Category
Internet
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Internet, Marketing
overload
There is a lot of information out there and it’s accessible anywhere. I remember the first time I settled an argument over a beer by Googling on my Blackberry (I won the argument by the way, Tony Hawk is taller than 6 feet). Marketers talk about how media fragmentation and information overload make it hard to reach consumers. But is it?
Clay Shirky once said about, “It’s Not Information Overload. It’s Filter Failure.”
Google and Bing are fixing this problem through search. By finding the intent behind somebody’s search, they create better filters to present relevant results. They personalize results based on your geographic location, your search history, your social graph and more. Google CEO Eric Smith (in)famously said:
<div class=”quote”>With your permission, you give us more information about you, about your friends, and we can improve the quality of our searches. We don’t need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.</div>
What can we learn from this? A lot.
A good filter separates relevant from irrelevant information. And relevancy is personal.
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Internet, Marketing, social media, Travel & Tourism
Producing viral loops is your business objective
In 2005 my wife and I spent a month in Nepal. We trekked the Annapurna Trail through the Himalayas. It was one of the best experiences of our life. If you’ve seen any of my keynotes you’ve probably heard the story including our amazing guides Rajan and Mukti.
Without realizing it, we’ve moved a lot of our friends through the marketing funnel. We’ve told a lot of our friends about the trip (creating awareness about the experience). Some friends asked us more questions about the trek (they’re considering to do the trip one day) and others asked about the experience we had with our trekking company (they’re intending) and two of our friends (and partners) have since gone to Nepal and gone on a trek with the same company (purchase).
Our experience and satisfaction with Nepal and our trekking company created a viral loop. The two of us produced 4 new customers in 5 years. We created a positive viral loop.
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Internet, Marketing, Travel & Tourism
DMO’s don’t need mobile apps
A mobile app requires marketing the app, costing time and money.
A mobile website is discoverable through links and search engines.
HTML5 can pretty much deliver pretty much anything a DMO mobile app can.
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Internet, Marketing, social media
Don’t be so serious all the time
Going on a trip means seeing new things, meeting new people, tasting different food, making memories. It’s supposed to be fun! And as tourism marketers, it’s ok to have fun in public as well. And on the internet, you really have no choice. Here are a few examples.
White House
Somebody started a petition on whitehouse.gov suggesting the government to build a death star. The whitehouse response is hilarious! Including the title “This Isn’t the Petition Response You’re Looking For”
The Administration shares your desire for job creation and a strong national defense, but a Death Star isn’t on the horizon. Here are a few reasons:- The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000. We’re working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it.
- The Administration does not support blowing up planets.
- Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?
Samsung
Someone ‘asked Samsung for a free phone. He posted on Samsung’s Facebook page and included a home drawn picture of dragon in return.
Samsung responded in style, with a picture of a kangaroo on a unicycle. Funny!
This caused a lot of PR for Samsung and they ended up sending a free phone anyways. With the dragon on it. Smart!
Thomas Cook
And then there’s Thomas Cook. A UK resident with the same name asked for a trip to Paris for all the grief he’s had over the years with a name like that.
Great to hear from you! Unfortunately we are unable to give away free holidays. Please see Thomascook.com for the best available price.
Stupid! Of course you can’t give everybody a free vacation but at least use some humour like Samsung did. Although in this case they should have jumped on it. What an opportunity wasted.
Lowcostholidays swooped in and gave Mr. Cook his trip to Paris, scoring a big PR win.
Moral of the story? Don’t be afraid to have some fun. And be quick when an opportunity arises. Marketing in 2013 demands it.
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Internet, Marketing, Travel & Tourism
Unbundling the DMO web and mobile strategy
Last week Foursquare announced it is going to split its mobile application into two. One is focused on discovering new places and the other (Swarm) will be focused on helping users share their location with their friends. They join Dropbox, who unbundled photo storage in a separate app (Carousel), Facebook, who unbundled their chat functionality from their main app, and others. They also join other companies who offer apps such as HotelTonight and Uber who also focus on a single-use case.
Most DMOs have “one-size-fits-all” websites and mobile apps that cover everything, for everybody. It’s easier to build and maintain one website, template and its content. I used to hate microsites when I worked at Tourism BC for that very reason. But as a result, DMO websites are often big beasts that are inflexible, hard and expensive to maintain after all.
Things have changed. Technology is ambiguous. Content is incredibly fragmented and apps and services similarly specialized. Content is abundant. DMOs need to be storytellers. You’re still the experts in your destination. But instead of focusing on being the experts on what time a museum opens, be the expert on the context of your destination. You know: the culture, history and the people. Be the destination storyteller and add value.
What if we unbundle our destination into very specific niches and build incredibly targeted apps or web experiences (mobile first) for our users? What if we put somebody in charge of these applications who is just as passionate about the niche as your visitors? What if it includes real-time information and social integration?
For example: an app for foodies. Not just listings but the story of the restaurants including menus, profiles of the chefs, reviews from prominent bloggers (you hire to produce this content), information about local farmers and food from the destination, recommended itineraries, etc. An app that adds incredible value to the food experience. An app that tells the story of food in your destination before and during the trip.
Another example: architecture. I’m a bit of a fan of architecture but by no means an expert. I love to wander a city and look at the and wonder about the style, history, etc. What about an app that explains all this? That shows photos of buildings the way they looked when they were build? Stories about their history. The architect. The style. Walking routes. Things that add value. Things that make the destination experience better. An app that would make me stay an extra day after a business meeting, just to wander around and learn.
Or music! An app that tells you about the music scene. Interviews with bands and links to their tracks. The venues and their stories. Interviews with the owners. Real-time information about who’s playing where and why you might like them. Information about the scene around music. The record stores. The bars. An app that adds value to the destination experience. An app that gives you an instant feel for the scene before I go and an instant connection with it when I arrive.
Some are venturing in: Visit Oostende has created a Marvin Gaye iPad app of a walking tour through Oostende. Marvin Gaye lived in this Belgian coastal town for about a year and wrote and recorded “Sexual Healing” there. The DMO created a wonderful experiences for Marvin Gaye fans, fans into music and soul, as well as people curious about this piece of it’s history.
Do you need other examples? No.
It’s not just about listings. It’s about context. Unbundle for niches, talk to visitors in a more meaningful way.
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Internet, leadership, Management, Marketing, Travel & Tourism
Building the social destination brand
09.16.13 | Permalink | 3 Comments
The Iamsterdam sign is an invitation to take a picture and share it
Building a destination brand is done primarily through the stories people tell each other. And social media has only accelerated that process. Getting more of the right stories told is a massive opportunity but how do you go about it?
Here’s a 5 step strategy for this.
1) MOTIVATE
A destination is the stage where memories are made and stories are created. People ignore or forget the ordinary and remember and share what’s remarkable. These remarkable experiences often turn into the primary motivators for others to visit a place. In order to get more stories told in social media, you need to make sure things are worth talking about. The IAmsterdam sign in Amsterdam (above) is always surrounded by tourists taking photos. Not only is it a cool piece of art, it’s also the perfect way to tell your (Facebook/Instagram/etc) friends where you are.
For a tourism business it’s important to build in moments that motivate people to share in the overall experience. For a DMO it’s important to increase the number of things worth talking about overall. Educating your operators about this principle is the low hanging fruit. Every tourism business should have at least one reason for people to talk about them. Often it’s just a matter of making a few tweaks to get people talking. Getting involved in city planning might be more difficult but can pay-off with massive dividend.
2) ENABLE
When there’s something worth sharing, people need to be able to share it right away. For international visitors, data roaming is often an obstacle and the availability of free Wifi will increase social sharing. It’s not just the responsibility of operators. Viewpoints, beaches, mountaintops, buildings of great architecture typically don’t have a tourism operator associated and Wifi is nowhere to be found. This is where the DMO can step in. Taiwan gets it, they offer free nationwide Wifi to tourists.
But there are other obstacles. Some businesses don’t allow pictures to be taken while others don’t have the proper lighting to make photos or to make them look good. It’s a missed opportunity, you have to give people the opportunity to share, even if it’s in a limited capacity.
3) ENCOURAGE
People will share an experience when they find it remarkable. For people on the fence it’s easy to pull them over the line by encouraging them. This can be achieved by things from signage to incentives. Disney identifies places in their theme parks with photo opp signs. Some DMO’s are starting to do the same. We worked with a ski resort last year to do put signage up to encourage sharing combined with and a contest for the best photos shared.
At an operator level it’s often a matter of reminding and asking people. Remind people on checkout to give a review on Tripadvisor for example, or follow up with an email. Others take it a step further. When I was in Wollongong, Australia, the Skydiving operator filmed and photographed the experience and gave me a link where I could download the images with an easy way to share them through my social channels.
4) CURATE
When people share stories, it’s important to find them. Social Media is like a world-wide, real-time, always-on focus group. You’re crazy if you don’t take advantage of it. You need to find them the relevant stories about your destination, good or bad.
A lot of other opportunities and insights can be gained from the massive amount of stories out there. Brands like KLM, Gatorade, Nascar and many others have dedicated social media team that monitor social media for a variety of purposes. These programs separates signal from noise by curating the content and processing it for specific purposes. Some data might need to actioned on while other data serves specific research purposes.
5a) ACTION – AMPLIFY
Some of the best stories told in social media are worth incorporating in your own marketing. People share stories with great emotional appeal and the quality, creativity and authenticity often rivals what a DMO and their agencies produce. Use the best content you find to enhance your own activities of amplify them through your own channels.
Visit Britain started sourcing the majority of the photos on its website from Flickr back in 2009. Tourism Australia only posts photos on Facebook submitted to them by their community. Many DMOs find the best photos on Instagram and reshare them while Pinterest is probably the best example of content curation with the best photos people find online.
But why stop there? You might want to give some quality content even more exposure. You can use some SEM budget to amplify a great blog post from an influencer for example. Some amplification can go even further. The Canadian Tourism Commission turned some of the best YouTube videos they found about Canada into TV commercials and recently crowd-sourced another. It doesn’t matter who created the story or where it’s located. What matters is that it moves a person down the funnel.
5b) ACTION – CUSTOMER SERVICE
Social Media will identify customer service challenges and opportunities. DMOs are already in the customer service business but have often limited themselves to a box called a visitor centre. Step outside the box and start assisting visitors in real time by responding to people in social media. Customer service challenges can be resolved quickly before they turn into negative stories.
In the meantime, the overall visitor experience will benefit from assisting travellers through social media. KLM will respond to any social media question within an hour. Most tourism operators don’t have the luxury to set-up these kind of services but the DMO can fulfill that role on behalf of their industry.
5c) ACTION – MITIGATE
Listening can also help to find information about a destination on the internet that’s incorrect (yes, there is incorrect information on the interwebs). This information could be viewed by many potential visitors who could make the wrong decision as a result. Often it’s just a matter of contacting the owner of the source to correct the error. Start by asking nicely!
If something slips through the cracks and negative stories start to emerge it’s important to mitigate these as soon as possible. There are also specific events that could cause a social media crisis. Think about a natural disaster, a call for a boycott or an influencer will a horrible experience. Being prepared and having a social media response plan in place will streamline communication before things escalate far and wide and cause considerable damage. Don’t rely on old corporate communication strategies, they don’t apply to social media. Just ask United.
5d) ACTION – LEARN
People will take pictures of things they find remarkable. And when they put themselves in the photo it’s even more remarkable. The things people find remarkable might surprise you. Insights gained from a curation program can provide you with all kinds of new marketing ideas or even identify potential target audiences. You will also identify the challenges visitors might have with the destination experience overall, sometimes in places you might not expect. Addressing these challenges in a fundamental way through service design will allow you to create a more favourable perception of the destination overall. You can measure these things over time, segment them by audience, experience and other parameters. It’s a massive opportunity and part of the future of destination marketing.
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Internet, Marketing, Travel & Tourism
8 lessons learned for DMOs when working with bloggers
06.21.13 | Permalink | 5 Comments
Packed room for my TBEX preso
This is the second post about the key takeaways from my #TEBX presentation a few weeks ago. Yesterday, lessons for bloggers, today lessons for destinations:
1) A blog trip IS NOT a press trip
I’ve seen too many blog trips miss the mark because the press trip was taken as the template for a blog trip. Most press trips follow a “standard” format by planning the trip in detail, hosting the writer/photographer/video crew for a certain amount of time and then wait for the piece to be published.
Bloggers have very different motivations than traditional travel writers. They also work with different schedules, deadlines, etc. Some don’t even have a home to go to. They live on the road. Some, maybe a lot, don’t even want to be hosted. They just want to do their own thing. Some publish fast, often in real time, some take longer to publish.
When planning a blog trip, think about your objectives. For example: do you want lots of content in the moment or would it be okay to wait for (better quality) content? This makes a difference. Do you want copy, photos, video? This makes a difference. What niches are you after? There’s a long tail of bloggers for pretty much every criteria. There’s a blogger who travels the world dancing. There’s a blogger who travels the world singing karaoke. You get my point.
2) Invest time to find the right bloggers
A lot of DMOs are passive about bloggers. They wait for a blogger to come to them, and deal with things as they come. There are hundreds of travel bloggers and more are starting new pages every day. Be strategic: it’s better to be pro-active and invite bloggers. Think about your objectives and use them to find bloggers that will best meet them. Even as requests come in from bloggers, have a checklist ready to quickly assess what you’re going to do with them.
We use 9 criteria we use when we select bloggers for blog trips we help clients with. It’s worth taking the time to find the right ones.
3) Don’t just focus on web traffic when selecting
My biggest pet peeve is the obsession with reach. It’s old-school thinking, ie “better to get my message to 10,000 people who don’t care, than 1,000 who do”. Web traffic is not completely irrelevant, of course, but it’s only one criteria out of nine.
Web traffic can also be misleading. For example, a blogger could get 20,000 visitors a month to their blog. But maybe 80% of those visitors are going to three past posts that rank high in Google because of good SEO. They’ll never see the content about your destination. More important is repeat visitation; these are people who are loyal readers.
4) Rethink your measures of success
If the objective isn’t to get a message in front of as many people as possible, what is it then?
A traditional travel writer will produce a piece and the DMO will measure the Ad Equivalency (which is B.S.). Bloggers can do a lot more. A lot of the campaigns we’ve done go way beyond the traditional way of working with travel media. I wrote a whole piece about this recently.
5) Build lasting relationships
This is social media. It’s meant to be social. Most bloggers like to meet people and make friends around the world. A lot of bloggers also like to meet other bloggers. If you or your socially savvy staff build relationships with bloggers, it’s better for everybody. And don’t limit it there. Connect bloggers with local influencers, especially if they operate in niches. Somebody passionate about skiing will probably stay in touch with somebody else who’s passionate about it.
If you have a good relationship with a blogger, they will also likely a) produce more content b) retweet your content when relevant c) come back for another visit d) refer other bloggers e) bring old content back to the front over time.
From personal experience I know Valencia is doing this really well.
6) Think outside the box; bloggers can offer much more value than a few posts
This is related to #4. A lot of bloggers are very talented content professionals. Many are looking for opportunities to fund their travels as well. Need destination photography? Make it social. Hire one of the awesome photography bloggers to do the shoot. They will do great work and share it with their own community as well. Why hire a writer or photographer who produces content in the dark?
In this case, you would pay the blogger – not for posting in their own channels but to produce content for your channels. Be transparent about it, though. And don’t make specific demands or have expectations about the content they post in their own channels.
7) WIFI everywhere, all the time
This one is very tactical and got applause in my session and it pains me this is still not a standard feature of every blog trip: bloggers Tweet, Vine, Instagram and blog in real time. Disconnecting them from the internet means this won’t happen. Such a missed opportunity. Some blog trips don’t even have good Wifi in the hotels.
8) Personalize and build in free time
Every blogger is different and most have a passion for travel and a background in writing. They’re used to being independent and the good ones know what their audience likes. Tailoring the trip to the individual is logical but a lot of DMOs resort to the “destination top 10” for everybody. They don’t spend the time researching each blogger and their interest.
Free time is also very important. Bloggers like to do their own thing or take time to produce content. Some of the best feedback we received from our “Flanders is a Festival” project is the itineraries Flanders created. They were extremely short. Most of the trip was at the blogger’s discretion. They received (personalized) tips and ideas and a person to contact in case they did want a host. They loved it. We also gave them a portable WIFI hotspot.
Robyn wrote a great piece about TBEX on the Think! blog as well and here’s the full deck from my presentation.
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Internet, Marketing, social media, Travel & Tourism
Graph Search is something people might just love
In 2010 I wrote that Tripadvisor’s integration of Facebook connect offered a glimpse into the future. Well the future is here.
Graph Search, announced yesterday by Facebook, is a new way of searching. It’s using taking your social graph and the content shared on Facebook as the basis of relevancy. Graph Search will allow you to search for things based on your personal network of friends, your ‘friends-of-friends’ or Facebook users in general.
You can soon search on Facebook for “restaurants in San Francisco liked by people who live in San Francisco”.
Or “restaurants in San Francisco my friends like”.
Or “restaurants in San Francisco liked by my friends who live in San Francisco.”
Or “Restaurants in San Francisco liked by my friends from India”
The possibilities are endless.
The travel decision process is going to be massively influenced when Facebook users adopt this kind of functionality. Because travel product is a heavy used item on Facebook. People check in, share photos and like places they’ve been all the time.
A whole new world of discovery and travel inspiration might open up. Imagine searching for “Places people check-in who like scuba diving”
Or “Cities people check-in who like art”
Or “festivals people like who like Greenday”
Or “pictures from my friends in Berlin”
Yesterday I also read a nice post by a Techcrunch writer about a recent frustrating trip to the new MySpace. This part caught my attention and made me think.
Wait, how does Myspace know I would like these?Is everyone seeing the same ones? Did Justin pick them out for me? Are my friends listening to these guys? I have no context here. I don’t understand why they’re recommended. I decide to move on.and
I mean really, I logged in with Facebook – would it have killed you to look through my “likes” for a bit of personalization here?A Techcrunch writer is obviously ahead of the curve. But what’s happening here is that people are starting to expect websites to personalize based on their previous behaviour and what they or their friends like on Facebook.
I remember being freaked out when Amazon recommended me books based on my previous purchases. Or when a laptop bag followed me around the internet thanks to remarketing. But that’s a long time ago. I don’t get freaked out anymore. We’ve gotten used to it. We even like it. We get mad when we see ads that aren’t relevant. And Facebook’s Graph Search might just deliver exactly the functionality at the right time. And travel and tourism marketing will never be the same. You better get ready.
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Experience Design, Internet, Management, Marketing, social media, Travel & Tourism
3 things to think about in 2013
Happy New Year everybody! Here are three things off the top of my head that are important things to consider for 2013. Do you have any more?
1) PUT SOCIAL AT THE CORE
I think it’s pretty clear by now that social media has a major impact on the travel decision making process. If your tourism business or DMO hasn’t realized this yet you better catch up. You should be at level 3 or higher by now.
Most marketers think of social media as an add-on to a traditional campaign, or at least start with traditional thinking. It’s time to flip it around. Start with a social idea and support it with traditional methods. Or do traditional things in a social way. For example, we recently worked with a DMO who let it’s Facebook community vote on what photos would be published in it’s visitor guide.
2) START USING SERVICE DESIGN
Mitigating a mediocre experience with brilliant marketing doesn’t cut it anymore. The experience IS your marketing and the stories your visitors tell each other is what it’s all about. You have two choices. First choice is to join the race to the bottom and keep offering specials, discounts and special offers. The second one is to create remarkable experiences people love and want to be part of, regardless of what it costs.
If your choice is the latter, you need to start thinking about service design. When you’re an operator you need to start thinking about the end-to-end experience you offer your guest. When you are a DMO you need to think about the end-to-end destination experience. Service design is gaining a lot of momentum in Europe, especially in Austria where destinations are starting to take an active role in the design of the destination experience.
3) MOBILE: THINK DEVICE PLUS CONTEXT
I was on a panel at a conference in Barcelona recently and somebody asked about mobile. Before I could even think about it I said “it’s not about mobile, it’s about device + context”. I probably heard it somewhere before but I have never really thought about it like that. But it’s true. Whether you build a desktop site, a mobile site, an adaptive site or an app, it’s not the device that’s important. It’s the context of use.
When you search google maps, it takes into account your device, where you are and what date and time it is. That’s the context of your usage and the information you get back takes that into account. You need to so the same thing. A consumer accessing your content at home is looking for very different things than a consumer walking down the street in your destination.
Now here’s the kicker. Often that means people use another website than yours. Somebody walking down the street looking for a restaurant is going to use Google Maps, Yelp or Tripadvisor, not a DMO website. Even a consumer planning as trip might never even make in onto your website (hello travel bloggers). Your content online strategy needs to include content on third party websites. From inspiration to transaction. Just like we used to do it in the 90s with travel guides and tour operator brochures.
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Internet, Marketing, Travel & Tourism
Making conferences social
Conferences are inherently social. People gather to learn and discuss topics that they are passionate about with people who care as much about it as they do. Yet the way conferences are created and promoted are incredibly traditional.
There’s a better way: bake social into the conference.
A good example is the Social Media Tourism Symposium Think!’s very own Dave Serino started in 2010. The mission statement describes what the conference is all about:
The symposium is a combination of destination marketing organizations, hotels, resorts, attractions and any other tourism related entities sharing ideas and learning more about how social media is effecting promotion within the travel industry.
What makes this conference unique is the involvement of attendees throughout the entire process. Attendees will have a voice in everything from the location to the session topics and presenters.
By involving the people who care about the subject matter in the planning process, Dave creates a conference that is more relevant and, therefore, more likely to be attended by the people who helped create it. Because all of this happens in social media, people who care are also promoters of the event.
For example, the destination selection process is driven by the SoMeT Facebook community. DMOs respond to an RFP and the Facebook community votes where the conference is going to be held. The 2012 selection process is entering the final stages.
In the process, people also get to know each other. They make friends online and want to attend the conference to meet those new friends.
This is what conferences are all about. Going to a cool place, learning relevant things and meeting new friends. By baking social media into the conference itself (instead of looking at it as an advertising vehicle) you make conferences more relevant with attendees who feel strongly connected and want to help make the event a success.
William Bakker's Destination Marketing blog
William Bakker is Chief Strategist at Destination Think!. These are my personal thoughts.
