Positioning and Marketing East London - a practical guide

The 2005 East London Tourism Development Strategy highlighted the need for a greater understanding of the needs of stakeholders and for new channels of communication and their ability to access the marketplace. A number of major projects have now been completed and these have been used to inform this new guide as it seeks to draw together key communication strands into a series of coherent initiatives that will make joint marketing opportunities more intelligible to the industry.  A major objective has now been reached with the launch of the Positioning and Marketing East London Guide, launched on April 7^th 2006 at the Museum in Docklands.

All the results of the major studies undertaken can now be downloaded here.

Some Key East London Facts and Figures

This sub-region has great appeal to the local market, followed by those living in the home counties and some European Markets. The appeal is for those who have been to London many times and are looking for new products, experiences and events. It also offers real value for money, fantastic accessibility and a growing number of accommodation and weekend break options.

1.      Target Markets – these are not defined by the usual categories of age, income or sex.  These segments focus on motivations, aspirations and lifestyles.

Children First

Families, predominantly with young children from the local area, Greater London, Kent and Essex. The focus is on children more than the adults. The aim to take the parental guilt away by offering value for money, yet stimulating events and products that the children, therefore the family will enjoy.

Quirky Repeaters and Explorers

Visitors who know London well – some of them will be Londoners – but this is the segment that overseas visitors to the area will fit best with.  The focus is on lifestyle, being the first to “discover” new experiences or buy something from an up-and-coming artist. 

Story Seekers

This segment could be family groups, special interest groups or visitors on a short break. They have a strong interest in history and heritage and their focus is on places with a sense of story. They want anecdotes and the quirky facts that have a good “telling power”. 

Meeting and Event Organisers        

Whether meeting planners and event organisers, or individual    companies, these buyers don’t want to host an event that everyone has done or been to. They belong to the “bigger, better and bet you haven’t done this before” school of thought.

2.      Primary Destination clusters include

 Secondary Destination clusters include

3.      Top sources of encouragement to visit included word of mouth, guidebooks, websites and tourist information centres. Londoners were least likely to be motivated to make a visit by a particular source of information – which means we have to be really creative in how we communicate.

4.      The key motivations for visiting include

5.      Key communication messages must allude to

In the meantime for London-wide statistics, please refer to Visit London’s Facts and Figures at http://eu.visitlondon.com/corporate/facts_figures/.

For information about the Docklands development, please visit the London Docklands Development Corporation's history pages at http://www.lddc-history.org.uk

 

 

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