It is said you can’t teach old dogs new tricks, but in 2017 I found it was easy. Wolsey Lodges, a private collection of some of the best B&Bs in the UK, was on the brink of collapse and I was asked to step in and take over their internet site and internal and external communications.
It gave me a sudden introduction to Umbraco, Microsoft’s devilish CMS based on the dreaded C# language, a deeper dive into the mysteries of Photoshop and also the intricate world of Mailchimp with its opening stats and bounce rates, and the science of marketing online.
More was to come. GDPR decimated our customer list and It became apparent that our reliance on Umbraco – and a single Web Design Agency up in Hereford – could be a problem, so I oversaw the transfer onto WordPress. Then came covid and the whole industry was shut down.
We needed to stay in the game so I implemented a monthly competition to repopulate our client list, used tags and segments, learned a lot about SEO and was forced to delve into Gooogle Analytics.
It then became apparent that Wolsey Lodges was not being well served on Social Media. Our marketing agency was fired, Google ads stopped and I took over maintaining WL’s presence on Faceook and Instagram. I rather dropped Twitter and have dipped a toe in Threads. I have also taken over the agency’s role of analysing and presenting analytics to monitor our marketing efforts.
The rise of Airbnb and the Online Travel Agents was already making life difficult for B&Bs: then Covid made everything worse. While Wolsey Lodges can hardly be said to be going from strength to strength it is, at least, still there. And I’ve learned a lot of new tricks along the way.