marketing

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Marketing
flickr: [|marketing] slideshare: [|Workshop 21: Lessons for World Travel Companies on the Social Web] (15,000+ views), [|marketing local] (3,000+ views) editing: [|marketing]


 * Marketing** = The process by which one creates interest in goods, services and place.

Buzzword Bingo
Ad - Artificial - Assemble - Attention - Authentic - Award - Awareness - Beautiful Font - Behavior - Brand - Business - Buy - Campaign - Client - Commercial - Communication - Consumer - Consumer Demand - Conversation - Customer - Customer Service - Engagement - Exposure - Feedback - Friends - Hype - Level Playing Field - Long Tail - Look-Alike Modeling - Market - **Marketing** - [|Murketing] - Participation - Promote - Relationship - Road Show - Sell - Slogan - SMEs - Social Web - Strapline - Strategy - Storytelling - Tagline - Trade Show - Unique Selling Point

Proposing Benchmarks for Tourism Marketing
On the social web: Does the local tourism authority ... retweet other people's tweets? like other people's facebook posts? share other people's Google+ posts?

On the ground: Does the local tourism authority assist topical workshops related to direct topics including language instruction and safety? assist topical workshops related to hygiene, sustainability and other indirect topics?

Tips
Businesses need to have a Facebook page or you won’t show up.

RSS
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Essay: The Results are In: How Good is Tourism Marketing Where You Live? ([|Blog])
[|Planeta.com], the [|Local Travel Movement] and the [|WHL Group] teamed up to review how satisfied you are with the way local travel is marketed. This survey endeavors to understand how localities are promoted by asking the locals. From survey responses we will compile a list of good practices and suggestions for improving tourism promotion.

In the first phase of a collaborative review analysis shows a strong disconnect among passionate locals working in tourism and the authorities developing and marketing tourism. When asked if participants felt that they could share information with the institutions or organizations responsible for marketing tourism in the locale, 33% replied no, 30% replied sometimes, and 37% replied yes.

When asked how satisfied participants were with the tourism marketing of your locale, the response was 3.091 on a scale of 1-5.

Anecdotally, a number of participants detailed the complexity of being able to communicate with one authority but not another. Participants criticized consultation processes which lacked adequate ... consultation.

Ron Mader: "Tourism authorities have an unprecedented opportunity to connect locals and visitors with social web tools and old-fashioned lo-fi technology, including maps and information kiosks. The survey points out that the failure to communicate and collaborate are global in scope though not predestined. There are ways to improve the communication and survey respondents supplied a number of proposals."

What interests us is the marketing in the locale and of the locale -- do locals feel engaged? Are they satisfied with the materials and information presented at the tourism kiosk? If they had a way of seeing, would they be pleased with how the city is presented at trade shows? Does the promotion reflect the a variety of narratives? This is not a rhetorical question. We asked for your take on your city

At a time when so many stakeholders – bloggers, local tour operators, global service organizations and more – are actively searching for new and viable solutions to improving visibility in tourism, this survey is to help develop benchmarks for good practices and suggestions for improving tourism promotion.

Marcus Bauer: Plenty of local ideas not being considered for destination marketing. But as destination managers are paid to produce measurable results (however stupid these are), chances are little that they give up top-down style and understand their work as 'destination coaches' who lead a team of players within the destination.
 * Responses to the survey**

Related: http://www.thetravelword.com/2012/07/30/how-good-is-the-tourism-marketing-where-you-live [|Blog]

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Raw Responses Collected in the Marketing Local Survey
I'd think twice about pitching ideas to the public sector as there's a history of such ideas finding there way into procurement processes and open tenders, which is a shabby way of treating intellectual property.

Structures in Cologne normally are not open to outsiders. So if you don't know someone in the tourism hierarchy or have some connection to the "apparatus" it's difficult to become part of the discussion.

We push to share ideas with our competitors but we have never been involved with Ministry of Tourism. We have tried!

Reports have been written about tourism in Malawi- specifically eco-tourism- we were not consulted and the World Bank report was not available to tourism companies in Malawi unless specifically requested which seems mad!

There is still TOO much duplication despite what everybody says about it.... The key is to DO the bits that need doing, that nobody else is doing - not doing the easy things and things we have always done.... DOING THE RIGHT THING, NOT THINGS RIGHT. Too many people, public and private sector too are still playing safe and NOT making REAL differences. Simplify strategies and local actions and get BASICS right at GRASS ROOT LEVELS. Wholesale change, not just tinkering. There is no overall plan for local tourism. When we began our DMO 6 years ago our city had a tourism budget, though no plan. Now it has neither, but we continue to market the community outside the community for now.

I actually Chair one of the local membership committees on destination marketing...we have lots of ideas and few resources or support

I am one of only a few that believe Activities and Attractions should be the marketing focus and Accommodation as an add on. Local cultures, unique nature and other features make our locale spacial.

Misc

You help this effort by talking it up on the social web -- particularly Facebook and Twitter. If you blog about this, you're welcome to use our [|graphic].

We are looking forward to a breadth and depth of responses to show us how marketing campaigns capture what's local -- the longtail appeal of a breadth and depth of what's on offer, the things to do, the points of interest, the people who matter -- or miss the mark in ways that locals can best point out. Take pride in under-the-radar attractions. Someone's offering them and someone's looking for them.

A few things changed in the past decade, including a Global Financial Crisis and the rise of the social web.
 * How has marketing travel changed in the past decade?**

Ten years ago it was difficult to imagine the meteoric rise of public channels such as Facebook, Flickr, Google+, Twitter and YouTube. In the days of Web 1.0 (1994-2004) it was sufficient to have a website that could be updated once or twice a year, usually at the request of an overburdened 'webmaster.' 'Stories' were written by journalists or PR agencies. Today the emphasis for tourism enterprises has morphed from websites to developing web presence -- how we interact with our neighbors and visitors using the social web. This shift has been taking place since 2004-2005 and has only accelerated in 2011 with the rise of smartphones, geolocation services, curation portals and other high-tech innovations.

Personally, I have seen that many government officials and tourism businesses have been slow to respond to the changes. In many ways this reluctance repeats a familiar hesitance. The technology does not matter. People often do not know how to share their own stories because they don't know what their own stories are. On top of this challenge in storytelling comes the quantum shift in narrative. More than one story is being told. Locals and visitors react negatively when they are treated as part of the herd.

Cape Town, South Africa stands out as a model of multiple narratives based on history and a concerted effort from those promoting visits from national and international visitors. As Cape Town Tourism CEO Mariette dT-Helmbold says, "Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell." In our [|2011 conversation] Mariette explained how she integrates the social web with being social. The new tourism campaign — “You don’t need a holiday. You need Cape Town.” — is inventive and inclusive.

What I have learned is that these changes do not come easily without some incentives for change. We have been able to develop the marketing skills and digital literacy through online events including Responsible Tourism Week and competitions such as the Indigenous Tourism and Biodiversity Website Award. Thanks to the ITBW Award, there were sterling conversations with [|Ceilhe and Neill Sperath] of Time Unlimited Tours in New Zealand. Neill: "It's easy to do marketing when you have a big budget. The value of social media is that it levels the playing field and allows you to compete."

Chatting with [|Pedro Martinez], owner of a bike tour company in Oaxaca, Mexico, also the winner of the 2009 Colibri Ecotourism Award has shown me how tourism marketing has changed the past ten years. Pedro does not attend trade shows or expos and like many small tour operators he complains bitterly about the trade shows he attended and felt ripped off. Since 2006 Pedro has been slowly learning the social web. So we were talking about the various ways Pedro has been gaining new clients and connecting with old friends via [|Flickr] and [|YouTube]. What does Pedro like best about Flickr? "La promoción mas cara es que lo menos funciona y Flickr es un regalo. (The most expensive publicity works least and Flickr is a gift.)

'Simplify!' is the advice of Anders Karrstedt of [|Nutti Sami Siida] who shared the Swedish proverb [|Gå inte över ån efter vatten (you don't need to cross the river to get water)]. It's a great recommendation since we often overcomplicate matters.

Anders: "SMEs disappear in the broad picture of tourism marketing. The social web helps us connect directly with visitors."

That said, Anders warns against taking a stand-alone approach in terms of developing tourism services. "If you work alone and take all of the customers, there's no foundation for cooperation. It's healthier for us to give way to others who do things better than us."

One of my favorite buzzwords is antisocial networking : presence on social networking but never actually communicating to anybody. I wish I could say that this a limited occurrence, but it's an apt description of how many rookies treat social web. They register, log on and do nothing. Later on they complain that their social web strategy has not worked! This is particularly true of the digital migrants, the 40+ crowd. A couple of years ago I was visiting rural Australia with a friend who wanted to show me her presentations on her laptop computer. 'Why not put this online Slideshare?' I asked. Instead of waiting for someone to visit to show one's digital creations, why not use the social web today to share one's stories? The sticking point for my friend is that by making something publicly available, she loses control of who sees it. If she posts the presentation on Slideshare, others might comment or copy the code and embed the presentation on another website. My response: go for it. Make presentations that can be shared, liked, favorited, embedded.

Planeta.com is partial to the operators of small mom and pop tourism operators -- SMEs -- around the world. For more than 15 years we have hosted the [|World Travel Directory], a select guide aimed at travelers seeking meaningful eco-friendly, people-friendly and place-friendly travel. That said, most of the operators have chosen to 'purchase a listing' instead of engaging in a more purposeful manner. I would like to reposition the directory more as an online workshop that helps the operators learn about the new trends on social web and help develop content on Planeta, starting with this wiki. This might be blue sky thinking, but I would be very happy if we got 30-50% of the operators to participate in February's Responsible Tourism Week.
 * What are your experiences on Planeta.com?**

Sallie Grayson of People and Places notes that their volunteers don't like to be thought of as voluntourists. Pedro Martinez' 'adventure travel clients' are equally interested in crossing gorges as they are visiting indigenous artisans in their homes. Those committed to ecotourism rarely call themselves ecotourists. Simply put, we do not speak a common language. It makes more sense to focus on the verbs than the adjectives.
 * What have you learned from travel operators?**

The #1 mistake is not getting the word out to potential visitors from the beginning. #2 mistake is not staying in contact with visitors. Many operators need some hand holding, covering the basics (writing a media release, preparing attractive copy and photos) and advanced web skills, such as conducting analytics and following-up with revisions as needed.
 * What's the #1 mistake operators make when launching their service?**

More capacity building workshops for locals (tour operators, restaurants, museums, park managers) //and government officials//. I'm tired of communication workshops in which the only outcomes we hear comes directly from the consultants. This can only occur if there is a horizontal buy-in throughout a city or country. Digital literacy needs to be embedded throughout the economy. And the good news -- during a time of economic slow-down, events could be focus more on what's local and use livestreaming to share this to the world.
 * What's on your wish list?**

Think long tail. People are traveling for all sorts of reasons, so attention to diversity is more important than ever. Local tourism pros need to share with visitors what's unique.
 * What are the big trends?**

Big Trend #1: Local travel has its own [|movement]

Big Trend #2: Slow Travel. We've talked this up for years, but it's actually catching on in marketing, tourism promotion and wider demand. There are even [|slow adventures]!

Big Trend #3: Real-time. It's all about [|storytelling now].

Successful tourism requires collaboration among [|stakeholders] starting with locals and visitors.
 * What are the solutions?**

Here is our [|Wish List for Responsible, Sustainable Ecotourism that Alleviates Poverty, Creates Jobs, Greens Transport and Events, Conserves Biodiversity, Fosters Education and Promotes Meaningful Engagement among Stakeholders while creating a more Peaceful World]

[|Yes] and so should you. Check out the Twitter tips.
 * Do you twittter?**

Can tourism promotion be crowdsourced?
It already is, particularly during times of crisis. That said, there should be flexible strategies that encourage collaboration among the government, the private sector and visitors. Campaigns can be organized from the top but they ought to welcome the feedback and contributions.

Not many. But I'd start with Join the Conversation. It's a great overview of how the social web is used for marketing. Also recommended are The Long Tail and Wikinomics.
 * Do you recommend any Dead Trees?**

Financial Time's [|Why global tourism campaigns do not travel] makes a good case that what worked before no longer works. One size does not fit all. How do we make the change? The answer is two-fold. One solution is capacity building and training. Another path is using awards to create incentives that showcase good practices.
 * How well do governments promote responsible tourism and ecotourism?**

Check out the tips for event promotion.
 * What suggestions do you have for event organizers?**

Yes! Ask you clients. It's good to have some dead tree materials, aka heritage media.
 * Is it still necessary to print tourism flyers and brochures?**

If we address solely the marketing value of certified tourism services and products, then the evidence shows that value is minimal. [|Here's the debate from a few years ago]. Personally, I think the marketing tourism services and values is best developed when hosts and guests figure out how to communicate better with one another. Far too many quality services have dropped off the face of the earth because the guides and operators could not articulate what they do. I focus part of my attention on raising the 'digital literacy' of hosts so that they can 1) promote themselves and 2) respond in a positive manner to the kind words, thumbs up, stars, likes and the like in social web from their guests. We can build a virtuous circle of responsible, sustainable and conscious tourism and genuine collaboration has greater value than the smoke and mirrors certification programs.
 * Does certification of 'sustainable tourism' have value in terms of marketing?**

Answer - Tags are a beautiful feature of social web that tourism pros need to understand.
 * What is the future of tagging in the realm of promoting ecotourism and responsible travel?**

[|Yes]. You are cordially invited to post comments!
 * Do you have a blog?**

Ask more of your teachers and be more engaged in your own education. We'd love to see some comparisons among countries evaluating how they market ecotourism and responsible travel. How well do marketing campaigns establish a conversation among interested stakeholders? What are successful marketing tips that have been tested by operators on the ground?
 * What would you recommend to students?**

Also, can students work with particular businesses and offer social web suggestions. Many operations are leary of Facebook and Twitter and need a younger hand. I encourage operators to let students teach them instead of taking on the responsibilities themselves. Otherwise, once the students or interns leave, the business owners are left without the experience to continue.

Travelers are influenced by each other. Find ways to encourage your visitors to spread the word.
 * Anything else?**

Wiki
advertising awards communication destinate longtail eventpromo



Slideshare
media type="custom" key="12126164" ** Workshop 21: Lessons from World Travel Companies on the Social Web ** View more presentations from ron mader ** [|Upgrade Your World!] ** View more [|presentations] from [|ron mader]. ** The New World of Word Of Mouth ** View more presentations from Cult Branding media type="custom" key="20762146"

Editing
[|Marketing Ecotourism]

Kudos
Many of the lessons learned and recommendations presented in this essay come from conversations with friends and colleagues featured in Planeta.com's [|World Travel Directory] and the [|Directory of Spanish Language Schools]

Wikipedia
[|Unique selling proposition] [|Marketing]

Elsewhere on the web
[|Why global tourism campaigns do not travel] [|Twitter chats and sponsored hashtags--how to do it right] [|When Tourism Logo Design Goes Off Message] [|Why is responsible marketing and communications so poor in tourism?] http://blog.responsibletravel.com/gold-and-green-marketing-responsible-tourism http://hackingdestinationmarketing.com - @BMACDFW

LinkedIn
[|How have you found Social Media Marketing in 2011?]

Misc
Chatting with Anders ... who in terms of recommends looking at tourism products the same way as purchasing a bottle of milk (or any other product you'd purchase). Information about the product needs to answer the basic questions: Where, When, How Much, Value for Money, Foreign Language. Visitors, clients, consumers seeking the information when they need it.

The challenge comes when tourism businesses owners don't include the price (for fear of informing their competitors). They don't include restrictions (such as seasonality).

People will be interested in a tour if they know the price, the place and have an idea of what value they get for their money. They will learn about the tours often by travelers like themselves, so it behooves operators to engage their clients in new ways.

Rate promotion on ...
 Facebook  Flickr  YouTube  Brochures  Posters  Events  Press trips

Misc Personally, I'm looking for vibrant city markets and outdoor parks, ecotourism and rugby matches, good local food that I would be unable to taste elsewhere. I'm looking even deeper to find familiar faces, people I've connected with on previous travels or via the social web. I want to visit someone who's Flickr photos I've favorited or gave a thumbs up to on YouTube.

Quotes
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 * < How about we do something more powerful, more meaningful? What if we helped cities express themselves and share their voices? My first thought was to ask the people of [|Pittsburgh] what they want to share with the world. That's one way to think about it. My next thought was to give them the tools, show them how, and get the most authentic voice.

- Chris Brogan, [|How Bloggers Can Work With Tourism Boards] ||


 * 1) [[image:http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/631730664/Copy_of_KTP1Willie_normal.JPG width="48" height="48" link="http://twitter.com/guurrbi"]]  **[|guurrbi]**

You can't afford to just rely on one or two media, or give up marketing for a second!! [|6:05 PM Oct 7th]


 * 1) [[image:http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/631730664/Copy_of_KTP1Willie_normal.JPG width="48" height="48" link="http://twitter.com/guurrbi"]] **[|guurrbi]**

customers respond to the drip drip of multiple stimuli...word of mouth, brochures, website, publications, articles etc. ... [|6:04 PM Oct 7th]

Look-Alike Modeling

http://liveramp.com/blog/look-alike-modeling-the-what-why-and-how http://adage.com/article/dataworks/alike-models/239590/