'internet marketer' who gives me a blank stare when I mention CSS gets an atomic wedgie. And by the way, web standards have nothing to do with the metric system.
2. Search engine optimization. Search engine results are the starting point for at least 70% of all online behavior. How on earth will you help someone market themselves online if you don't even know what moves a site up and down in the rankings? Quick hint: Saying "SEO? Oh, we optimize your meta tags" is the same as saying "I am a severely impaired nubwit".
3. Pay per click marketing. Nothing sucks money out of a marketing budget faster than undisciplined PPC marketing. Assuming you care about your clients, you need to know a lot about PPC. Knowing where PPC ads show up doesn't count, by the way. You need to know and understand concepts like negative keywords, quality scoring, dynamic keywords and content networks. Another hint: "Negative keyword" doesn't mean "Keywords that make you feel bad".
4. Analysis. Let me make this clear: A bar chart is not analytics. If I ask for analysis and you e-mail me a bar chart I will so kick your behind. Analysis/analytics is the practice of turning data (the bar chart) into action steps and conclusions like "Wow, our ROI on this keyword is great. We need to build a landing page."
5. Usability. Please, please read Don't Make Me Think. Just for starters. Then start keeping an eye on Jakob Nielsen's site and other resources. Usability is a non-stop learning process. So get going.
6. Complete sentences. Write every day. Every day. I don't care what you write about. But you need to be able to write a post like this in 30-40 minutes, and it needs to be readable.
   
7. RSS and feeds. I shouldn't even have to say this. But you do know how to use Google Reader, right? Right?!
8. Blogging and social media. Write at least one blog. See 'Complete Sentences', above. And know what people mean when they say 'social media'. They really mean media. Understand what makes it all tick, and how you can help someone interact with their audience in a meaningful way.
9. E-mail marketing. Learn to build a house e-mail list. Learn why most rental e-mail lists suck eggs. Know what makes an e-mail work or fail.
10. Statistics 101. If you don't know what a rolling average is, don't even talk to me.
11. Marketing. Oh, did I mention? You need to be good at, you know, making people understand why something is The Product For Them.

PPC Copy Writing

I can't even remember where I picked this up, but it's a little trick that I use in almost every AdWords campaign that I put together. So I'll share it with you just in case you're not familiar with it.

When creating your PPC copy you can easily create dynamic keyphrase insertion by simply using parenthesis. That is, when a user searches for your keyphrase they will see it as your ad title. Let's imagine our keyphrase is 'digital marketing blog', and it's in the AdGroup 'Blog'. By using the four following codes for your title copy you can control what a user sees:

A user searches for 'digital marketing blog'

• {keyword:Blog} as the title, and they will see your ad title as 'digital marketing blog'.
• {Keyword:Blog} as the title, and they will see your ad title as 'Digital marketing blog'.
• {KeyWord:Blog} as the title, and they will see your ad title as 'Digital Marketing Blog'.
• {KEYWORD:Blog} as the title, and they will see your ad title as 'DIGITAL MARKETING BLOG'.

Generally I use {KeyWord:XXXX} as this is how I would usually write my title copy, but you can figure out what works best in each campaign. This is a particularly useful trick when working on a direct response campaign.