Happy new year. All the best for 2012. My resolution is ar least one post a week. We start with a tip.
Most DMO’s will have stockpiles of leftover printed guides from 2011 somewhere in a warehouse. Refusing to accept these are remnants of a distance past, they print more than there is demand.
Here’s an idea. Search for doctors and dentist offices in your key markets and send them a free copy. The combination of bored people waiting for their appointment with the low turnover of magazines in these offices will provide some good reach for relative low investment.
At Think! we believe marketing should be relevant and add value to people’s lives. We believe in tapping into the passions of niche audiences by offering remarkable experiences relevant to that niche.
When you tap into people’s passion, distance and money means a lot less. People will drive 5 hours to eat some cheeseballs if it means something to them.
We use this concept when we create marketing campaigns as well. For the Powder Highway contest, the price is very remarkable to people passionate about skiing and snowboarding
Steve Keenan, online travel editor from the London Sunday Times summarizes Valencia’s unique approach to a media/blogging fam
Valencia Leads
A few weeks ago the Valencia Tourism Region hosted a blog trip (#blogtripF1) and it could very well be the new standard for DMOs to model their traditional media trips or media fams after. I was fortunate enough to be invited on the trip.
Valencia Tourism invited a mix of traditional journalist, travel bloggers, social media travel, web technology and web design professionals. These people of all ages, with diverse skill-sets and interests where hosted on a four day event centred around Valencia and the Formula One Grand Prix.
It included all the hallmarks of a traditional media trip. Visits to the best restaurants, the top sights, attractions and accommodations. The trip included private guides and behind the scenes tours, all well organized as you can expect from any respectable DMO.
Making the media trip social
Valencia Tourism innovated the traditional trip by creating a place for these professionals to collaborate, discuss, debate and most of all develop new relationships. Social Media professionals are social by definition and unlike traditional journalists who are more driven by exclusivity, bloggers understand their individual success is strengthened by the success of their relationships and their network.
Taking advantage of educational opportunities
The place to kick-off the discussion was at a conference where attendees presented a topic related to their area of expertise (videos of presentations here). The event was attended by many local, national DMO’s and operators. A great way to get Tourism Valencia’s stakeholders access to the knowledge in the group.
Fostering the creation of networks
Over the next few days we got to know each other very well. There was enough time and opportunity to do so. We discussed and debated all topics digital travel professionals are interested in. And everything was tweeted in real time of course, creating a surge of Valencia exposure in real time, across many people’s personal and professional networks.
Creating remarkable experiences
Remarkable experiences turn into social objects, shared in social media. These are the things worth blogging, tweeting and Facebooking about. There were plenty in Valencia. Walking on top of a shark tank, eating the best Paella, incredibly photogenic modern architecture, random bars, more great food and of course the F1 race.
Remarkable experiences was also the subject of my presentation, summarized in this interview
Results
The tally so far? By the last count I’ve heard a while back a few dozen blog posts have been written, 61 YouTube videos created, 363 people tweeted 1,558 tweets reaching over 2 million people all around the world while articles in traditional media are being written.
But the real value is not just the immediate exposure but the fact that Valencia sits at the centre of a strong network of travel bloggers and tourism professionals including their expended networks. Valencia will always be top op mind when I connect with any of the new friends I’ve made.
Promoting by focussing on building networks and putting yourself in the middle of it. That’s the future. Valencia has re-invented itself over the last years with new tourism attractions, infrastructure and mega-events. They’re doing the same with destination marketing.
Congratulations Joantxo and Arantxa, you’re setting the new standard for travel media.
Valencia’s City of Arts and Sciences – Photo by Sherry Ott
Every year Google launches over 500 improvements to its search algorithm. There’s a lot to learn from this video for modern day marketers.
Focus on your end user
It all starts with a focus on the user. “Google has made a huge investment in understanding what works for users (3:25)” because “when you align Google’s interests with user interests, good things happen (3:17)“.
Aligning business objectives with user objectives should sit at the core of any online marketer principles. Without it, you’re sure to fail.
Keep improving what you have
Google is obsessed with improving their search product; “we get excited when we hit on an idea what helps a lot of users (3:37)“. Continuous improvements sits at the heart of their culture.
Traditional marketers spend almost all their efforts before they launch because it’s hard to change things after. Online marketers need to spend the majority of their effort post launch. You receive instant results and it’s easy to change things.
This includes websites, social media, search, email marketing, etc.
Base decisions on data, not opinion
In too many organization, decisions are made based on opinions. Usually a senior person doesn’t like something or receives pressure from a stakeholder with an agenda and want something changed. Or a real problem is being dismissed because it’s invisible (a technology upgrade for example). Rarely does anybody actually look at the data in detail.
At Google, “a problem identified and hypothesis created (0:35)” and subjected to “rigorous scientific testing (0:53)“, using a trained panel called raters (0:59), live experiments (1:14) and analyzed by a search analyst (1:14). The decission to make the change is then held in a “launch decision meeting (1:47) by the leadership, based on data with an unbiased view”.
Implementing this at your organization
These are some key elements of Google’s success. But even when you’re not Google with a large team, here’s what even the smallest organization can do:
Always put the user first. Not your manager, not the CEO, not the creative genius at your agency, not that difficult stakeholder but always the user. Fight for your users and make it a non-negotiated principle.
Foster a culture of rapid iteration. Change is good and needs to be constant. To streamline the process, remove unnecessary approvals and sign-offs. Trust your team and don’t micromanage. Educate, don’t police and empower staff. With empowerment and responsibility comes a powerful sense of ownership.
Implement a system to collect all feedback; from consumers, from staff, from stakeholders and from your online marketing team looking at the data. Break big problems into smaller pieces and prioritize all feedback based on your objectives.
Look at the data and look for evidence. Run tests. Is this a real problem or an unfounded opinion? (bonus: you now have ammunition the next time the same “issue” comes up)
Create hypothesis and test them best you can. Through usability, prototyping or A/B testing. Might sound complicated but it doesn’t have to be. A/B testing in SEM is super easy and with Google Website Optimizer, so are web pages.
Bring back the data and make a decision.
The most successful online marketing programs I’ve seen aren’t the organizations with the most money. They’re the organizations that run their programs based on the above.
What about all this BS that technology and social media stop people for having real and genuine relationships? Social Media is making my life, and my relationships with people better every day.
Here’s my story.
My wife and I adopted our daughter two weeks ago from Japan. It was an amazing experience. But hard as well. We had to wait for two weeks in Tokyo for paperwork to processs. Anybody who is a parent knows how weird those first few days are. Being in a strange city where you don’t know anybody without a real support system can be tough.
But it didn’t feel like that at all. Skype allowed us to have our family in Canada and the Netherlands share the moment when our daughter got placed with us live. It was like they were there with us.
And over the next two weeks, people checked in all the time, we never felt alone. There was always somebody to see and talk to.
All our friends made us feel very connected and supported with an outpouring of well wishes and excitement from our personal networks on Facebook.
Even my Twitter followers, some of whom I don’t even know in person, were amazing in their support.
This wouldn’t and couldn’t have happened 10 years ago. And it was all free.
Social Media and technology connects people and builds stronger relationships with more people over larger distances. Because it’s different doesn’t mean it’s artificial or incomplete.
From left to right: Gary Arndt, me, Brooks and Steve Keenan at #blogtripF1
What’s the difference anyways?
A travel writer writes movie scripts, a travel blogger writes TV scripts.
That quote comes from Gary Arndt, author of the Everything Everywhere blog. Gary has been traveling around the world since 2007. He has no permanent home. His website receives more visitors than most DMO’s. He has over 100,000 Twitter followers. Gary is the real deal.
A travel writer writes a finished piece. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. On a good travel blog one episode leads to the next and the ongoing story makes the visitor come back over and over again. People are drawn in by the ongoing story.
This was one of the messages from John O’Nolan‘s fantastic presentation at the DMO’s and social media conference in Valancia last week.
John rightfully pointed out that when people care enough about your product, take time out of their day and go through the effort to tell you that you need to fix a problem, it probably means they care and want you to succeed.
This is a huge opportunity. Fix the problem, invite them back and you might have a customer for life, and an advocate for your business.
Most people don’t know I’m a huge F1 (Formula One) fan. I watch every qualifying session and every race, ever time. I’m depressed in the off-season.
It started when I was a teenager. On Sundays, me and my Mom would always watch the races together. I don’t remember how it started but it was our thing and it has always stayed with me. Even after I left Europe and moved to Canada where F1 fans are few and far between.
I frequently get asked to speak about tourism marketing at places around the world. It’s very flattering that people are interested in what I think and have to say. In the tourism marketing community, I suppose I’m some sort of influencer. Unfortunately I can’t make it everywhere. I try, but I have to pick and choose.
I met Joantxo Llantada from the Valencia Region Tourist Board at the ENTER conference this year. I presented a case study about our marketing for the 2010 games at Tourism BC and he presented a fascinating case study about his F1 blogtrip. So I told him I was an F1 fan.
A few months later he sent me this tweet.
The decision was very, very, very easy. Come to Valencia to do a presentation and visit the F1 race? Uh… yeah!
Connect with somebody’s passion and they’re easily convinced. Joantxo uses the F1 to bring influencers together for a conference and a blog trip. For 4 days we explored the (awesome) city of Valencia, had great food and inspiring conversations. An awesome mix of the biggest bloggers, journalists, social media marketers and digital professionals. From young to old and from all over.
It was educational and inspirational. More about that in the next few days.
I often hear from hotel operators that negative reviews on Tripadvisor usually aren’t from their typical customers. A 4-star hotel receives bad reviews from customers who got a deal on a discount website because of high parking fees and the expensive restaurant. A family oriented hotel receives bad reviews from business traveler who complain about the noise from the kids playing in the pool.
I use the chart below in some of my presentations:
There are a lot of people will love your product and a lot of people who probably won’t. The people who love of hate your product are the people who will talk about you in social media. The people in the middle shrug their shoulders and won’t mention you either way.
Two lessons from this chart:
Stop marketing to people on the right side of this bell curve. They might deliver short-term cash flow but hurt your business in the long run.
Moving the curve a little bit to the left will increase the number of positive conversations and grow your business through word-of-mouth.
Foursquare users are faced with a dilemma every time they check in. Do I share this with my Foursquare friends, my Twitter followers and/or my Facebook friends?
The psychology is interesting. Because let’s face it, a big part of Foursquare is bragging about the cool stuff you do. When I’m in the coffeeshop in my building, I don’t share it on Facebook and Twitter. But when I checked into the White House in Washington, DC, I made sure everybody knew.
Foursquare provides an analytics dashboard to business owners. It shows who your mayor is, how many times people check-in and when. Interesting data.
The dashboard also shows you how many times users share their check-in on Twitter and Facebook. These are effectively the number of people who think it’s worth bragging about your business and implicitly recommending your business.
Claim your Foursquare page, check out your percentages and track them over time. Make your business more interesting to Foursquare users to increase the number of Foursquare visitors and your bragging percentages.
