The web provides tourism boards with a varied and innovative platform from which to launch effective marketing campaigns. Linda Fox finds out who’s doing what.
How far can you catapult a koala across a number of terrains?
It may sound like the latest children’s game released in time for Christmas, but it’s actually an online viral marketing campaign run by Queensland Tourism in September.
The aim of the 10-day campaign was to promote Etihad’s service into Brisbane as well as the experiences Queensland has to offer through a competition.
Players were asked to promote the campaign via email to friends and family to increase its reach and boost the consumer database. More than 1.1 million koalas were catapulted over the 10-day period.
How things have changed from the days of static advertisements in glossy travel magazines where the impact is hard to measure.
Now viral campaigns, destination profiles on social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, blogs, microsites, meta search engines and the use of video to bring countries to life.
Destinations now have a huge range of measurable media at their fingertips to create innovative ways to attract and capture the consumer.
Destinations have changed the way they think about their marketing and want to see a direct correlation between the volumes of people viewing advertising and marketing promotions and the number of people making the decision to visit those places.
South African Tourism trade relations manager Matt Armstrong says it’s about immersing consumers as much as possible in the experiences a destination has to offer so that they make a booking.
Another example of good destination marketing is Dubai, with its decision to create a meta search engine for the destination in conjunction with Global Travel Market. Previously the destination drove traffic to dubaitourism.ae but there was no ability to transact.
Dubai Tourism and Commerce Marketing UK and Ireland director Ian Scott said his interest is in conversions: “It is a very competitive environment and the consumer has the world to choose from, so you have to make sure information is relevant. Once the seed is sewn, you have to give them a call to action where they can do something about it. We’re growing 16% a year in terms of UK visitors to Dubai but we have to continue to work at it.”
Tourism New Zealand has also dramatically changed its approach and two years ago took the decision to produce content, rather than just buy advertising space.
General manager Europe Gregg Anderson said: “All the work we are doing is to ensure we are reaching consumers through the screens they use every day and to make the best use of the options available to promote New Zealand as a holiday destination in innovative and interesting ways.”
The organisation now has its 100% Pure New Zealand channel on YouTube dedicated to video content of the destination.
Through clever use of the channel, New Zealand’s ‘Youngest Country’ advert has been viewed online about a million times with YouTube users forwarding the footage to other places on the web at no extra cost to the destination.
Tourism New Zealand also uses YouTube’s free customisable technology to embed video within its own newzealand.com site.
The destination has also created a group on photo-sharing service flickr.com, whereby visitors to New Zealand join the group and upload photos of their experiences.
Tourism New Zealand also enables visitors to its own site to share experiences through its ‘submit a memory’ tool whereby travellers submit short accounts of their trip, which are then promoted at various places on the site.
The destination has also created its own online community around the Rugby World Cup 2011.
The idea is to take advantage of the game’s popularity and transform it into a love of New Zealand. Users sign up to be a club member, create an avatar with a rugby strip and can then begin creating a network of friends. The plan is to update the club site with new content and functionality as momentum for the World Cup builds.
It seems the idea of online communities has caught everyone’s attention in the destination marketing world.
Australian Tourism has worked with Bebo and MySpace, Enjoy England has just launched a campaign with social networking site WAYN.com, South African Tourism is developing a YouTube channel and the Hong Kong Tourism Board is incorporating Facebook and Flickr on to the latest version of its website.
Web 2.0 and social networking may seem a match made in heaven for destinations because of the ready-made communities out there interested in travel, but it’s about targeting people with relevant information at the right time.
Enjoy England online marketing manager Constandina Milios believes companies should initially adopt a softly-softly approach to social networking and other Web 2.0 elements.
“Anyone who wants to invest in this should look at what’s already out there in terms of online tools. Agencies want vast sums to create a blog but you can do it yourself.”
In recent years the tourist board has worked with Yahoo! Answers, and Flickr and has created its own online forum. Recent developments include a page on Facebook and partnerships with a number of sites including WAYN.com for its autumn advertising campaign.
“Anyone can do this. If you’re a small destination you can go into TripAdvisor and post answers to the questions being asked. You can also set up Google Alerts and RSS feeds to see where you are being talked about and respond.”
Milios also advised destinations to respond to blogs, forums and within social networks and be prepared to respond to negative comments.
“There are companies that are scared to get involved, but we have always said if you get [negative comments] you have to face them. If you don’t, people won’t see you as being impartial.”
At a recent Travel Technology Initiative conference, Tom Griffiths, founder and director of gapyear.com also stressed the importance of learning about and understanding the dynamics of social networks before putting plans in place.
He added that other common mistakes were thinking that one size fits all and adopting widgets and other online gadgets without thinking of the implications.
“Google Earth is a waste of time. People think: ‘Let’s get it because our site looks dated’ but without measuring the return. It’s about picking your battle – toys v sales.”
Griffiths also compared the failure to understand customers and what they really think about your brand to ‘buying a bat and asking someone to beat you with it’.
Despite the online boom, traditional forms of marketing such as newspapers and magazines are not dead.
Tourism Australia UK general manager Rodney Harrex said: “We still produce a brochure because our audience is very broad and there are people who want something they can hold and talk about.”
The tourist board also advertises in major national newspapers and its latest campaign, which launched in the first week of October, has a major TV focus although the call to action is the website, through which Tourism Australia will be able to measure the campaign’s impact.
The internet has given destination marketing a new lease of life and additional opportunities to reach a new audience. The beauty of it is that, used strategically and tracked from start to finish, destination campaigns can be far more targeted. They can be
far-reaching and stretch those marketing bucks.
WAYN.com guide to engaging with social communities
- Winning the trust of your online community is vital. Their trust has to be earned through consistent and conscientious branding with a clear message. It doesn’t come through pushing promotions
- Don’t misuse social media sites to gain internal linking. Engage your audience in a two-way communication rather than simply generating links to your site as search engines are wise to social content listing your website link, which can
affect your reputation - Exchange ideas, increase the awareness of your brand and encourage dialogue to gain priceless feedback from your audience. It’s not enough to just have a presence
- Content must be useful, appealing and plentiful. It’s not about shouting the loudest – it’s about being enjoyable, entertaining and enlightening
- Ask yourself what you want to offer your online community. How are you engaging them and allowing them to express themselves? Does your content meet their needs?
- Select the right forum to engage your audience, vary the content, inform them and understand their interests and needs
- If you’re aiming to drive traffic to your site/blog, make sure you deliver what you promise once they click through from the community forum/social environment to your site
- Talk to your users before you start your campaign and try to understand what they want to see
- Don’t push the sales message. Be true to yourself, your brand and your audience. Don’t over-hype or over-sell as the online community is savvy
- Don’t lose momentum – maintain content around key points of reference and keep the people engaged with fresh content
Advantages of different online techniques, provided by Designate
Blogs run by you
- Provide in-depth ‘behind the story’ coverage
- Increase search engine optimisation
- emonstrate authenticity; credibility; provenance; long-tail subject matter knowledge; and increase customer access to
first-hand experience - Provide guest writers (partners, or customers) with a platform to provide relevant content
- Solicit feedback and commentary (if you switch on ‘respond’ features)
Measurements: use analytics to benchmark referrals from the blog through to your point of conversion; try to quantify positive and negative feedback if people are responding
Feedback/user generated content
- Good for helping customers assess suitability
- Customers build trust with the brand if you’re open to feedback
- Customers are more likely to enjoy the experience if they’re more informed before they book
- Can reduce look-to-book time by allowing for more robust decision making
Measurements: compare look-to-book time between people who have viewed UGC and not; benchmark returning visitors after you’ve implemented UGC
Facebook (and other community social networks)
- Good for being in the same space as key customers (e.g. the 18-24 crowd who consume their media on their mobile phone and PC, and rarely use ‘old media’)
- Treat them as a powerful member-get-member tool. If it’s relevant, and useful, then the network will do the job for you
- Measurement: assess referrals from a social network through to point of conversion in the same way as you would from a search engine
Widgets
- Push mechanisms good for time-sensitive offers
- Cut-through price offers perfect for certain segments and can help shift inventory – e.g. SouthWest Airline’s now legendary ‘Ding’ widget that gave it $150 million of incremental revenue
- Can provide value-added utility – e.g. a surf-cam, weather update, picture of the day
- Quick, cheap, easy to deploy – can connect with inventory in principle by riding off existing XML, RSS or web service
- Measurements: compare downloads of the widget against actual transactions that are through the widget or referred from the widget
Campaign Microsites
- Are highly-targeted – eg seasonal offers; new destinations; new ticketing types; promotions
- Quick set-up time
- Bypassing existing technology sales level agreements with systems integrators
- Not being hindered by information architecture, format or creative of ‘main brand’ presence
- Tend towards richer or multimedia experience
- Good for ‘fun’ mechanics like games and competitions
- Can be used for specific data capture and CRM for further campaign offers
Measurements: campaign response and conversion over campaign time period; referrals in terms of email and banner click-throughs, or click-throughs from social media/networks
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