Volume II | Issue no. 4
Developing your own media channels
Why spend all of your budget paying for media exposure when you can now invest some of it to create your own channels and networks? Owned media – channels that you develop and manage yourself – allow you to engage the people you want as profitable repeat visitors for your destination. This is narrowcasting: creating a lot of content for a relatively small audience, one that’s much more receptive and therefore more likely to purchase.
Some examples of owned media:
The destination itself
Almost every aspect of your physical destination presents an opportunity to make favorable impressions. You have a captive audience and a controlled environment where you can communicate your marketing message any way you choose. What will you do with it?
- architecture & design
- signage & way-finding
- merchandising
- point-of-sale
- consumer facing staff training
- customer service
- mojo
& ambiance
Resorts and attractions can have a great deal of control over physical issues such as appearance, ambiance, the experience, and even direct the way people move through and interact with the environment. CVBs and DMOs don’t have quite the same level of control. Their locations are influenced by many factors, including marketing partners, other local businesses and residents. They need to focus on the things they can control: the visibility and usage of brand identity and positioning, way finding and signage, experience-enhancing tools and materials, continuously communicating with and educating marketing partners so everyone is on the same page.
The Destination Website
Another media channel with seemingly unlimited potential. You can leverage SEO and keyword rankings to attract the right audience to your site. Develop a content strategy that provides key information, creates desire for your destination and converts prospects to customers. Serve up photos, videos, itineraries to fuel the imagination. And provide visitors the opportunity to share their experiences as testimonials and advocacy. You own the media – why wouldn’t you do all this and more?
Mobile Marketing To Travelers
More and more, your target audience relies on mobile devices for trip planning and day of travel navigation. Mobile marketing is another media you can own, by offering a mobile website interface to the right content and value-added applications that help travelers get the most out of their time and money.
Social Media in Travel
Blogging, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, the list goes on. All virtually free to set up, reasonably inexpensive to populate, and practically priceless for engaging the people you want as repeat customers. These tools were designed to share content and marketing messages on a one-to-one or one-to-a-few basis. Relevant? Hell yeah. Appropriate? Go easy on the sales messages, and you’re in. When your audience signs up to receive and comment on your marketing communications, you’re in a relationship, my friend. Just be sure to treat them right.
By all means, be creative
The wrapper on the mint on the pillow in your luxury suite. The underside of the seats on your ferris wheel. The temples of the 3D glasses you give out in the theater. The mirror in the ladies’ room. Your ticket stub. Your email signature. Your staff uniform. You probably own media that you’ve never thought of – that NO ONE has ever thought of.
Mark,
Great article. Just wanted to let you know that I quoted your point about "narrowcasting" in the comments thread for the article I published yesterday about measurement. I'd just read this when I received that comment and it was the perfect response.
Also, I like the hierarchy of media effectiveness diagram. It does a great job conveying a lot of information in a very simple way, but especially in that it shows how proportionately few "actual experiences" are leveraged in marketing--they occupy the tip of the pyramid (the smallest space), but they have the most impact. Very true.
Chris
Chris,
Thanks for the kudos. And thanks for the quote. Only wish I was the author. Alan Beberwyck, our chief wordsmith, crafted this month's Wanderlust Report. (I am far from the only person who adds value here at Wanderlust) I did send him in search of the concept of owned -> earned -> paid media, partly because I was swamped with client work - and partly so I'm not the only one here thinking in these terms. He did a spectacular job capturing the essence of what I wanted to communicate without groaning that I dropped this rock on his desk. (thanks again, Alan, for stepping up)
As for the Hierarchy chart, I saw something similar in a presentation given by Tim Williams recently. Not sure where he got it. We've been practicing the concepts behind it for nearly a decade but had never seen it communicated so simply. We adapted it for the Travel & Leisure industry and posted it here. Happy you found it as concise and as informative as we did.
Mark,
Thanks for letting me know. I apologize for assuming! Alan, great article!
Chris
Chris/Mark: Thanks for the kind words. I can't take all the credit for the ideas behind the article, but I'm happy that our newsletter can open a discussion on such an important issue for the travel marketing industry.
Great article. Have shared it widely around my network. I am going to use the charts in my lectures (quoted off course)
Keep it up!
Thanks/Claus
Great article, going to be sharing it quite a bit. I totally agree with the information. We see the value of creating destination & theme based content/websites to drive visitors. This actually is what our new marketing platform does (as well as the SEO & social media etc.)
Thanks for sharing!
John SGT Slaughter.
Mark, great article and some very interesting points to consider. It is interesting to note how the technologies that we all seem to fall in love with and expect huge benefits from seem to complicate our lives in unexpected ways. The evolution will continue to force marketers to think more like publishers and content providers and less and less like strategic brand managers.
Interesting article. I agree that DMO's must be client oriented in their marketing and give a central place to theme based content/websites to drive visitors. Unique content gives a good ranking in searchengines (SEO). I'm absolutely NOT sure what the effectiviness of Social Media could be at the end. I'm participating in some platforms as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc. My statistics see very few visitors coming to my websites through these channels. Twitter a hype??? Who knows?
Rene Husken
Claus - Thanks for the good words and by all means, share the charts.
John S - Thanks for the comments and thanks for connecting. It's great to speak with like minds in the industry.
John C - technology does have a double edge sword. I remember when the fax machine first, followed soon after by Fedex sped up the world, and at the same time, reduced the amount of thinking time we all have. And yes, marketers will have to have substance behind their efforts. In the old days, you could get away with making it look good. Today, that is all but a thing of the past.
René - Social media is an enigma and major time suck in its current form. While there are certainly examples of success, I suspect the overall effort being exerted presently is far greater than the ROI. But, there has most certainly been a major shift in the way consumers of just about any category are viewing marketing. Engagement, whether its by poking their minds (the old way) or by interacting (the new way) is the present rule of the day.
Recently we launched a 2.0 version of a blog for a private island development project in the Caribbean, tcsportingclub.com/blog . The 1.0 version was a highly successful engagement based strategy that communicated real, authentic content to a highly private group of wealthy owners. The results were astounding from an analytics, viral and lead generation perspective. The 2.0 version leveraged the insights gained from the analytics, quantitative and qualitative data to drive even deeper engagement to this group. Unfortunately most brands today really miss this point, conventional marketing strategies don't work unless you are prepared to drive massive numbers of impressions, which most hotels & resorts lack the resources to effectively sustain. As a result case studies like this have much more validity to a sustainable and effective hotel or resort marketing strategy.
Really appreciated the article. Having lead marketing and sales teams at some of the major attractions in Southern California, I have experienced first-hand the power of the trifecta of word-of-mouth/experience/relationship.
I agree. Having a strong relationship with a customer, and knowledge of the quality products always gives brings me a word of mouth recommendation, and another valuable and grateful customer.
Best explanation of what is happening around us as it relates to marketing I have read. I love the "owned media" phrase. Great Job
Excellent article, and explanation of the shifting landscape of tourism marketing. I love the terms "owned", "earned" and "paid" media. Spot on. The "owned" and "earned" media capabilities level the playing field and allow smaller DMOs/CVBs/properties to compete with their larger counterparts. Keep up the good work.
Word-of-Mouth is massively important in travel decisions but I would also argue that you need both efficiency and effectiveness in your communications to achieve your business objectives.
There is so much competition now in Tourism that the right message has to hit the largest possible target audience as quickly, efficiently and accurately as possible. Word of mouth is immensely powerful but one needs the reassurance of other sources of marketing communications to establish the credibility of a business in travel/tourism.
I'm finding the traditional ways of advertising in travel magazines and trade journals very costly and largely ineffective, although brochures are still doing a bit for us, but am concentrating most of my marketing efforts on search engine optimization and other web aspects. By far the greatest proprtion of our guests find us on the internet. I'm also getting the impression that publishers of magazines and trade journals are getting a bit desperate for advertisers, judging from the numbers of telephone calls and emails I'm getting asking me advertise in various media, some of them very persistent even after I say I'm not interested.
Yes I agree that for us bumping up our internet presence has been more succesful than traditional print advertsing/marketing. Especially in the Vancouver market where it is one of the most expensive places in the countries to advertise in print with the Sun/Province and the amount of people that read the paper now is lower so it doesnt give you the same return. For us as we specialise in travel to Australia & New Zealand we believe that instead of saturating potential clients with deals and advertising and endless emails, tat if they want to find a specialist then they will look for one online.
Yes, and as pointed out by one book on inbound marketing I read recently, conventional marketing tends to interrupt people from other things they are trying to do, whereas internet marketing provides information they are actively seeking and thus likely to pay it more attention