Do you know how many people visited Liverpool City Region in 2014?
Well it was a whopping 58.7million.
Wondering why they visit?
Well one reason is the general atmosphere.
How do we know this? Through our research service based at the LEP, that’s how!
Through our dedicated North West Research team based at the LEP we can offer a range of services to help your organisation gain the evidence and data needed to support your growth.
Why is research important
Research is an essential part of any business strategy, providing evidence and knowledge to support growth.
To put this into context – In 2014, 58.7 million visitors came to the Liverpool City Region, generating approximately £3.8 billion towards the local visitor economy- so by using this data North West Research can help clients gain competitive advantage within the Visitor Economy sector to inform strategy and marketing plans.
It is critical for destinations to collect information on how many, what type of visitor and why they choose to visit Liverpool City Region. If you own a hotel, restaurant, or cafe, run an event or attraction – then you need to know how to reach these visitors.
This is where we come in.
So what does North West Research offer?
Our services are varied and include an experienced fieldwork team conducting surveys at events and attractions across the City Region; in-house data analysis as well as tailored report for clients, in addition to collating local and national key tourism statistics to monitor the local visitor economy.
Customer Profiling and Segmentation
Do you know who your customers are? North West Research enables clients to tailor their marketing for specific target segments. Customers can be segmented geographically (where they are), demographically (who they are), psychographically (what they think and expect) and into different behavioural groups (what they do, buy etc).
For instance every five years we conduct the Liverpool City Region Visitor Survey, to inform tourism professionals about who the visitors are, where they come from, what motivates them to visit and what activities they do whilst visiting. This enables tourism marketing to be targeted and provides important background for tourism development plans.
Customer Satisfaction Studies
North West Research helps to understand what customers think of your organisation, products and services. By unlocking collective knowledge, opinions and views actions can be made and areas of improvements identified. The basic principle of giving customers what they want contributes to business success.
We have conducted studies for local museums asking customers to rate various aspects of the attraction such as the facilities & cafes, or the quality of service. These studies are normally conducted on a regular basis so that the client can monitor improvement based on any changes they implement.
Economic Impact Studies
What is the economic impact of your event? By interviewing customers or members of your audience we can quantify the economic impact of investments such as events to provide evidence in support of accessing public funds and resources.
We have conducted economic impact studies at major events across the Liverpool City Region. This involves interviewing event attendees to measure patterns of spend. We then use an economic impact model to generate an overall economic impact of the event, which clients then use to support funding and generally monitor the success of their event. Events have included the Three Queens, Liverpool International Music Festival and the Mersey River Festival.
Marketing Evaluation and Assessment
North West Research examines market reaction to your current and potential marketing campaigns. We can help you to understand the return on your marketing investment and the relative success of different marketing campaigns and media.
Local visitor surveys (such as the Liverpool Destination Survey and wider Liverpool City Region Visitor survey) include questions used to identify what marketing tools have generated visits, and which are more successful than others – for example, are the printed brochures and leaflets making an impact, or are the social media tools more likely to motivate visits now. This enables marketing colleagues to put more emphasis on the campaigns that are proving to be more successful.
Market research is a vital tool for growing business
And don’t just take our word for it! Here is just a snapshot of what some of our customers think of the insight and intelligence we have gathered for them.
“Monitoring and evaluating past success and indeed failure is fundamental to any organisation that wants to target its products or services cost effectively. The excellent service provided by North West Research has not only helped develop our own Wirral Destination Marketing delivery plan, but has also been used by the borough’s key event organisers, to help create sustainable events that attract hundreds of thousands of visitors to Wirral year after year.”
Wirral Council
“The work that you have done in the past for us, which I hope you will continue to do in the future, has always been excellent, met its aims and delivered concrete evidence for us to demonstrate the positive impacts of our events programme on the local visitor economy and met with the outcomes required in order to comply with ERDF funding guidelines.”
Culture Liverpool
“North West Research provided a high quality, cost effective piece of work including useful insight and a clear analysis. Their knowledge of our industry has proven invaluable and I look forward to working with the team in the future.”
SK Events
So if you feel your business, attraction or event would benefit from the services we offer here at North West Research then get in touch with Anna Rees at anna.rees@liverpoollep.org