The advent of mobile travel applications for smart phones and iPhone apps is obviously an exciting new direction for travellers and the tourism industry. But how far off is it before it becomes a key way to book and pay for travel?At present, like the early days of the internet, ...
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 ...
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 ...
There are plenty of choices out there in the market for accommodation operators in selecting an online booking system that suits them. You can view a list of New Zealand booking systems available on this article “Online Booking Strategy for Tourism Operators“. One notable change since that article was published ...
Once you’ve been in business for a while and created a successful tourism venture, you may be wondering what’s next? It’s very easy to sit back and keep doing the same old thing, however new and exciting tourism products can help to not only boost your business profile but also ...
New Zealand is well positioned in the world of Adventure Tourism – we are the innovators and leaders of bungy, and have the perfect setting and natural resources to offer a comprehensive range of tourist activities that are land, water and air based.But every so often we are reminded of ...
Search engines love regular fresh content and links to a website, the more you have of both the better your website will rank in search results and your website visitors will have more reason to visit your website regularly to see what’s new. So a blog function on your website ...
It’s been around for a while now (over 10 years) and quite possibly one of the most successful and unique tourism brands in the world that has stood the test of time. But is it time for something new? Would anything new just be a hard act to follow? ...
Click on the image to enlargeInteresting 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 ...
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. ...
Email marketing can be an extremely cost effective way to communicate with your regular customers and drive traffic to your website and social media pages. Despite this I’ve noticed this is an underused marketing tool for tourism businesses, for some this is because they don’t have a strong repeat business base – but for those that do then email marketing should be a key part of your marketing communications strategy.
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.
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.
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.
Every business wants their website to rank well in google, and tourism is no exception – this is a very competitive industry and we all need to get found online.
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:
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.
I’m interested to hear from New Zealand tourism operators as to what tourism websites bring them the most traffic and booking enquiries and why. Is there a website that you would absolutely always maintain a listing on (free or not)?
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.
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.
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!
I’ve been working away on a new initiative for the New Zealand tourism industry to connect together online, sharing business articles, ideas and comments related to all sectors of tourism. A great way to network online and help each tourism business or organisation to succeed in tourism.
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.
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?
Online marketing strategy is now a very important part of the overall marketing strategy for any destination marketing organisation and tourism operator. I came across an interesting blog post on the eTourism Blogoscope about “eDestination Marketing Secrets” based on a presentation from Martin Schobert from the Austrian National Tourist Office. His full presentation can be downloaded here.
These articles on my Marketing Tips blog may also be of interest:
Hi, I'm Michelle Ackers and I own ADEPT Marketing based in Kerikeri, New Zealand. I offer marketing services for small to medium businesses and have a specialty in online marketing and tourism.
Email marketing can be an extremely cost effective way to communicate with your regular customers and drive traffic to your website and social media pages. Despite this I’ve noticed this is an underused marketing tool for tourism businesses, for some this is because they don’t have a strong repeat business base – but for those that do then email marketing should be a key part of your marketing communications strategy.
