At present, like the early days of the internet, most of the applications are content focused brochures rather than booking tools.  Many will link you to mobile versions of booking websites that allow you to book but overall the interface for many of these is still cumbersome to use.

Tripadvisor has recently launched their new iPhone to include links to book accommodation online through their OTA (online travel agent) booking partners websites rather than trying to come up with a complete solution.

This article on tnoonz (Talking Travel Tech) “Isango starts work on mobile destination app” highlights the issues over product payments for mobile apps.  The key concern being that with last minute bookings, which are most likely on a mobile device, there is a need to ensure real time availability is accurate in the last minute period (particularly if made with 48 hours of arrival) rather than a simple email confirmation process with accommodation properties.

No doubt many different solutions are being developed and the gap in the travel market to deliver an effective mobile booking and payment solution for mobile devices is being worked on.  According to this article on m-Travel.com “Start-up works on new enterprise mobile platform for hotel reservations“.

The start up named is “TripCraft” and they promote themselves as “the industry’s first enterprise-level mobile application… No more cumbersome mobile browser-based experiences. TripCraft combines the speed and efficiency of a native app with the ability to pull in dynamic content in real-time.”  Their application allows connection to reservations systems to book in real time with the ability to modify and cancel bookings.

At this stage TripCraft is a solution for hoteliers rather than online travel agents, but initiatives such as the Open travel Alliance will be key to standardising ways for the industry to achieve true real time availability distribution no matter what the platform.

No doubt, for accommodation providers, providing your own application for mobile bookings will be a key way to ensure repeat business with your regular and business travellers making it easy for them to book with you no matter where and when.

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.

The decision on which online booking system you choose will come down to a few key areas that are relevant to your business:

Cost model

Is it commission based per booking or a set monthly fee?  The certainty of a set monthly fee will suit some and not others.  Those will lower volume bookings are likely to be better off using a supplier with a straight commission model.

Flexibility with Inventory Management

Can you opt to offer real time or on request bookings?  Can you mix it up between the 2 options?  There are definite key benefits to having control over your availability type for different time periods – particularly for smaller suppliers who don’t have the luxury of large room inventories to always offer instant bookings.

Distribution opportunities

Does the system offer a retail distribution channel or network to increase your booking opportunities?  Many of the key systems either have set up their own retail website, work with key retail websites or have been purchased by a large retailer.

Functionality

Does it come with all the bells and whistles of a full reservations system or simply accept online bookings?  Can you choose what you use in the system to suit your business?  Pick a system that will work with your needs.

Channel Management

Does it offer an automated link to updating key retail travel websites or at least link to a channel manager that does?  This ability opens up the opportunity for you to gain broad exposure and easily manage your pricing and availability with key online travel agents.

Easy to use

For both yourself and your customers.  It’s an important consideration as to how your customers experience the booking process on your own website.  It should be simple, quick and easy to understand (likewise for you!).

How Do New Zealand Online Booking Systems Score?

To me, a great system would offer you options in all of these areas and give you the choices to make it work for your business without dictating how you use it.  Does any of the New Zealand systems offer all of this right now?  Not really, there is no perfect system yet that will suit every type of tourism business.

Don’t get me wrong – many of the systems work fine and offer comprehensive solutions, but I think all of them fail in one respect or another so it’s a matter of picking the one that is the best fit for your business based on some of the criteria discussed above.

Joint Ventures

A great way to invent something new is to think about possible partners you could develop a joint venture product with.  Your expertise may be in one area but through your business you have likely networked with other tourism businesses that have different and complimentary skills.  Building an alliance with another tourism operator/s can be an effective approach to develop something new and innovative for continual business development where you can share the benefits and the risks.  Plus with joint marketing funds and knowledge it’s likely you can achieve a lot more and bring it to market faster.

I think this sort of approach can work particularly well in the activities and attractions area of tourism.  For example, some activities may benefit from having a historical or Maori cultural component added to it, a food and beverage component, a marine or water sport, or expertise on nature and eco tourism.  The type of “mix and match” options available is really up to your imagination, your local contacts, and knowledge of what your market likes.

A good example of a new tourism joint venture launched recently in the Bay of Islands is “Dining under the Stars” (see the media release here).  This product has been led by Adventure Puketi (a forest walks tourism operator), who have joined with a local restaurant “Food at Wharepuke” to offer a unique guided kauri forest walk and dining activity  in the Puketi Forest.  The experience includes a night walk in the forest (something they already offered) culminating in an exotic dinner service in a forest clearing under the stars with Maori cultural performers and a guide talking about the stars in the New Zealand night sky.  The target market is aimed at conference groups, tour groups, and the cruise market.

This type of creativity and willingness to work with partners is what small to medium New Zealand tourism businesses can use to revive or expand their tourism products plus create memorable and unique experiences for our visitors.

But every so often we are reminded of it’s risks when a tourist in New Zealand suffers serious injuries or even death by undertaking one of these experiences.  Such was the case on Friday in Hanmer Springs where an Australian tourist slipped out of a bungy harness.

Is adventure tourism inherently risky and something tourists should agree to at their own peril?  Yes, BUT – there should be safety regulations and regular approval/review processes of commercial adventure tourism operations that aim to eliminate or reduce the risks, that are balanced with the need to attract and effectively cater for thrill seekers.  As a backpacker in South America I undertook several adventure tourism activities and recall that asking about safety precautions was not high on my list of key concerns (put that down to youth, being trusting and language barriers), the point being that adventure tourism operators need to be the ones who are concerned and do take the right precautions, training, checking of equipment and conditions etc.

Scarily, over 5 years 29 people have died (and at least 540 seriously injured) in New Zealand adventure tourism activities.  I have no doubt that each time this happens the overall New Zealand tourism reputation takes a hit – particularly when it’s occurred under the management and care of a marketed tourism business and not the result of irresponsible behaviour on the part of the tourist.  Sure accidents happen when people do things in the outdoors – but severe injury and death are not acceptable outcomes during the course of a paid or chaperoned tourism activity if it was avoidable.

The Department of Labour is currently conducting a detailed gap analysis of risk management and safety provisions in the adventure and outdoor commercial sectors in New Zealand, due to the Minister of Labour by 31 May.  We will look forward to seeing the outcomes that will hopefully outline a way forward to prevent these statistics from growing.

In the meantime, for the sake our visitors, we hope adventure tourism businesses are reminded that safety is priority at all times and it would be interesting to hear their opinions as to the best way forward to improve safety measures across the industry and for reputation management.

Our Regional Tourism Organisations (RTO’s) seem to be getting into gear with workshops, websites and planning for their regions.

With ticket packs now available to apply for, individual tourism operators should be starting their planning on how to benefit from the expected influx of visitors to New Zealand throughout Sep/Oct 2011 (if you are not already a supplier for an Official Travel Agent).

Key Areas to consider now:

• The starting point has to be understanding the legal aspects of what you can and can’t promote in regard to the RWC brand and events.  For full details go the this link to download a useful guide in relation the RWC2011 Major Events Management Act Guidelines.
• Get in touch with your RTO to find out about events and marketing opportunities relevant to your region that your business may benefit from or be involved with.  Some RTO’s have held workshops (Auckland for example) and Northland have developed a website just for the RWC so this is a good resource for businesses to understand the opportunities available.
• Consider your own pricing levels and packaging opportunities for the RWC period.  We’ve been seeing a lot in the media about over the top hotel pricing being applied, so be realistic about what you can charge based on your location to any of the key matches, team training areas and so on.  Generally it’s recommended you apply your high season pricing during this period and for accommodation minimum stay requirements may help to achieve high occupancy rates.  Operators located in close proximity to major games should achieve pricing that the market is prepared to pay for such a high profile event – which is likely to be well beyond high season prices.

Any other tips out there for tourism operators to maximise the opportunity?

RTO’s and local government will now be considering the impacts of visitors arriving in large numbers and planning towards ensuring a positive impression and everything runs smoothly – a number of events and festivals are being created to entertain and encourage visitors to stay longer and spend more, so bring it on!

If you need more convincing then see this article on Hubspot called “SEO is Evolving Fast – Is Your Website?” – it discusses Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and includes how a blog can now help a small business website to achieve better rankings than a larger/less flexible competitor website.  Another great article on this topic is “6 Reasons Every Small Business Should be Blogging…Are You Missing the Boat?”

For tourism operators or organisations a blog is a great way to promote any news, media releases, tips for travellers coming to your area, events and activities – anything that is relevant to your business, specialist knowledge and tourism in your area.  It doesn’t have to be about opinionated articles and topical issues.  Once you get the hang of it adding new articles is easy and fun.

Another great thing about blog articles and RSS Feeds (all blogs have an automated RSS feed) are that they are very easy to share online adding significant opportunity for you to increase the number of inbound links to your website, which identifies it as a popular or important site by search engines.  You can also list your blog URL with a large number of online blog directories, see this list for starters.

When setting up a blog, to ensure you get the best benefits for search engine rankings, make sure the blog software allows the following:

• The blog can be “self hosted” with your website domain rather than a separate domain e.g. the blog URL is: www.ABCTours.co.nz/blog.  This takes a bit more effort to set up than just using a free blog hosted site and you will need your web designer to get it set up for you – but it’s worth it as all the website traffic to your blog will be credited to your main website ranking which is ultimately where you want the traffic and recognition to be achieved.
• Each blog post title can be set as part of the URL name so that keywords are included, for example this article URL is:

http://www.tourismindustryblog.co.nz/2010/04/why-a-blog-can-improve-your-website-ranking

• Each blog post can have meta tags applied (see this article “Using Meta Tags to Get Your Website Ranking Higher in Google“)
• It has a blog plugin to easily share your content online via social media websites or email.
• You can easily set up a blog email subscriber function to build an email database and send out articles as they are published.

If you were to ask my opinion on what blog software to use to achieve all of this (and more) then I would always say WordPress.org (self hosted) wins hands down, but what you use may depend on what website content management system you have, so talk to your web designer.

Got any examples of good tourism websites with blogs? Here’s a couple I’ve spotted recently: Sky Dive Wanaka, Dive! Tutukaka

Changing a brand that works so well is a big decision, a gutsy move and something that perhaps should not be done just because “it’s time” but because it’s no longer relevant or effective. Tourism New Zealand certainly haven’t indicated a change is coming but it’s no doubt something for the new CEO Kevin Bowler to consider with his team.

Overall I think it’s a been and still is an effective overall umbrella brand for New Zealand and we should continue to create campaigns, like the “Youngest Country” and other more tactical campaign initiatives under that umbrella that can be differentiated to continue to inspire and attract our various target markets.

I’d be interested to hear the thoughts of others in our industry with your opinion is as to whether we should still be “100% Pure New Zealand”?

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

What are the key steps to Get Started?

• Develop a database. You may have a lot of email addresses of regular customers in your email software so add these into an excel spreadsheet for starters (so you can import them into email marketing software). It’s OK legally to send marketing emails to customers who you already have a relationship, but it might be a good idea to email them first to invite them to subscribe.
• Have an email subscription option on your website. Make it easy for your regular customers to opt in to receiving your emails. Ideally this function is linked to your email marketing software so they are automatically added to your database. “Opt in” email marketing is the most effective in terms of open rates and successful campaigns.
• Use professional email marketing software. You do not need to purchase or download this software, there are plenty of options that are internet based. Pricing will depend on how big your database is and how often you send out emails, generally it’s quite cost effective and you will find an option to suit your budget. There are also free systems like Mailchimp for smaller databases. Email marketing software provide design templates that you can customise with your own colours and logo, it’s also worth considering have a professionally designed email template that matches your website as a one off cost. The software will also track the open rate and click throughs from your campaign so you can measure it’s success. It will also manage unsubscribes and bounced emails.
• Establish a regular email marketing schedule. Too often can be annoying so don’t overdo it, once every 1 or 2 months is a good start or just when you have something newsworthy.
• Keep the content relevant and interesting. Special offers, events, new products and competitions are popular reasons to send out an email, be careful not to make the email too long. Ideally you will provide links to your website for further details and to make a booking.

Email Marketing Tip: The best time to send out an marketing email is Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon

Got any other tips you want to share or email marketing software you prefer? Let us know.

Click on the image to enlarge

Interesting to see an article on the Mashable website yesterday about Google Testing Hotel Prices in Google Maps. This news, which was announced fairly casually on Monday on the Google Maps blog siting it as an “experiment”, will no doubt spark up interest among the Online Travel Agents (OTA’s) as a new way to advertise pricing and get click through traffic to their website.

For travellers it’s means they can use google maps to find accommodation with the ability to search on dates of travel to get real time pricing and then click through to the provider website to book.

From Google’s perspective it’s probably seen as an evolution of the maps business listings and another way to develop advertising revenues rather than a desire to become part of the online travel market, however it will no doubt have an impact on OTA’s and introduce a fairly competitive necessity to be included as an advertiser on the google maps.

Of interest to accommodation providers will be whether they too get the opportunity to be one of the listed advertisers to attract direct bookings or whether the pricing has to come through an automated feed from participating OTA’s or booking systems – if it’s a bidding model like Google Adwords then it’s likely the large global OTA’s will dominate this opportunity.

Potentially the effects of this will be lesser felt in New Zealand as many accommodation suppliers do not participate on the global OTA’s, leaving the opportunity open perhaps for more of the local accommodation booking websites and accommodation providers themselves.

So time will tell on how this will all work and impact on the market, we will keep an eye on progress of the likely roll out of this new feature. In the meantime, if I were an accommodation provider I’d make sure I’m listed on a selection of OTA’s.

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.

Firstly, you should know that there are never any guarantees to getting your website ranking 1st for your desired key google searches because there are external factors (like the performance of competitor websites and how many direct competitors you have) that you can’t control, so any company that tells you they can guarantee it if you pay them are just doing a sales job on you.

Secondly, meta tags are just one factor used by google – but an important and easy one to implement. Despite that, I have noticed after doing audits on over 50 tourism websites throughout New Zealand in the last 12 months that very few have effective meta tags.

What Are Meta Tags?

• The meta tags are found in the html code of your website and can either be entered by your web designer or added in through your content management systems (CMS).
• Google (and all search engines) use meta tags to quickly find content about your website to include you in relevant search results.
• Meta tags for search engine optimisation are made up of Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions. Meta Keywords are no longer used by google.
• The meta titles and meta descriptions will be the text that is displayed in google search results, if the meta tags are missing Google will grab the first text content that is on each page (e.g. the page title and first sentence).

Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions

• A meta title should only be 60-70 characters (including spaces) and the meta descriptions about 150-160 characters – any text after this just gets ignored.
• A key thing to remember with your meta tags is to apply DIFFERENT meta tag content for each page which should be RELEVANT to the page contents.
• Avoid repetition of the same phrases. The idea is to include a variety of search phrases across your sites meta tags to increase the range of searches you will appear in.
• It’s also effective to use more specific search phrases rather than broad terms e.g. “Queenstown luxury apartment accommodation” instead of “Queenstown accommodation” so that you appear in results that reach your target market – there will also be less competition so a higher ranking is likely.
• Choosing the contents of your meta tags is important and often it can come down to how well differentiated your business is – what’s unique about it? Who are you trying to target? The answers to these questions will help define the content of your website and meta tags. The more unique you are as a business the more likely it is you will rank high in google for the target market you are trying to reach.

TIP 1: A good way to check your meta tags in your browser is to select the option in the menu bar to view the “page source” of each page on your website. This will show you the html code of the page and the meta tags will be located near the top of the page and look something like this:

<title>Using Meta Tags to Get Your Website Ranking Higher In Google</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”View some tips on how to improve your meta titles and meta descriptions to rank higher in google.” />

TIP 2: You can view what content from your website pages is displayed in google for quick analysis by doing this google search:

site:www.yourdomainname.co.nz

Now go and check your meta tags!

Adept Marketing

I quite often monitor the website statistics for tourism clients to see where their traffic sources are coming from so we can make decisions on where to best spend marketing money for online advertising. The answers are not always clear cut, and some sites work better for some and not for others, often depending on how the site ranks businesses (alphabetical or paid vs non-paid listings for example).

So is your most valuable tourism website any of the following or something else?

• Our national tourism website newzealand.com
• High profile tourism websites that you pay to list on like AA, Jasons and New Zealand Tourism Guide
• Your RTO, regional and local tourism websites
• Sector or Niche tourism websites that you specialise in e.g. luxury accommodation, B&B’s, Eco-tourism, etc
• Instant booking websites like Wotif, Ezibed, Travelbug, Expedia and so on

Perhaps there are a few key ones, and if you don’t know then you probably should find out. It’s a good strategy to be listed on a combination of the above listed sites to ensure broad exposure, so it’s just a matter of figuring out which ones. In any case it would be great if you could share what you think works for you.

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!

This is an independant website where all New Zealand tourism professionals are welcome to participate, and even add their own tourism related media releases or job ads for free.

Check it out here!

Tourism Industry Blog

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?

These articles on my Marketing Tips blog may also be of interest:

“How to Avoid Bad Online Experiences for Travellers”

“Some Basics of Online Marketing Strategy”

One of the key things to ensure about your website is that it is persuasive – the language, the images, the layout and the usability all combine to appeal to and convert your website visitors into customers.

A key part of this is the language you use, here are some tips to help get it right:

• Don’t bore them with information all about you, particularly on the home page – it should be about them – what’s in it for them?
• Talk direct to the reader as “you” rather than referring to “them” or “our customers”.
• Don’t overwrite, keep your text content short and sweet, people don’t like having to read lot’s of text on a web page
• Use bullet points to list important information
• Tell them the benefits to them, don’t make them guess
• If you do have a lot of content to get across on a page use sub titles to break up the content into different topics

There are some good examples of how to do this in the article “How to write persuasively“. Have a critical look at your website and homepage – do you think it is persuasive from a customer point of view?

Adept Marketing

For the cafes, motels, hotels, B&B’s and so on that currently do offer their guests free wireless internet access – good on you! I hope you promote this service strongly and get more business as a result. For those that don’t, do it now – it should be part of your service and built into your rates, don’t annoy your customers by charging them extra.

Let’s get our travellers online as much as possible so they can share their experiences with others easily and promote New Zealand for us – it’s obvious isn’t it?

adept marketing

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.

adept marketing

If you are in the situation of choosing a domain name for a new website then here are some tips to get it right from the start:

• Choose something that describes the key things that you offer, particularly if your business name just doesn’t do it and there is a lot of competition in your area. For example if your business is a motel in Tirau then www.tiraumotel.co.nz would be a great choice (it’s available by the way, quick someone register it!)

• Also register your business name as a domain name but simply redirect it to your main domain name to avoid a competitor using it and keep control over your online brand.

• If some of your best choices are already taken then try variations using hyphens or an extra word e.g. www.great-furniture-design-store.co.nz (note: search engines love hyphens but people don’t like having to type them in a URL).

• If you are a New Zealand based business but target customers in both New Zealand and internationally then register a co.nz and a .com version particularly if your website has different content versions for different countries. Just register .com if your main target market is international.

• Don’t confuse customers and the search engines by registering lots of different domain names and promote them all going to the same website, focus on having one main URL name that can be universally promoted.

If you are reading this and think, oh I should go and change my website domain name right now, then consider the following things:

• An established website will have already gained some level of search engine ranking and network of traffic sources, if you then change to a new domain name this ranking will be lost until you build traffic with the new domain name.

• If your existing website is already ranking well in search engines don’t muck with the domain name – enjoy the rankings and keep on building it with great content on your site.

• If you do want to change your current domain name to improve rankings then make sure you redirect your old URL address to the new one, and immediately change all inbound links you have advertised to the new address to quickly build up rankings. Submit the new address to the search engines, and promote it intensively with pay per click advertising like Google AdWords and Facebook ads. Share it on social media too.

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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.

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I’m interested to know what website/s you like the best for booking and paying for accommodation in New Zealand and why.

I regularly advise accommodation operators about what websites to list on and what booking systems to use so I am aware of the most popular websites in terms of rankings and website traffic, which I think would correlate with booking popularity too, right?

Well, maybe not – so I’d like to hear about what people think rather than statistics, some things I’m keen to know:

• Do you always use the same tourism or accommodation website to book?
• Or do you tend to book direct with the accommodation property?
• Maybe you don’t book online at all and use email or the phone or even a travel agent?
• Do you use a different website for business versus holiday?

Tell me – I want to know what and why.

I will kick it off, I always book on Travelbug* or Wotif. I like Travelbug because it’s easy to use, good pricing, comprehensive and has an easy booking process, but sometimes I’ll also use Wotif for similar reasons but mainly because it may sometimes offer a better deal.

* Probably best to disclose that I was part of the development and launch of Travelbug when I was Marketing Manager at Vianet, but I stand behind my reasons for liking it and am no longer with Vianet or involved in promoting Travelbug.

Now – let’s hear yours! Add a comment.

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Making your website stand out and avoid a negative first impression therefore comes down to some key areas:

• Ensure it is an easy website to use. Clear easy to use and consistent navigation is vital with easy to read, brief content for each page and subsection. Solid professional website design will go a long way to achieve this.

• Provide comprehensive but succinct information about what you offer AND your destination without making your site cluttered. Include transport options and maps. Long-winded flowery marketing content doesn’t work so well online.

• For travel, quality photos and a good selection are vital – make them easy to view using slideshows and options to view enlarged versions.

• Offer online bookings – preferably with the ability to check real-time availability, secure payment and instant confirmation. See Online Booking Strategy for Tourism.

• If using email booking enquiries then make sure you respond quickly.

• Promote previous customer endorsements of your business, see how to Make Traveller Reviews part of your Marketing Strategy.

• Keep your website updated with fresh content – there’s nothing worse than out of date information. Having your own content management system will go a long way to do this. Also having a blog page can give you a quick and easy way to adding new information and news.

Checkout this summary of Content and User Experience in Online Travel 2009 – a global online traveller research study conducted by Frommers Unlimited which gives a lot of detail about the process travellers go through with online research, what they are looking for and what annoys them – very information reading.

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Existing websites designed for desktop computers are simply not easy to use on a mobile device. So if you want to cleverly target the increasingly sophisticated FIT traveller then start work now on a “mobile” version of your website or an application for mobile and touch screen devices like the popular iPhone.

This will provide long term benefits for the online marketing of your site and ensure you can capture all of the traveller market, especially for those travelling rugby supporters during the Rugby World Cup 2011.

If you have a WordPress website (like this one) then converting your site for mobile is very easy with this WPtouch iPhone Theme plugin. Good to see Wellington Tourism with a mobile site version and Auckland Tourism with an iPhone application!

For further reading, check out these related blog posts and articles:

Destination Marketing & Mobile Travel on Tnooz by Stephen Joyce

The impact of the iPhone on Travel on eTourism Blogoscope by Prof. Christian Maurer

Mobile Marketing & Distribution in Hospitality by Lawrence from Cabbage Tree Creative

iPhone and Travel on Phocus Wright by Joe Buhler

cabbage tree creative ltd

Without analysis of these details I would be blind to the affects of all my online activity – and there’s no fun in that – it’s quite a satisfying thing to post a new blog, tweet about it and then watch the traffic activity and blog comments start coming in. You then know that what you do is not just of interest to you – it is adding value to your customers and target market.

So here are a list of some key things any website owner should know about their website:

• unique visits to the site for any given period
• your top traffic sources and search key words used
• when peaks in traffic have occurred and why (correlated with marketing activity)
• what pages (or blog posts) are the most popular
• average time spent on the site and on each page
• trends for all of the above

These are the main things I always look at using Google Analytics but there are many more metrics available through this tool. It’s also good to know the “bounce rate” (what % of people leave the site after just viewing 1 page), and for the sake of understanding how people use your website check out the “site overlay” function to see the percentage of clicks on any link for each page.

It’s amazing how many businesses barely look at their website statistics, which is a shame because online marketing is one of the few marketing activities where you can accurately track activity from marketing campaigns – you can and should use this knowledge to monitor and improve you marketing strategy.

Interested to hear about what other metrics people typically monitor for their websites too, share your thoughts!

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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.

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