The Eden Project

Just as the first lockdown was starting, the Eden Project approached our cohort for a digital marketing plan. Given the situation at the time, there was a serious and indefinable risk to the business as visitors to the Eden Project are a main source of income. Visitors to the park are not limited to people who only go for the rainforest attraction, the Eden Project runs a number of activity clubs for families with young children, as well as educational talks, lessons and tours, and even events and accommodation.

Another source of income for the Eden Project is their shop. In comparison to their main business social media channels, their shop’s social media channel following was severely behind (around 70k vs 4k followers on Instagram, with their main Facebook page having around 160k followers at the time), suggesting that the majority of people who used their shop would have done so during a visit to the attraction.

During that turbulent time, it became important for the Eden Project to focus on income streams still available to them, while figuring out a way to keep their customers and audience engaged with the brand.

With this in mind, I recommended aiming to increase awareness of the shop and its social media pages by utilising the reach and following of its main social media pages and encouraging people already engaged with the brand to visit their shop.

I also recommended improving their landing page optimisation and including shoppable features on the social media, generating a smoother, easier and more enjoyable experience for the user.

The second objective, given that lockdown had stopped both regular and one-off visitors, was to increase and encourage conversations and engagement with the brand online. As the Eden Project is involved in so many interesting areas with educators and experts at their disposal, there was opportunity to reach out to consumers in a number of ways. Not only does positive online word of mouth generate consumer appreciation, it can be influential on social media following and generates more organic impressions and results than paid media.

With this in mind, I recommended running some podcasts series to engage their different areas of business (families and young children, educational, environmental, entertainment, special guest talkers etc.).

Finally, I created a detailed posting schedule to guide when and how frequently to post, and how long to post for, along with measurement and evaluation methods, both of which are really important and useful for any marketing plan.