No you don’t have to be Prince William, Sienna Miller or Pippa Middleton to stay in a posh palace…

Any media campaign must start with a measurable target. While it’s too early in the campaign to release any data, LandedHouses.co.uk is hoping that by tying a PR campaign to the release of the new series of mainstream TV show Game of Thrones (GoT) it will achieve one key objective – to broaden its reach.

Founded by a classmate of Prince Harry no less, this niche online travel agency opens the doors of some of the grandest castles, country estates and manor houses in the UK. While renters may include premiership footballers, A-list celebrities, like Sienna Miller and Pippa Middleton, and even royalty, for the minions among us - providing the party is big enough – a stay can apparently come for as little as a price tag of £27 a night.

“Properties listed on LandedHouses.co.uk were traditionally only accessible to the super-rich, and most people still wouldn't believe renting a place like this would be affordable,” says Edmund Cohen, the founder of this upmarket start-up.

So the thinking was that because the series has such mainstream appeal, ordinary folk may take a peak at the site and be pleasantly surprised at its affordability.

Although none of the properties on landedhouses.co.uk have featured in a Game of Thrones series, those chosen to feature in the campaign “highlight the feel, period and drama of the show and we use tongue-and-cheek references to the series,” says Cohen.

By tapping into the buzz, which has been trending on Twitter, around the launch of the show’s fifth season, the campaign was timely and topical offered short-lead publications a ready made feature that could run online and appeal to readers with links back to the site.

The target demographic of the campaign was very similar to that of the show namely viewers aged 20 to 35, who might, for example, be interested in booking these venues for parties or university reunions.

Of course, there is always some debate around the measurability of PR, but the group will be measuring traffic into the website from the sites and publications that picked up the GoT campaign.

“Aside from driving new traffic to the site, the aim was to create long-term brand awareness and generate significant SEO benefit that quality inbound links bring to a website,” Cohen explains.

It’s not the first time Game of Thrones has been used in a PR campaign, and it probably won’t be the last. Last year travel search engine GoEuro.com released a blog post detailing the filming locations of the hit show. That created such a buzz that it decided to keep track of the filming locations and release a similar infographic – a Real World Travel Guide to Game of Thrones, updated for Season 5.

The decision was based two reasons. Firstly the majority of the show’s backdrops are bookable via GoEuro’s search engine. And secondly, bookings for the locations in which filming takes place increased as a result. Here is some of the data:

• 8-16% - the increase in tickets booked to Dubrovnik in Croatia, which is used as King's Landing and is located close to Lokrum, another location*
• 26% - The rise in flights booked to the island of Malta 
• 5-11%  - The increase in bookings to Northern Ireland’s capital Belfast, the closest major city for scenes shot in Winterfell (also travel mode dependent*

*Travel mode dependent

For GoEuro.com it was a win-win situation. To stand out in today’s hypercompetitive travel world, brands today must understand their audience and deliver strong content. According to GoEuro.com, not only has the information was well received well by fans, it was also raised awareness of the locations. This year’s infographic includes new information on filming locations in Spain, a country previously unvisited by the production crew.