1) Niche marketing

Consumers have become more individual. This is a cultural phenomena aided by the internet where it’s easy to connect with like-minded people. DMOs need to understand this and move towards niche marketing. Niche marketing is breaking your experiences down into small pieces, identify remarkable experiences and find the niche audiences this appeals to. But it also includes finding niche audiences and package or create experiences for them. Most DMOs will segment their audience to some key markets and demographics. Their products are categorized in a few segments such as “culture”, “ski”, “beach”, etc.. This is not niche marketing. This is traditional segmentation. Nothing wrong with that but not enough. And even though people who live close by and/or have direct air access are obviously more likely to visit, don’t constrain yourself too much to geographical boundaries either. If you offer something that’s truly remarkable to a consumer, constraints such as budget and travel time matter less. These people could also very well be active in online communities that include your traditional markets.

2) Humanize your brand

Instead of communicating your “all things to all people” communications, you can create relevant messages to audiences who are actually interested. You need to Jettison the Generic as Roger Brooks says. Sometimes it’s best to stand back and let the consumers do the talking. It’s a lot more credible. Know when to talk and know when to listen. Understand where your message can add value.

3) Manage the purchase cycle differently

After you understand your niches and specific motivations for a consumer visit in these niches, your destination needs to deliver in order to generate positive conversations. Remarkable experiences are key. Mediocre experiences won’t do. Good experiences will generate word-of-mouth, generating awareness in niche communities. If you have low awareness in a niche, you need to start conversations by connecting influencers in these niches with the remarkable product. An influencer can kick-start a conversation. Once somebody is considering or intending a trip to your destination, they will pro-actively look for information, most likely through search engines or by asking or following links shared in their online community. This is where your DMO website is crucial. You needs to deliver on the consumers information need in a relevant way. Understand what each niche needs and figure out a way to deliver the information to them. Content is still king. But there is a plethora of other sources of information out there. And consumers could very well end up using these sources. That’s ok. Just work where you can to add value to third party information sources. Most travel purchases are not decided overnight. It’s a process. So it’s important that you don’t lose somebody who’s active in the funnel. The key is to keep triggering planning behaviour and keep your destination top of mind. You could run ads to keep your destination top of mind but it’s better when you know who’s in the funnel and pro-actively trigger planning behaviour. This is where your own email marketing and social media channels are very effective. But they’re not the same. Each requires a different approach. Keep your destination top of mind, communicate ideas and a sense of urgency. When the consumer is ready to book, they’ll know what to do. They’ve done it before. But it doesn’t hurt to give them options they might not know about and connect them with your operators.

Work different internally

The above can’t happen with the current structure most DMO operate under and by doing the same stuff they’ve always done. In order to implement the above, you need to free up resources and stop doing other things. Staff re-trained. Budgets realigned. Too often, people who have to implement are constrained by layers of corporate hierarchy requiring to sign off on too many things, a leftover from traditional advertising where each piece of creative was crazy expensive and important. In niche marketing, you need a diverse set, ongoing communications. And because the majority, if not all, of these communications happen online, you need to analyse the effect in real time and adjust on the fly. To success, the people responsible for implementation need to be given the responsibility and authority to make decisions and be nimble in the execution. Instead of policing, they need to be educated, trusted and know when to ask for help. Set them free and you’ll be amazed what competent and motivated individuals are capable of.

Work different externally

Your destination brand is build through the experiences people have in your destination. Pretty much all of the consumer experiences in a destination are beyond the control of the DMO. It’s the responsibility of the industry to deliver on the experiences. But if the DMO is responsible for the destination brand, and the brand is build through the experiences consumers have, how can a DMO build a brand? And what about experiences your industry stakeholders don’t even control, like crime, public transportation or immigration and border control? Leadership, collaboration and education. The DMO is the organization that sells a basket of experiences to a specific audience. No other organization does this. The DMO needs to lead all stakeholders towards a common vision for the destination, rally everybody behind, lobby with local government to invest in external factors that support the vison (safety, infrastructure, etc.) and assist other non-tourism stakeholders to deliver on the tourism experience. The DMO needs to collaborate with its industry in its marketing. Because marketing is getting more and more fractured and niche, it’s hard for a DMO to scale its activities. DMO marketing can’t happen in isolation. DMOs need their industry operators know-how, capacity and passion. The DMO needs to educate their industry how to deliver on this vision and how to market this collectively. This can range from service designall the way down to supporting marketing activities. A DMO is perfectly positioned to provide these services and use them as a tool to rally and align the industry.

Measure success differently

The size of the tourism industry is the ultimate measure of success. But too many completely uncontrollable factors influence tourism growth. The economy for example. Measuring the impact of specific marketing campaigns isn’t enough. What really matters is if the right people visit the destination who in turn convince others to visit through the stories they tell or  return for another visit. I like Nett Promotor Score (NPS). NPS measures customer satisfaction by asking one question on a scale from 0 to 10. “How likely is it that you would recommend our company to a friend or colleague?”

• People who rate 9-10 are promotors; they are likely to recommend.
• People who rate 7-8 are passives – they neither recommend or detract.
• People who rate 0-6 are detractors; they are likely to detract.

Your Nett Promotor Score is the percentage of promotors minus detractors. NPS is a strong indicator of future growth for a company or product. In effect, it’s a qualitative measure of the consumer’s brand perception after a trip experience. DMO’s should consider using NPS as the collective measure of success for their destination. It’s easy to implement and easy to understand. With an easy follow-up question (why?), you can understand what you can build on and what needs to improve. This can involve  tourism product and customer service but also things typically not considered such as the airport experience, or taxi rides, crime, etc. Note: a lot of the above comes from the incredible smart people I work with and have worked with including Rodney, Paul, Holly, Aaron, Carol, Grant, Becky, Rod and Joel.