In the old school world of destination marketing, DMO’s didn’t have a lot of opportunity for diversity in marketing. Watch the average DMO TV commercial and you can tick boxes for experiences and demographics.

Good food? Check

Golf? Check

Shopping? Check

Outdoor activity? Check

Culture? Check

Elderly couple? Check

Kids? Check

Gay couple? Check

With magazines, you could diversify a bit more and put a golf message in a golf magazine and a luxury resort in Conde Naste. But still pretty generic. Media was also expensive, so you spent a lot of time (and money) to make sure the creative was absolutely perfect.

There’s no need for this anymore. On the internet you target your message to individual’s interests and passions.

At Tourism BC, we had a Search Engine Marketing program that targeted tens of thousands of individual keywords. On Search Engines, people self-select their interests. No need to cast a wide net, just deliver what they’re telling you they’re looking for. Each keyword group had its own ads. How many people signed off one these ads? Zero. The person responsible for SEM was trusted to create the right ads, test them and adjust them to maximize results. Before we let him loose, we made sure he knew all about our brand and objectives.

In social media, people also self-select. They select the communities they join and the people they trust.