When I took up the role of first Chief Executive of the new company Marketing Lancashire in 2012, I embarked on a programme of change to develop an organisation that as well as championing the county’s incredible tourism offer, would also promote Lancashire as a place to live, learn and where existing and new businesses could thrive

In other words Marketing Lancashire would lead the way, in projecting a cohesive and confident brand for Lancashire that would encourage growth across the whole county.

This broader role for the organisation will develop organically while, as Destination Management Organisation (DMO) for the county, we continue to lead in terms of promoting Lancashire to domestic as well as overseas markets, working very closely with our tourism colleagues Visit England and Visit Britain.

The role of the visitor economy or tourism sector in Lancashire is significant, attracting 63 million visitors to the county, making a £3.5billion contribution to the Lancashire economy and supporting 56,000 FTE jobs (Source: STEAM 2013). It may come as a surprise to some that Lancashire attracts more visitors than Cumbria.

Fortunately, the breadth of choice in accommodation, attractions and events in Lancashire is helping the destination remain a quality choice in an increasingly competitive marketplace and for short breaks and day visits in the UK.

The visitor has also changed their way of researching and planning their days out or short breaks with over 56% using their smart phones or tablets to access information about a destination.

I’m pleased to say we have invested in making sure visitlancashire.com is a comprehensive guide for Lancashire. In the last year we have seen our unique users of the site rise to 1.5million and our page impressions reaching over 5million and each year this is growing by around 25%. This has been driven by continually adding rich content and thinking of customer interests.

We’ve also fully embraced social media such as Facebook and Twitter and actively engage with our customers and partners daily, highlighting the latest short break campaigns, fantastic offers and the incredible choice of events that fill our online calendar.

We recently created and spearheaded a Lancashire Day twitter campaign, inviting people to upload images of Lancashire to illustrate the Visit Lancashire brand #wherelifefeelsgood with the chance of a prize of a gourmet break at Michelin-starred Northcote, a year’s supply of Dewlay Lancashire Cheese and a one year subscription to Lancashire Life magazine.

On the day itself we reached over 23 million people in over 800 world locations, which led to #Lancashireday trending across the UK for six hours; a very clear demonstration of how successfully these social channels can spread our messages around the globe.

These are very interesting times indeed for marketing and communications teams, the challenge will be keeping up with these fast-moving trends and having the flexibility in our teams to run with them.

Growing the county brand often involves us in discussions with tourism colleagues keen to create distinct identities for their own districts that work hand-in-hand with our county Where Life Feels Good brand.

This year we’ve been pleased to play a role in the re-branding exercise of Lancaster and helped by leading on securing Lancaster’s place as one of England’s Heritage Cities, of which there are only 11 in the country with peers such as Oxford, Cambridge, York, Durham and Chester.

The process was very well-organised and involved a wide range of stakeholders all keen to raise the profile of this historic city, that we all agreed should be talked about just as much as York, Bath or Durham. Lancaster has many similarities in terms of visitor attractions but would benefit from some of the volumes of visitors, often overseas groups that head to these other historic cities.

It’s a matter of creating the right ‘story’ and marketing opportunities for Lancaster and with the new Small City – Big Story branding, Lancaster is promising the visitor a ‘big’ heritage and cultural experience but on a scale that appeals to the city break market and brings year-round prosperity.

Marketing Lancashire is supporting Lancaster with a new dedicated section for Lancaster on visitlancashire.com and with additional focus on Lancaster in the new Lancashire Visitor Guide 2015. We are also collaborating with our colleagues at Cumbria Tourism to raise and promote the profile of Morecambe Bay as a place to visit, explore and experience the beautiful and natural landscapes it has to offer.

Lancaster and Morecambe Bay are an extremely important part of our Lancashire story, with strong product and rich assets and through collaboration and true partnership- working, our aim is to increase visitor numbers and spend and get this wonderful part of Lancashire talked about for all the right reasons.