1. Canadian Benchmarking
2012 |2013 Reporting
UPDATE
January 30, 2013
Alicia Whalen:
Co-founder, A Couple of Chicks™ Digital Tourism Marketing & Online Revealed
Canadian Program Director, Destination Benchmarking for DMO’s

2. Program Update:
In our efforts to create an International Destination Marketing Benchmarking program comparing the online success of
DMO’s in Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the USA, we are excited to announce the commitment of 23 Canadian
DMO’s in the 2012/2013 sample, and the release of the first of three annual reports to be available in early February.
With a strong sample size of 23 Canadian Destination Marketing Organizations, we have divided the sample into 3
separate Tier levels based on; geographic size, reach, and overall budget. We have taken care to group the Tiers
appropriately to ensure valuable comparison data for our partners. Reporting success metrics, as reviewed in the
December conference call and program update include: geographic traffic source analysis, consumer engagement
metrics and social media metrics - with additional search data provided by Google Canada, and comparable
performance metrics from the Canadian Tourism Commission’s (CTC) consumer site .
In order to ensure that our sample size was strong, reflective of DMO’s large and small, and representing regions from
across the country, we were delayed in starting the first in the series, a 2011/2012 comparison report. We are now
completing the research and will be making the first reports available in early February. Thank you to our legacy
partners who have helped us fund this research, and we look forward to providing you with strong metrics and insights
into the successes and challenges facing our industry through the next 12 months.

3. Participating Canadian DMO’s
With a total of 23
participating DMO’s included
in the reporting sample for
2012/13, we were able to
provide additional metrics
(based on feedback from the
industry) to include
benchmarking between
DMO’s of similar size, reach
and budget.

4. Program Overview
We will continue to move the program forward this year by offering:
• 3 DMO specific reports, with analysis and recommendations
• 3 Aggregated Reports summarizing results from all participating
Critical Insights to include: destinations
• Domestic vs. Intl. Traffic
• Social Media Reporting
• Country by country trends
• Sources of traffic • Google Search Data Overlay
• Mobile growth • Webinars to present key findings and action steps
• Engagement comparisons
• Social Media Benchmarking • Special half day review of the study will be presented at the Online
• Comparative CTC data Revealed Canada Conference (April 2-4, 2013 in Windsor Ontario – more
• Google Insight information at www.onlinerevealed.com)

5. Example: 2011/2012 Reporting

6. Metrics Including
DMO Tier Breakdown:

7. Aggregated Metrics
Including:

8. SocialMedia Reporting :
Social Media Reporting
Faceb
Social Media Reporting
In Association with:
in association with

9. Calculating engagement rates
The Our Engagement Rate assesses engagement (likes,
comments and shares) in proportion to a page’s number of
fans and number of posts.
(Likes) + (Comments x 2) + (Shares x 3)
_____________________________________
Number of Posts / Number of Fans

10. More Fans
Canadian DMOs
More Engagement
Fans and engagement rate mapping plots both factors to compare competitor performance.

11. Additional Data: Google Insights

13. Thank you
On behalf of the teams at both A Couple of Chicks™ and Miles™ Partnership, who have worked to get this program off
the ground since the pilot program launched at Online Revealed 2012, thank you for your participation and support in
helping us to develop an industry standard in benchmarking the success of Destination Marketing Organizations both in
Canada, and Internationally.
We look forward to to delivering the full 2011/2012 comparison reports to the legacy partner participants in early
February 2013. Analytics-only participants will receive a snapshot report for their DMO following the release of the paid
program participants.
A special keynote general session will be presented at the April Online Revealed Canada Conference |
www.onlinerevealed.com - with a review of key findings reviewed by a panel of industry experts including: Chris Adams;
Miles Partnership, Paul Nursery; Canadian Tourism Commission, and David Pavelko; Head of Travel, Google. I will
moderate this exciting session, and we will also be offering a workshop dedicated to implimenting key findings at the
conference. We look forward to seeing you at Online Revealed in April, and hearing feedback from the first reports that
will be available in February. Thank you once again for your support!
Alicia Whalen p. 905.401.2249 e. awhalen@acoupleofchicks.com