Marketing Greece SA is a non-profit corporation, founded in 2013 when the Greek Tourism Confederation (SETE), the Hellenic Hoteliers Federation and the Greek Association of Advertising Agencies decided to join forces in order to reverse the negative image of Greece worldwide and the downward spiral at the Greek tourism numbers due to the financial crisis. These 3 institutions worked together with the consulting firm McKinsey to create a non-profit Destination Marketing Organisation that would:

• Develop the Greek tourism product portfolio
• Effectively promote Greece and its tourism product portfolio in key target markets
• Unite all Greek private sector efforts to strengthen the brand Greece and enhance the Greek tourism product offering

The most important pillar of Marketing Greece SA was its Discovergreece.com website, around which all the promotional and communication activities would be planned and executed

Discovergreece.com is an interactive platform/website that showcases the integrated Greek Tourism Product portfolio, acts as a sales tool by combining products with booking engines; and serves as a digital platform for community building & social media campaigns. With 120.000 words of written content translated in 5 different languages, more than 2.000 photos and 60+ videos of Greece, Discovergreece.com was at the time of its launch one of the biggest and most advanced DMO/Country website in the world.

The challenge was for Base Element to establish the newly launched Discovergreece.com as the preferred source of information online pertaining to travel and tourism in Greece, within a timeframe of 1 year. The idea was for Discovergreece.com to become the go-to travel guide for users searching for Greece on the web and for the portal to be findable in organic search.

This was particularly tough considering the competition and the industry. The website had to compete with world famous booking engines, established Greek hotels, numerous other websites that were also promoting Greece and of course all the  other major tourism destinations in the world (especially the strong Mediterranean countries like Spain, France, Italy and Turkey).

Furthermore, having to undertake the design and execution of global multilingual online marketing campaigns (in English, German, French and Russian) brought with it other challenges pertaining to cultural and linguistic idiosyncrasies, keyword research and SEO.  

At the initial stages of the Discovergreece.com project, Base Element assisted Marketing Greece SA in the formulation of a digital marketing strategy, alternative action plans and partnerships. 

At the second stage of the project, Base Element was responsible for the implementation of all the international and local online advertising campaigns in multiple languages and social media coordination with the client and its international PR agencies. 

Our work for Discovergreece.com included:

• The creation and execution of content marketing and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategies which included SEO Copywriting in 4 languages
• The conceptualization and execution of a number of purpose and theme specific digital marketing campaigns;
• The implementation of analytics, data collection tools and usability testing methodologies;
• The development of Facebook applications;
•  A UI (user interface) and UX (user experience) audit of the website;
• And finally, data analysis and actionable insights reporting.