In recent years, the tourism marketing landscape has seen a lot of changes impacting the way marketers operate. If your destination marketing program is not getting the results that it used to, it might be time to go back to the drawing board.
The first step towards growth is to identify what strategies are not working for your program and weed them out. What are you doing or not doing that’s holding you back? If any of the following common errors apply to you and your destination marketing organization (DMO), it may be time to switch things up.
1. Lack of Clear Goal
A destination marketing organization without a set of clear goals is like trying to hit a target with a blindfold on. How do you know what you’re working towards if you don’t have a set goal in mind? If you want your DMO to have economic impact, it’s important to know exactly what you want your marketing plan to achieve from the beginning.
Intentionally crafted goals are the driving force for your marketing campaign. Don’t make the mistake of creating vague, unachievable goals. Define a set of specific, realistic, and measurable goals within a defined timeframe, and put it on paper.
Try to avoid accidentally setting wishes instead of goals. Let’s understand the distinction between the two with an example. Find the difference between these two statements:
Wish: I want to bring more people to Ontario.
Goal: I want to increase hotel bookings by 25% this year.
While the first statement is a good place to start before defining more specific goals, it’s still only a wish without a timeframe or any means of measurability. Statement two is a real, defined goal with a due date and growth rate. Defining a clear goal will help you learn how to use resources efficiently and plan for growth.
2. Failing to Understand the Importance of Search
Search has become a critical component of modern digital marketing programs. If you’re not yet aware of how search works, it’s probably one of the key reasons why you’re not getting the same results you used to. Traditional tourism marketing methods have given way to online marketing. A perfect example of this is the use of travel agents. Today’s generation of travelers prefer easy-to-access search engines to explore and book their tourism destinations.
Recent statistics show that over 90% of travelers will do their research online, and most of them do in-depth research. TripAdvisor reported that 80% of all travelers will spend around four weeks researching a destination. This deep dive into travel options often includes reading reviews of hotels, restaurants, tour operators, attractions, and seeking out travel tips to maximize their experience.
Online research has become such an important part of the tourism industry that approximately 72% of new customers won’t make a booking without doing some form of research.
The logical conclusion: if there is not substantial information about your destination readily available for consumers, you’re less likely to attract and convert them.
3. Shallow Content
In the travel trade, content with substance is critical. If you’re not providing enough detail about your area, then who will?
Are you letting other travel sites occupy the top search results about your community? It doesn’t have to be this way. Your DMO is the expert, so lead the way by providing more accurate, detailed, and first-hand information.
In one month alone, TripAdvisor reported 224 million visits. Imagine the impact on economic development if even a fraction of searches went to supporting local websites and DMOs instead.
The only way to beat out popular sites like TripAdvisor is to embrace effective SEO strategies and go all out with creating deep and relevant content. Show the Google algorithm that your site is more qualified by creating long-form, detailed content that enhances the customer experience.
4. No Call to Action for Campaigns
Deep content brings visitors to your site, but what makes them stay? Think back to the section on creating goals. Each campaign has specified goals. That goal may be to direct visitors to another piece of content for further reading, signup for your newsletter, or book a ticket at of your attractions. The larger campaign goal informs what the call to action (CTA) should be.
For example, if increasing room nights at local hotels is your goal, the CTA should be, “Book Now”. Every piece of content needs a call to action because if you don’t tell potential visitors what to do they might not do it.
At the same time, if you have too many CTAs, it causes decision paralysis, and potential visitors click off of your site feeling overwhelmed, and without crossing the goal line.
5. Blindly Copying Other Brands
Taking inspiration from successful examples of marketing campaigns in the tourism business is pretty common. Creators are inspired by the work of others in every creative medium; it’s how industries evolve. However, DMO marketing programs from larger cities typically have significant resources to pull from. With substantial budgets and creative teams at their disposal, they can thrive on more paid advertisements.
If you are coming from a smaller DMO with a limited budget and staff, you can’t pull off the same large-scale campaign and expect the same results. That doesn’t mean you can’t thrive and grow, it just means you need a different approach that plays to your own strengths.
The key to a successful marketing strategy is understanding why it works (or doesn’t). If their marketing efforts had successful results, can you identify why and how? If you can’t pinpoint that, there’s no guarantee the same strategy will work for you.
Instead of blindly copying any particular travel industry strategy, analyze it first, taking into account alignment with your own specific goals, your target audience, and your budget limits.
6. Not Understanding Hidden Values
Your marketing campaigns should successfully tell your audience why your destination offers something they can’t find anywhere else. Your content needs to showcase what makes your community tick.
To do that, you have to develop a working understanding of how and why people travel and recognize that not everyone is looking for the same travel experience. In fact, a lot of travelers will seek out unique attractions that you may not even realize your community offers.
If marketed well, niche destinations can attract a steady and enthusiastic stream of visitors who want an experience they can’t find at more mainstream attractions.
For example, Lyons, IL is home to the Museum of Mourning Photography, which houses a collection of mortuary photography. While the subject matter is sure to attract so-called “dark tourism” enthusiasts, the museum’s focus on studying and preserving the history of human rituals draws both photography and anthropology aficionados from all over the world.
In today’s diverse and well-connected world, the “riches are in the niches”. The internet has cultivated millions of niche interest groups for decades, so it’s no surprise that there’s a niche out there for just about everyone. Your job is to find what unique attraction might be in your community and make sure its intended audience knows it exists.
7. Not Testing and Optimizing Campaigns
The job is not over when your destination’s marketing campaign goes live. Stopping there would be like saying an athlete doesn’t have to keep practicing and improving their skills in between games. The successful ones analyze their performance in detail, seek constructive criticism from coaches, and make the necessary changes to improve and be successful.
Success works the same way in marketing. When campaigns go live, it’s important to study its performance. Measurable results like page views, time on page, social media engagement, click-through rates, and return on investment (ROI) are all important pieces of data that you can use to improve outcomes for each target audience. That’s why it’s important to obtain business-focused marketing technology that allows you to centralize your efforts all in one place, such as HubSpot.
It’s also important to note that you should be evaluating the your campaigns AS THEY OCCUR, and not after they end. Budgets are too tight to be wasting money on the wrong messaging or ineffective calls to action. If your campaign isn’t doing well, you need to be able to see the data and pivot as fast as possible.
If your agency isn’t creating transparent reporting or is giving you reporting after campaigns run, we can help. You need a team that understands the data and makes the proper adjustments to deliver your best return on investment.
A Destination Marketing Program that Gets Results
There’s no shame in recognizing the flaws in your current destination marketing strategies. In fact, it’s the first step towards incredible growth! If any of these common mistakes apply to your marketing program, book a call with us to get started on your new strategy.
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