ADEPT Marketing

Foursquare, the latest new and free location-based social media tool based on mobile device use that is taking off.

What is it?

Using a mobile device with GPS, it’s a way to explore a city and find people, places and things to do.  The users “check-in” to their current locations and can earn rewards in doing so.   
It’s got much more of a “game” approach to it than other social media tools where users can “unlock badges and discover new things” for rewards, but the interesting bit is that these things are in the real world so businesses can use it to influence behaviour and actions, turning Foursquare users into paying customers.

Is It Useful for Tourism Businesses and Destination Marketing?

You bet ya it is, well eventually anyway – once more people start to understand it, and provided it’s content continues to grow throughout New Zealand then it could become quite a powerful tool for travellers to decide what do to and where to go while visiting, plus you can incentivise your regular customers.

Here is a link to find out how businesses can use Foursquare to reward their customers with special offers and incentives.  You can either “claim your venue” as the business owner if someone has already added your business on Foursquare, or you can add your venue yourself.  Once you have claimed it you can monitor the stats, add special offers and award prizes etc.

This article “VisitPA uses Foursquare to it’s Full Potential” on the Project Wander blog is perhaps the first example of a Destination Marketing Organisation getting onboard with Foursquare to market it.

The limiting factor right now in New Zealand is the quality and lack of mobile internet access nationwide so it’s use is mainly in the cities….that may take some time to fix, but if your coverage is good then give it a go for your tourism business or organisation.  Would be great to hear about any businesses using it already.

In the US Facebook recently overtook Google for popularity based on weekly traffic (for a week in March) accounting for 7.07% of US Website Traffic for that week – this is an incredible achievement given Google’s dominance on so many levels. With over 400 million registered users for Facebook worldwide it has become a social media website that is difficult to ignore and as a business you should be considering using it as a way to communicate and share content with your target market.

Not only that, the applications and tools available on Facebook pages are a great fit for tourism businesses that can sell your features based on interactive and user content such as photos, videos and reviews. The personality that you can show about your brand and your people can come through strongly and add to your online brand profile.

Facebook Pages

• This is the key way for a brand or business to represent themselves on Facebook, and can generally be set up in less than 30 minutes, create a page here. Note: All Facebook Pages have to be set up by someone with a personal profile.
• It can be viewed without being a Facebook user so you can have a link directly to your page from your website but only Facebook users can follow your page as “fans”
• There are a multitude of free applications that you can add to your Facebook page that can enhance it’s functions, see this article on Mashable.com “5 Essential Apps for Your Business’s Facebook Fan Page“
• Your updates will appear on the personal walls of your fans to draw their attention to the activity on your page
• You can send your fans messages, so it’s essentially another form of database marketing and incredibly powerful because all fans voluntarily opt in to receive your content
• While it all sounds easy, creating and maintaining your content plus attracting user content from your fans requires a time investment and a strategy to keep it growing effectively combining it with your other marketing media
• Always keep in mind that the is aim to use tools like Facebook to drive traffic to your website and increase your marketing database of targeted customers

Establish Your Fan Base

Building your Fan base is always the first challenge for a new Facebook page, so here are some ideas to help get it going:

• Create some interesting content on your Page first so that when you start promoting it will attract fans
• Promote your Page with in a prominent place on your website
• If you have a marketing database then use email marketing to promote your Facebook page, similarly if you already have a following on other social media sites like Twitter then you can promote your page to them
• Use the Facebook Ads to promote your page – costs are based on pay per click and you can select the demographics and location of people you want to target
• Develop some fun and interactive viral marketing initiatives that can be featured on your page, competitions and incentives are a great way to attract visits

Popular Tourism Facebook Pages

If you have some doubts over the benefits of building a busy Facebook Fan Page have a look at the number of fans generated on some the following popular tourism pages – marketing gold!

Australia - 384,220 Fans

100% Pure New Zealand – 118,800 Fans

Air New Zealand – 18,844 fans

WellingtonNZ – 13,846 fans

Have you got any more examples of popular tourism Facebook pages or useful apps to use on your page? What has worked for you to build your fan base?

Become a Fan of the Tourism Industry Blog Facebook Page

Viral marketing is essentially the “word of mouth” spread of a marketing message by an organisation through the use of some sort of media – typically it is shared through online social media such as You Tube, Facebook or Twitter, but it could also be text messages or email. Using video or something interactive is the most common vehicle for the campaign and it must be entertaining. It will be targeted at a particular market who are likely to share it with others because of it’s amusement value (not because of the brand or message).

Developing the right viral campaign is a bit of an art because you have to be careful not to make it too manufactured, it needs to be genuinely funny and the brand or message involved has to be visible but not dominating – potentially the more outrageous and cheeky it is the more success you will have. People will either love it or hate it – but that’s OK, so long as it gets exposure.

How can tourism use it? Very creatively hopefully! This is a superb way to create interest in a destination or particular tourism product in a different and memorable way. A couple of current examples of viral marketing campaigns for New Zealand tourism organisations are:

Air New Zealand – Who Would You Spoon?

A funny video featuring comedian Di Henwood with the campaign centred on the Air New Zeland Facebook page. They have even produced a Facebook application for the spooning campaign so fans can select some of their friends to spoon and enter a competition to win a weekend away…the marketing message for this campaign? It’s all about their new Economy Skycouch which allows passengers to lie down during flight to sleep, and presumably spoon if travelling with a close friend…

Destination Northland – Northland For Dummies Aussies

A clever couple of videos have been produced and placed on YouTube with the star of the show being the likeable Bazza from Oz. Targeted at Australians to visit Northland, these 2 videos (A language Guide and an Outdoor Guide) are being spread virally through You Tube, Facebook and Twitter. Bazza has his own Facebook page and Twitter account so you can follow his travels through Northland.

This is a great summary by Karen Rubin from Hubspot about how to manage and plan content for your business blog so you can keep coming up with useful blog topics that attract targeted traffic. The video is 29 minutes long but definitely worth the time if you have your own business blog or are considering starting one.

See our Blog Set Up & Management Services

[business:Adept Marketing]

There are conversations going on everywhere, all the time by your customers. Whether good or bad it’s “word of mouth” and something we are largely ignorant of until it gets back to us in the form of a new booking because someone has recommended you, or a complaint about something that didn’t meet their expectations.

A lot of the time you will never know about these conversations….well not quite, fortunately there’s now a growing number of these conversations happening online. Social networking sites, travel review sites and blogs are all ways people are now sharing their experiences with others in a much more public and accessible way.

Many tourism operators are very nervous about this, but I say it’s an opportunity – to be part of the conversation. It’s an opportunity because you have the ability to respond, whether it’s a thank you or an explanation to resolve a situation that has been remedied, then you can have your say.

But how do you find out about these “conversations”? There are a number of ways and you won’t find them all, or have time to, but if you participate in a few simple ways you can at least find the one’s that will get the most exposure on mainstream websites, so here are some tips to help:

• Set up and guide your customers to your own social media pages to make comments, this is your best approach. Have your own Twitter and Facebook pages that are promoted on your website for people to connect to, view and share their experiences on. Encourage them to comment, share their photos and recommendations. Overwhelmingly, if you have positive content on your own pages then this will overshadow any “glitches” where negative comments may have been made.
• Embrace the key travel review sites and promote your listings with them on your website where you can place their logos and website “widgets” (like Tripadvisor, Rankers and Virtual Tourist) and link to read your reviews. You can see a bit more about this topic in an article I published in August 2009, “Tourism Operators: Make Traveller Reviews Part of Your Marketing Strategy“
• Do online searches for “mention” of your business name – you can google it or do this on sites like Twitter, Technorati and Social Mention.

Of course, if you are confident of your business delivery and service then you may not be bothered to do all of this, but then you’d be missing out on some great conversations!

Having been actively using Twitter for my business the last 6 months or so, I have observed that the Tourism Industry in New Zealand is very active with Tweeting and it’s gaining momentum all the time. Key tourism twitter accounts such as @grabaseat, @flyairnz and @purenewzealand are amongst the most popular in New Zealand in terms of the number of followers. So bravo for being a proactive industry with social media marketing!

For those of you not yet using Twitter here are some reasons why you should consider starting:

• It’s FREE.
• Once you’ve established a good network of followers it’s a very easy way to share information and communicate online.
• You can use it to help build awareness of your business and drive traffic to your website without being a salesperson, it’s more about relationships than sales but the end result is positive online presence.
• It’s a perfect tool for “viral marketing” where the people you connect with can help you to spread the word with very little effort.
• You can use Twitter Lists to group followers into different categories for viewing their updates e.g. customers/travellers, tourism industry, media etc.
• There are ways to automate feeding your Twitter updates into your website and other social media pages like Facebook and LinkedIn.

So if you think it may be time to jump into Twitter then have a look at this article I wrote about Getting Started on Twitter for Business. I encourage you to come and try it out for yourself. You can also look at this Interview with Tim Cossar on TV’s ASB Business about the “Tourism Sector Looks to Social Networking.”

For those of you already using Twitter let us know how it’s working for you – got any tips, successes or failures to share?

Branding in any media in not just about visual representation of your logo and colours, it’s also about the personality of your business and it’s people. Online media provides some unique ways to effectively share and reflect your brand image that allows engaging and interacting with your customers at a one to one level. Businesses can really use this to set themselves apart from competitors with how they communicate and manage relationships.

Here are some ideas that businesses can use to build and manage their online brand:

• Have a blog on your website – this will show your personality, expertise and interests, read more about the benefits

• Be part of the conversation – check online regularly with searches of your business name in blog posts and social media, you can use free tools like Social Mention or Technorati (for blogs). Wherever possible, get involved in discussions and reviews about your business.

• Create a Facebook page and build some “fans” – this will allow you to start any conversation and easily let them share their thoughts, photos and videos with you. LinkedIn is popular for business to business and career profiling.

• Get Tweeting on Twitter – an easy and quick way to build a strong online profile, great for connecting with people as well as driving traffic to your website and blog.

• Be active online – contribute to content by commenting on relevant and high profile blogs in your industry or area of interest.

What online activity has helped build your business brand? Keen to hear any other suggestions or examples of successful online branding.

You may think that having a blog on your website is just for professional bloggers or people who are experts in something, but in reality the functionality of a blog opens the door for your business to easily add fresh content to your website and allow online interaction with your customers.

Some of the key benefits of a Blog page are:

• Basically it’s a way to share any relevant information of interest with your target market. It may simply be a “News” page where you can add any recent or upcoming events, or news and tips about your business products and services.

• Because blog posts can be less formal, it can help to show the personality of your business and how you interact with customers providing an open way to communicate.

• Search engines like websites with fresh content and you can effectively grow the traffic of your website as each blog post can appear in search results. Particularly if you ensure you use the blog title in the URL name, e.g. this blog post URL includes: the-benefits-of-a-blog-on-your-website/.

• Blogs work in perfectly with social media as each blog post can be announced on Twitter or promoted using sites like LinkedIn or Facebook. These tools become an effective way to regularly attract relevant traffic to your site.

• For the above reasons, it can really make you stand out from your competitors online and build a stronger online profile.

• If you use a blog tool like WordPress you can manage and update your entire website with a full content management system that is free.

So if you are looking for a way to enhance your website and traffic then add a blog! Interested to hear any additional benefits or successes businesses have experienced by having a blog page so add your comments or questions.

See our Blog Set Up & Management Services

[business:Adept Marketing]

Most small business owners are happy having a website up and running and beyond that don’t put much thought into how people they want to target can find it….and once they find it does it effectively convert them to customers?

Here are a few basic guidelines on what you should focus on for your online marketing strategy (yes you should have one!):

Website Design & Content

• It should reflect your business image and brand, designed with a layout and content to appeal to your target market
• Make sure it is designed to EASILY find the key information needed to make a decision to buy from you
• AND make it easy for them to BUY your products or services (preferably instantly online)
• Use persuasive language talking direct to your customers, make them part of the story so they feel involved
• Use professional images, videos and photos to also communicate what you offer
• Build a website with a content management system (CMS) included so you have control over keeping it updated
• Give your website visitors the opportunity to connect and interact with you online using tools like a blog (with a comment function), subscription to your communications, connecting to your social media pages or a members only area.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

• Most websites really don’t do this well. One of the first things to do during development of a website is to establish WHO the website is targeting and what the keyword/phrase search terms they would use to find you in search engines
• Use these keyword phrases in your page URL’s, meta tags, page titles and content.
• Better results will come with using specific phrases e.g “Paihia luxury self contained accommodation” rather than broad generic terms like “New Zealand accommodation”.
• Each page on your website should have different meta tags and SEO content relevant to the contents of the page
• Don’t expect your web designer to manage all of this for you, it’s up to you to be proactive and thorough with the details of SEO

Online Marketing

• The objective on any online marketing activity should be to attract relevant and well targeted visitors to your website
• Any traffic is not necessarily effective traffic, so ensure you promote your website on relevant websites that attract your market with a link direct to you. The higher profile the website is that links to you the more benefit it will be to your website ranking
• Pay per click advertising like Google Adwords or Facebook ads can really help to boost your website traffic quickly, ensure you use specific and relevant keyword phrases to trigger the ads – if they are too broad the cost per click will be expensive to compete for the bids and the traffic you attract may not be relevant
• Build reciprocal links with complimentary businesses to feed traffic to each other. E.g. if you are an accommodation business you may have links on your website to tourist activities, local restaurants and transport. In return ask for a link to your website and ideally use your keywords in the link e.g instead of ABC Motel as the link name, request it is Kerikeri Budget Motel Accommodation

Don’t Ignore “User content” & Social Networking

• Online marketing should now include strategies to attract content from your customers online, whether it be on your own website or on your social media pages like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and so on
• “Word of mouth” marketing is powerful and now easy to generate online using these tools
• Social media is also an effective way to build a profile online for your area of expertise and to maintain and form new relationships
• Make it easy for your website visitors to share the information you have on your web pages or blog by providing “sharing tools” such as Sharethis.com or Addthis.com

There is a whole lot more detail involved with each of these areas above however if you have a plan that includes these things then you are on the right path to having an effective and well ranked website with a strong online profile. And finally….it’s an ever evolving process so never stop planning and implementing online marketing strategies.

Thanks to a “retweet” from someone I follow on Twitter (@ranui_organics) I came across this YouTube video about the “Social Media Revolution”. Watch it now if you still just don’t get social media or think it’s just for the younger generation – wrong!  It’s definitely for business too, start using it today to discover all it’s potential.