What’s new in tourism communications? The idea that, instead of just publishing or broadcasting information to people who might be interested to visit your community, you build personal relationships with them through an online information network.

This type of network concentrates on what’s happening NOW. The personal messages that go back and forth between your community’s representatives and the network of people they interact with aren’t about static information. They aren’t about last week. They are about this moment, and the number of people who are eager to capture this moment online is growing explosively around the world.

The most popular network they are using is called Twitter. This social-networking site, launched in 2006, was originally intended for individuals to send micro-blogs to their friends, on the topic of “What are you doing now?” But as so often happens, business quickly saw an opportunity and now a growing number of tourism marketing boards, in Nova Scotia, Chicago, Baltimore and Queensland, Australia, are using it to reach potentially millions of people with their messages.

The messages are delivered from one or more persons, in conversational professional tone, and they can be read by anyone searching www.twitter.com by topic or name. More importantly, they can be received and read instantly as text messages by people using computers – or more often, mobile devices – who have registered to receive the person’s “tweets.” In Twitter lingo, they have signed up to be “followers” of the message sender.

Followers like to respond to messages with comments or questions. These come right back to the message sender and also appear on the Twitter site of the sender’s tourism organization, which of course is also linked to its website.

Whoa, does this sound like a lot of work and time? Oh, yes. But there are ways you can spread the workload, by enlisting followers to help answer questions and by spacing out your informational tweets.

Nevertheless this is certainly a time-consuming information channel – but one with the potential to attract widespread interest to your community’s tourism offerings because you are part of NOW. Twitter is a social medium. Social networking is more immediate than any other form of communication. It’s growing and it is the norm for young people.

It requires dedicated resources and a willingness to be experimental and even impromptu in carrying out your tourism marketing plan.

You can begin slowly. After registering on Twitter, complete the user profile information, including a link to your tourism website and any blogs originating from it. You can even establish a home page on Twitter that mirrors the one on your site.

Start up by searching for people that you would like to have follow you and follow them. Then begin to post frequent short blog-like messages (tweets) about events, activities or new announcements related to tourism in your community. Include links to your website/blogs for more information.

Slowly at first, people will begin to register as followers because they want to receive more such information. Then you can follow them back. In most cases, they are potential visitors and could bring revenue into your community. Send new followers a genuine thank-you tweet or direct message and let them know you are available if they need trip-planning assistance.

Once you have a couple of dozen posts to your credit and a handful of followers, issue a news release telling that world that your tourism organization is using Twitter. Include it in your communications to your industry partners and database, and post a Twitter link on your website. All of these activities will attract the attention of search engines and make it more likely that your tourism website will appear prominently when people search by topic.

Did you know that Twitter has a search engine too? It is part of a new crop of start-up search engines designed to make searches faster and more personal. Using Twitter search can help you find twitterers interested in travel and event information. You can become followers of their tweets and learn more about your market. Local twitterers may be primarily interested in current information while those from remote locations might be looking for ideas, deals and help in trip planning.

What’s the long-term potential of using Twitter? How large can your network grow? These are unknowns yet, but it is easy to measure your network growth and activity, and the ROI from your investment of time. People are likely to tell you when they have visited your community as a result of information obtained via Twitter.

Twitter is a community. People build their networks by following and being followed by other people. As a tourism marketer, you need to spend time building your network but if it thrives, the network itself can be your marketer.

Anya Codack, CEO

Yfactor.com

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News releases used to be written for, and sent to, only the media.  Usually that meant the print media, and for economic development departments it meant print media concerned with investment attraction.

But the first rule of modern news releases is that they should no longer be targeted to traditional media only.  A difficult economic climate and the advent of new technologies have combined to change modern strategies toward news releases for investment-attraction purposes.

Releases need to generate optimum returns on investment, so they should be written to appeal to as broad an audience as possible.  Decide beforehand what you want the release to achieve other than simply disseminating information.  Do you want to impress site selectors with the dynamism of your community?  Do you want local businesses and employees to continue to be confident that they are in the right place?  Do you want government agencies to know about the sectors your community is fostering?  In the age of the Web, all these audiences and more – potentially millions of people – have access to your release, unfiltered by the media.

You need to write for them.  Write directly for your target audiences in addition to the media that you hope will also reach them.  In particular, provide information that site selectors and business investors specifically look for.  Present your news with accompanying data about your community’s population, income levels, labour statistics, quality of life, industrial clusters – the kinds of criteria that companies have on their selection charts.

The second rule of modern news releases is that they should generate two-way activity.  In addition to directing information outward to promote something noteworthy happening in your community, today’s releases have the additional purpose of drawing traffic to your economic-development website.  In other words, they need to be viewed as part of your search-engine marketing strategy.

Write releases that are replete with keywords and phrases that are most likely to be entered by site selectors using search engines to seek potential opportunities.  Imbed links in releases to deliver potential investors to landing pages on your website.

First and foremost, publish the release on your website, along with inter-website links to it from all relevant pages, such as your home page. Make it even easier to pass the press-release along to a colleague by adding “tell-a-friend” functionality.

A useful tool is RSS, or Really Simple Syndication.  Enable your site with RSS feed capability so that viewers can sign up to receive your releases automatically.

RSS is one of the main ways in which bloggers aggregate content.  For that reason an RSS-enabled release has the ability to reach a wide net of people who have an express interest in your community or its activities.

Next inform those on your regular email list by sending a mass mail to let them know about your news. Make sure that the subject line is clear and that the email quickly takes them to the press release itself. 

This leads to the next rule for investment-attraction news releases: distribute them in the Web 2.0 world as well as the traditional media world.

Today, you must make sure that your message can be found where your audiences look for it. 
•      Free and low-cost online press release websites offer an excellent channel for dissemination.
•      If you have a blog, let your readers know about the press release here.
•      Social networks such as Linked-In, Twitter, and Facebook constitute a collaborative, interactive and dynamic source of community, information and commentary. 

The more presence your municipality has in these communities through distribution of news releases and announcements, the more frequently the community will appear on lists of search-engine results. 

Social networks also enable access to your news by others who have similar interests.  If those interests converge on your investment-attraction release, you may find it going “viral” – reaching vast numbers of people and organizations and creating audiences for your release that you didn’t know were there.

One other best-practice rule remains to be discussed for news releases – how often they should be published, and under what circumstances.  We will examine that issue in the following article in the larger context of the importance of frequent communications.

Anya Codack, CEO
Phone: 416-977-9724 x 509
Fax: 416-642-1959
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Gas prices have relaxed, the Canadian dollar is back to a reasonable level and SARS is ancient history.  But the tourism floodgates are still far from open, no thanks to a sputtering economy and mandatory passports just around the corner. Fortunately die-hard travelers haven’t stopped traveling, they are just being much more cautious.  It’s basically a matter of trust – and destination marketers can look to hosted web video to build that trust like no other medium around.

Yes, a confluence of external factors beyond the control of Canadian destination marketers has dramatically impacted the overall number of travelers. In 2006, same-day car trips by Americans to Canada saw the biggest drop to date, hitting their lowest level since 1972.

This is real, but what can destination businesses do besides holding these external excuses hostage until a miracle happens? While spur-of-the-moment day-trippers – often a tightfisted lot – may become relics of the past, the high-spending, die-hard traveler will barely bat an eye at all these obstacles. But they will be much more cautious about where they travel. It’s all about gaining their trust. 

But how? We must realize that to get the die-hard traveler’s wallet back, we have to do a better job of pre-selling the experience – while breaking down all and any risk factors. Eliminate any doubt they might have about coming to your destination. You see, pretty pictures and flowery words won’t cut it anymore. The traveler just isn’t buying into those fancy magazine ads. Well, that is unless those ads are backed by serious and very convincing internet marketing. 

I don’t have to tell you that most travelers research their destinations on the ‘Net. Travel destination decisions are heavily influenced by how well your site delivers what the prospect is looking for. If your web site is three or five years old (or even more ancient, God help you if it is!), chances are that your online marketing strategy is out of date. Not necessarily your content, but how it is being delivered.

There are some fundamental questions you should ask yourself. Is my site user friendly? Can prospects navigate easily? Does the prospect end up where I want them to end up? Is my message strategy geared to the prospect or to my competitor? This latter question is a whole other article though. The bottom line is that your web site should be working 24-7 as a virtual sales agent. When destination marketers started using the web as a marketing vehicle, we were designing sites as an online brochure. Up until a couple of years ago this was fine. A well designed “brochure style” site didn’t do too badly with conversions. This isn’t nearly as effective anymore. Now imagine a site that has incredible converting power, a site that not only delivers visual appeal, but literally speaks to the prospect and guides them where to click next.

The increase in broadband subscribers and the development of new video streaming technologies have opened the door to more creative possibilities to get your message across in a unique and interesting way. With green screens and some video editing, a live host can now turn your static web site into your very own TV channel. You can now pre-sell your prospects using the spoken word, complete with the emotional inflections that the written word could never convey. 

This brings us back to trust. Whether it’s a hostess at a restaurant or a greeter at Wal-Mart, it’s all about establishing a level of comfort and trust – something the most gifted copywriter using the most inspired copy can rarely achieve. 

But don’t can your copywriter just yet. Your online host still needs a carefully written script that will not only give a full picture of your destination, but will actually guide them through your site for more information, and more importantly, for conversion. The “KISS” theory applies in full force here “Keep It Short & Sweet”. No one wants to sit and listen to someone yammer on for a half an hour – that may be fine for traditional TV, but this is Internet TV, where we all suffer symptoms of attention deficit. Short 15 to 30 second segments are all you need – and all your viewer will sit through. As your host speaks to your demographic, they will get a better feel for your destination, making their decision a much easier one. Let me give you an example, a scenario we’ve all been through at one time or another. You’ve just sat down at a restaurant that you’ve never been to before. You’re not sure what to have, so you ask your server for a recommendation. The server suggests the sautéed tenderloin with wine sauce, delivering the pitch with excitement and enthusiasm (and often very well-scripted too). The same description read fine on the menu, but then again so did all the other dishes. But listening to it right from the horse’s mouth just makes it sound that much better, as you envision the mouth-watering flavours that the chef has painstakingly prepared. In essence, your server has just pre-sold the experience that you might have. You visualize yourself enjoying the dish while it is being described. And if executed convincingly, more likely than not, you’ll be going with the tenderloin.

Just like at the restaurant, a host on your web site gives the visitor a clear path in which to follow, describing the experience and greatly reducing any possible doubts by pre-selling the experience. There’s no better way to do that than with the spoken word, delivered instantly and effectively through web video. 

It’s all part of concept we call Brandcasting, where you use your own web site as an Internet TV station to effectively broadcast your brand to your visitors. You control the branding, programming, distribution and monetization of your own channel.

But video production, you ask, won’t that cost an arm and a leg? It doesn’t have to. In all likelihood you’ll be able use content you already have – still photography, video footage, etc. You’re just re-purposing it and using it in a very innovative and creative way. That alone makes it a much more cost effective web site to develop.

Let’s remind ourselves that solid online, offline and SEO marketing strategies still apply here. It doesn’t matter how much you invest in web video functionality, it won’t make a difference to your bottom line if no one visits your site. But as a start, with a brandcasting approach driving your new web site, you might never need to ask yourself, “how can I differentiate myself from the competition?” again.

Luc Courtois                      
President
180 Marketing
Website: www.do180.com

BODtv™: www.bodtv.ca

Follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/180Marketing

division of Courtois & Mather Creative Inc.

How easy or how frustrating a website experience is, is generally determined by how easy or how frustrating the navigation of a website is.

User-friendly navigation tools are more than a matter of aesthetics. To an economic development professional, it can mean the difference between attracting leads and being passed over – even if you don’t know that a visitor has come and gone.

Your investment-attraction website is competing with many others at all times. The majority of initial research by site selectors is done online. Such searches are anonymous, of course, so you will never know who is considering your community and evaluating it. If your website doesn’t do the initial talking for you, you won’t have a second chance.

Site selectors typically look at hundreds of websites at the beginning of their process of elimination to compile short lists. This is much different than practices of eight or nine years ago, before Internet research came to dominate in this field. At that time site selectors may have looked at a couple of dozen potential locations. Today your competition is much wider and stronger.

In addition, the length of time for an initial search has shortened to four to eight weeks from six months or more. This means that economic development professionals need to be ready and armed with more information at all times so they can address initial search criteria of site selection professionals and respond to requests for details immediately.

Failure to find the information you have provided will cause those searching for prospective locations to simply move on. There are plenty of websites that are able to quickly deliver the necessary information required to meet demanding deadlines.

What are the tools you can put in place to ensure an enjoyable navigational experience?

Content Architecture

To begin with, you will need a well-planned content architecture to communicate with today’s unforgiving audiences. Following best practices, the architecture needs to incorporate all necessary information and organizes this information into logical and practical sections, enable information to be found as easily as possible. This might sound complicated but it’s not.

An architecture is essentially a content plan. It can be envisioned as an organizational chart in the shape of a pyramid, with building blocks, or boxes, representing web pages and lines connecting the boxes to show how a visitor would move from one page to the next.

The challenge of constructing the architecture is to make sure that the boxes contain the right information, and enable the functionality that will best serve the mandate of the organization and the needs of your prospects for finding key information easily and quickly.

This article is concerned with the lines between the boxes – moving visitors around the website. It has to be simple, quick and intuitive if you are to meet the demands of impatient site selection professionals!

Search

More than half of your website visitors are “search dependent”. That is, they will look for the search bar and use it as their primary means for finding specific information on your website.

It is vital to provide a search tool that delivers the information your visitors are likely to want without delay. There is nothing more frustrating than poor search results that fail to produce expected links.

Seventy-five per cent of the searches conducted by your visitors will consist of one or two words. Given the industry sectors you are trying to attract, what are those words most likely to be? Anticipate the kinds of searches your website visitors will conduct and ensure that you have relevant content available for them; fresh, relevant content that is!

Breadcrumbs

In the story of Hansel and Gretel, breadcrumbs were used by the children to find the way home. In the same way, breadcrumbs are a tool; a series of links, at the top of a web page, that help visitors navigate the website or find the way back home.

Breadcrumbs typically appear horizontally across the top of a web page, usually below title bars or headers. They provide links back to each previous page the user navigated through to get to the current page. Breadcrumbs provide a trail for the user to follow back to the starting or entry point. Typical breadcrumbs look like this.

Anya Codack, CEO

Yfactor.com

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When a new technology trend becomes established it often has implications for investment attraction. It is now widely known, for example, that the web is the most important medium used by site selectors to gather information. A new rule of thumb arises from this - the quality of your website is a key factor in determining the success of your economic development program.

What characterizes a high-quality website? There are many facets to the answer but one principle has become clear: as a medium for communications, the site needs to be more than the sum of its parts.

That is, the site should have the ability to generate interest and activity beyond itself - beyond being simply a place where people can visit and find information. Your site should be the center of a wide and active network of interest.

This is where Web 2.0 comes in and social media bookmarking is one facet of Web 2.0 tactics. It can be used to enhance your website so that people can more easily discover, remember and share the information you publish about your community.

By providing easy to use and conveniently located bookmarking links on your website you can encourage visitors to add your website to their own social media sites, making your website a point of interest. Typical bookmarking sites include Delicious, Digg, Technorati, Furl, Simpy, Citeulike, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Blogger, Facebook, Mixx, Propeller, Reddit, Slashdot, and LinkedIn.

Once added to a social bookmarking site, the link, and therefore your website, can be shared with other people who share the same interests or work in the same field. This opens up your information and stories to a whole new network of people who might not have found about you otherwise. Now it is possible that viral marketing about your municipality can take place.

Many site selectors have found social bookmarking sites an important time-saving tool because they, like everyone else, have a problem in finding relevant information and keeping track of it all.

As the bookmark is shared amongst a network of people and is imported or added to other people's bookmark lists your website actually becomes more visible in a number of ways: First, your search engine rankings can improve due to the expanding number of links generated to your website. Second, many people use social bookmarking sites for Internet searches as the bookmarks have been tagged to identify the main content of websites, resulting in more relevant search results.

As social bookmarking services have matured and become more popular, additional features have been added, including ratings and comments, the ability to import and export bookmarks from browsers and e-mailing of bookmarks and web annotation.

For site selectors, access to such features adds to the competitive qualities of an economic development site by helping them organize their searches, find opportunities of high interest in the market and keep track of potential sites associated with their highest priorities.

Saving time, making it easy, making the information easily shared and searchable by category - these are the reasons why economic developers need to consider adding bookmarking tools to their websites. You can take advantage of these tools to extend your site into a network of information repositories that link users around the world. That is part of what competitiveness means today.

Anya Codack, CEO
Phone: 416-977-9724 x 509
Fax: 416-642-1959
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The creative class – entrepreneurs, designers, scientists, artists, performers, technologists and other knowledge workers – will lead economic growth in future. This thesis, originated by Richard Florida, is a foundation of economic-development practices today and has been discussed previously in Tech Trends (see “Business Retention Means People Retention,” March 10, 2009). Now we are seeing the theory being applied successfully by a growing number of communities.

Such communities have developed strategies to be “talent magnets,” especially for young professionals aged 25 to 44. They have paid attention to Florida's research showing that any community that wants to improve its economy should look at how it stands with the three T's of economic development—technology, talent, and tolerance. All are necessary conditions for attracting creative people, generating innovation and stimulating economic growth, according to Florida.

Whether you are fully in agreement with his ideas or not, your investment-attraction strategy needs to take into account the creative class. So does your website and all the communications related to it.

Here are three examples of communities that are successfully putting these ideas into practice.

Austin, Texas
Austin in recent years has made considerable investments in its quality of life. It is an open and tolerant city with lifestyle centers for cycling and outdoor activities, a vibrant downtown community and a thriving music scene. It has a rapidly growing high-tech industrial center that has attracted investments from major companies.

The website of the Austin Chamber of Commerce, www.austinchamber.com/DoBusiness/index.html, uses the tag line “Austin, the Human Capital.” It says the city “gets the nod as a young, creative and entrepreneurial city in a dynamic, growing region.” The site has extensive information about green issues, features an online business incubator called the Central Texas Regional Center of Innovation and Commercialization, and links to a related site, www.liveablecity.org, which celebrates public engagement in Austin.

Calgary, Alberta
Thanks to a decade of attracting young, creative and artistic immigrants, Calgary has grown into a haven for the creative class. A survey by Maclean’s magazine in 2008 ranked Calgary the most cultured city in Canada. Now its arts industries and not-for-profit organizations are providing pillars to support the city in the midst of a severe oil and gas recession.

A recently released Economic Development Strategy identified quality of life as a foundation of sustainability for Calgarians. A number of initiatives are planned to support the strategy through websites as well as the new world of social media. The first of these programs is Calgarypedia, www.calgarypedia.com, a wiki-based website launched in October 2008. With content created and maintained by Calgarians, it is serving as a platform to communicate information about the organizations, activities, events, history and stories that position Calgary as an investment location of choice.

Prince Edward County
In southeast Ontario, Prince Edward County is enjoying an economic renaissance by reinventing itself as “Canada’s first creative rural economy.” As described in detail at www.pecounty.on.ca/government/corporate_services/economic_development/index.php, the County’s strategy of exploiting its quality of place and lifestyle attributes has attracted many creative businesses.

Prince Edward County’s investment-attraction site, www.buildanewlife.ca/site/, includes links to Facebook, YouTube and Flickr. The site also features a virtual Collaboration Centre where researchers, developers and community members from anywhere in the world can meet to exchange ideas about creative rural economies.

Best Practices
What best practices can be gleaned from the websites of communities that are successfully targeting the creative class?

1. Be different! Recognize that site selectors and businesses are looking at your community as one choice in a sea of options. To stand out you need to consider not just what your community has to offer, but what it offers that is unique, and to reflect that difference on the Web.

2. Involve the community. Locate members of the creative class already in your community, find out who they are, what they read, what they purchase, and what drives their decisions. Use their ideas and experiences in your communications, especially on the web and in social media.

3. Aim carefully at specific targets. Creative economy strategies are not simply focused on recruiting the creative class. They are built upon attracting select sectors, such as digital media, gaming, film and music, graphic and industrial design, and arts manufacturing. Which sub-sectors is your community best positioned to be a magnet for? Focus your creative resources and incentive programs on them, and keep your messages consistent through all media and partner organizations.

Anya Codack, CEO

Yfactor.com

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Your investment-attraction strategy probably includes reaching out to specific audiences. For that purpose the Internet provides new opportunities to reach more people in target niche sectors than any other kind of marketing ever has.

Today, messages can be segmented to go to people who self-identify based on what information they search for. You do not have to guess or hope that recipients are interested in what you have to say – you already know. This makes for very cost-effective marketing, something that is top of mind to economic developers in these times.

Self-Selection Through Search
People reveal on the web what they are interested in by the keywords they enter for searches. Today’s web products and techniques can use those keywords to bring your organization into the direct line of vision of the searcher.

A Google Adwords campaign, for example, can be extremely narrowly targeted. Not only can you determine the geography and other parameters for where and when your ad will be served. Most importantly, you can insert keywords into your Google ads that are designed to match the terms that people would enter if they were to search for the kinds of business opportunities your community provides. Your ad will appear on the results pages found by these qualified viewers. You have reached your defined niche and not merely scattered your message to the world at large.

Web 2.0 Niche Marketing
Similarly you can reach very specifically targeted niches through social media groups. Suppose you municipality has decided it wants to attract agricultural or financial or high-tech industries. Further narrowing the focus, you may have identified greenhouse growers or credit unions or video producers. Can the web help you to reach those narrowly defined industries? Yes, by using social-media channels.

You can create relationships and build a following by defining your interest and proving your expertise through your involvement with narrowly targeted interest groups through YouTube channels, Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups and many other channels that are proliferating and becoming more robust as you read this.

Segmented Target Email
An old-fashioned technique, direct mail marketing, is still powerful if it is applied to the Internet through segmented e-mail marketing.

E-mail is a quick and inexpensive way to distribute information. Many economic developers use e-mail to stay in touch with their communities, provide valuable information to prospects, reach new target customers and create relationships with vendors, suppliers and others in the investment-attraction chain.

The challenge, as was always the case with direct mail, is to provide the right information to the right recipients. The Internet gives you the advantage of knowing that the recipients are interested in your messages, since they will have signed up to receive them. But still there is a list-management job to do.

You will need to tag your lead database (CRM) by niche sector and then segment your mailing list. You will also need to create content that is of interest to the niche target audience. Effective segmentation makes it easy to send customized email to specific niche sectors, providing information that they will respond to.

Today’s online tactics for targeting narrow niche audiences provide economic development professionals with a set of tools that were simply never available before. It is now possible to be interactive and involved with your narrowly defined target audiences, rather than broadcasting to an entire sector. That’s the spirit of what we call Economic Development 2.0.

Anya Codack, CEO

Yfactor.com

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A major reason why the web has become the predominant medium for destination marketing is that it permits a community to do far more than just cast a wide net of information and hope that it picks up some interested tourists. Today’s website technologies and social networking services combine to enables a destination to communicate interactively with highly targeted groups of potential visitors and even with individuals.

This explains the recent growth in the number and variety of themed tourism mini-sites. You might want to consider allocating some funds in your tourism promotion budget for building such mini-sites because they effectively fulfill the potential of the web, and make it increasingly easy for potential tourists to find what they want. That adds value to your message.

As noted in an earlier article in this series (“Directories and Itineraries for Tourism Websites,” Jan. 19, 2010), people visit tourism websites with personal goals in mind for their trip. Their choice of destination often depends on whether a site reveals desirable characteristics in a tourism offering.

Mini-sites take advantage of this personal-shopping aspect of the web by suggesting new ways for people to enjoy their vacations in keeping with their personal goals.

For a guide to how these ideas can be put into action you can examine the tourism strategy of the City of Enumclaw, Washington (pop. 11,470). The city is developing an ingenious strategy based on the brand, “Washington’s Equestrian Capital.”

The objective of the tourism strategy is “to use the unique brand for Enumclaw based on the equestrian-themed Expo Center as the lure to bring visitors to both the center and the town in general to engage in a concentrated rural atmosphere of activities and events, spend money and have a good experience.”

The strategy identifies and appeals to three groups: local visitors up to 30 miles away, day visitors to a distance of 60 miles and overnight visitors coming from a radius of 120 miles.

And the web? The Enumclaw strategy identifies it as a key marketing tool, with a website specific to the equestrian brand. It recommends the following characteristics and content for the site:

a. Organize it by interests and activities.
b. Make photographs compelling.
c. Draw in the viewer with:

• Videos and podcasts
• Opt-in e-newsletter
• Press room
• Printable activities guide and “best of” brochures and maps
• Links to class registrations, hotels, dining.

It’s clear that Enumclaw understands how a themed mini-site can be used as a foundation for a successful tourism strategy. You can download the Enumclaw, WA Marketing Plan & Style Guide here.

Niche Marketing

Micro-, niche- or mini-sites can be the key to implementing niche marketing in a way that still reflects a cohesive, consistent brand. An outstanding example is www.traveliowa.com, the official tourism website of the State of Iowa.

This site, though unified by a modular design and the logo “Iowa Life/Changing,” is really a collection of mini-sites. It deliberately presents no generic information, but invites the viewer immediately to express personal preferences by clicking on topics according to a variety of criteria: location, timing, type of experience or specific destinations.

Pages devoted to vacation themes, such as Iowa’s history, are structured around maps and linked descriptions of attractions that fit that theme. Individual attractions are promoted by large rotating photos that link to in-depth sites with interactive capabilities such as ticket purchases. On all pages the viewer can consult an events calendar and express personal viewpoints using Facebook or Twitter or RSS feeds. This is a site that invites visitors to dig deeply into their own preferences to make their vacation plans.

Mini-sites can serve any number of purposes within a tourism strategy. They can guide tourists through activities related to hobbies, historical figures and places, music, local products and special events. They can effectively promote initiatives that would be difficult to present comprehensibly in any other medium.

The Town of Markham, Ontario, for example, has an innovative festival every August called Doors Open Markham. It is an annual showcase of the community's historical and architectural heritage sites involving many institutions, historic buildings, heritage homes and private gardens. How can such a multi-faceted event be marketed in a bite-sized package? The answer is a mini-site, www.doorsopenmarkham.ca, that captures the spirit of the event while serving the key function of tourism websites – to answer viewers’ questions.

These examples demonstrate that a single tourism website does not need to be all things to all people. It can serve as a gateway to mini-sites designed for specific purposes and to appeal to audiences that your community wants to target in its destination marketing strategy.

Anya Codack, CEO

Yfactor.com

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Why are municipal tourism websites proliferating in North America and becoming ever more creative and technically sophisticated? Because they are recognized as one of a community’s most important economic development tools.

Many communities, especially in small to mid-sized population regions, have turned to tourism as a way to combat declines in traditional industries. The economic impact of municipal tourism promotion reaches deeply into the community, increasing the growth and retention of tourism operators and the spill-over effect of tourism spending, which is re-invested throughout the community.

Dollars spent developing tourist attractions and promotions can bring significant returns. Research in the Province of Ontario, Canada, by its Ministry of Tourism shows that every $1 million spent by visitors generates $553,400 in wages and salaries.

Websites are the first place that tourists go to find places to go and things to do. The impact of the web on tourism success was explored in an earlier series of Tech Trends articles, under the heading “The New Face of Tourism Promotion” (May 5-26, 2009). To summarize the trend succinctly, we can simply quote TravelWeekly magazine: “Google is the new travel agent.”

And of course a travel agent provides interactive communication. So a website that functions merely as an online brochure will not satisfy today’s travel consumers. Modern tourism websites compete by employing such tactics as:

In a difficult economic climate, an economic development organization must invest its money wisely and obtain a return on that investment. When it comes to building or improving a website, your budget should address two factors:

• Providing one-stop, real-time tourism sites that enable buyers to investigate, and plan their trips online;
• Posting stories, written by tourists, about various activities and destinations they have explored;
• Making use of online interactive marketing by posting or linking to video and photo sharing collections, blogs, social networking sites and consumer ratings.

Another important trend arises from the realization that tourists do not necessarily come from far away. Often they are interested to know what’s available in their own neighborhoods for a weekend getaway. Tourism websites need to cater to a variety of audiences including local visitors, regional visitors and out-of-the-country visitors.

To turn website visitors into visitors to your municipality, your tourism website should offer practical trip-planning tools including:

• Searchable directory of attractions, accommodations, activities;
• Event calendars;
• Lots of fresh content about things to see and do, including testimonials and third-party commentary;
• Lots of photos and videos;
• Extra promotion of primary area attractions;
• Ability to create itineraries and view maps.

For an excellent look at how these ideas can be put into action you can visit Durham Tourism (http://www.durhamtourism.ca), the colorful and attractive website of the Economic Development and Tourism Department of Durham Region in south-central Ontario.

This site invites interaction by visitors on every page. There are links everywhere. Visitors can click just once to find travel guides, photos, videos and the tourism department’s Facebook page. Information throughout the site can be bookmarked and linked to a wide variety of social-media services, helping to build a community of interest centered in Durham Region.

For people unfamiliar with Durham Region or who live some distance away, there are sections of the Durham Tourism site labeled in a user-friendly manner about “Things To Do”, “Places To Stay” and “Where To Eat”, with introductory information and lists of tourism products arranged by categories of experience. For those looking for entertainment and activities, there’s a comprehensive events calendar, links to local festivals and special events, and an “Explore Durham” blog by a travel writer talking about nature, culture, history and food in Durham Region – and a long list of other bloggers who respond and contribute their own home views.

The site has other imaginative ways to keep viewers engaged: a link to a computer desktop calendar that provides a new wallpaper image of Durham Region every week; registration for a Durham “Smarthost” discount card with exclusive offers, promotions and discounts for tourism products; a “Go Green” page with top 10 tips on how to organize environmentally friendly events – reflective of the Durham tourism motto of “Good Natured, Good times.”

It’s clear that Durham Region understands how the web can be used as a promotional foundation for tourism. Does your community have a website to compete with one like this?

In the next few articles we will explore some of the current web tactics for bringing tourists to town.

Anya Codack, CEO

Yfactor.com

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1-877-793-5016

In the decade to come, the number of workers reaching retirement age will be several times the number entering the work force. This will affect communities all over North America. Immigration will be vital to maintaining a workforce that can sustain economic prosperity, but immigrants are drawn overwhelmingly to large cities. What can mid-sized or small communities do to attract the immigrants they will need?

They can do what a number of large cities are already doing: identify the communities they wish to attract and draw them to their websites to explore economic-development opportunities.

Simple tips include:

      •Welcoming them and providing information in multiple languages
      •Providing useful information specifically valuable for new immigrants 
      •Making it easy to find the new immigrant information section on the website

They can also take steps to make their sites stand out from the pack by adding interactive tools and extending their messages out to immigrant communities.

Be Welcoming to New Immigrants!
The first step is to serve notice that your community is serious about welcoming an immigrant work force. For an example you can look to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Philadelphia has realized that immigrants have made up for the population loss that resulted from middle-class whites and blacks departing for the suburbs. Now it has become one of the top 10 US metropolitan areas for immigrant men business owners.

It has done so with the help of a website called The Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians, www.welcomingcenter.org/immigrationPA/economic.php. It connects newly arrived individuals from around the world with the economic opportunities that they need to succeed. Since opening in 2003, the site has assisted more than 4,000 clients from 70 countries to understand how to obtain health care, education, get around in the city, find a job, start a business, bank, pay taxes and much more.

Target Immigrant Women Entrepreneurs
Immigrant women start businesses, too. They comprise one of the fastest-growing groups of business owners in North America. This fact is well recognized in the Region of Durham, Ontario, east of Toronto on the north shore of Lake Ontario, where the mayor and council of the Town of Ajax proclaimed May 2009 as South Asian Heritage Month at the request of a not-for-profit group called Community Economic Development for Immigrant Women.

The group’s website, www.ced4im-wo.org/index.html, is designed to help train, match and promote the skills of immigrant women and small business entrepreneurs by exploring the business opportunities that exist within Durham Region. It is one reason why immigrants are choosing Durham as their second home after landing in Toronto.

Make it Easy to for New Immigrants to Integrate
In the City of Red Deer, Alberta, www.MovingToRedDeer.ca provides a regional one-stop shop for potential immigrants, newcomers, and businesses with foreign workers who want to obtain information on topics including housing, education, language services, healthcare, and the cost of living in the Red Deer region. The site has helped produce an increase in attraction and retention of new labour for the region and reduce its critical labour shortage.

Atlanta and other communities in Georgia have benefited from the state’s Entrepreneur Friendly program, which includes a section of its economic development website devoted to women, minorities and youth, www.georgia.org/BusinessInGeorgia/SmallBusiness/WomenMinoritiesYouth/Pages/default.aspx. Georgia leads the US in entrepreneurship, according to the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, and its fastest-growing business segments are women and minorities.

The Province of British Columbia, Canada, has a website devoted to encouraging immigrants to settle, work and start businesses in the province. At http://www.welcomebc.ca newcomers can find all kinds of easily accessible information on social and business topics, including profiles of regions all over the province. The site is part of B.C.’s Provincial Nominee Program designed to make it easier for skilled workers and experienced entrepreneurs to settle there. Since 2001, British Columbia has welcomed more than 4,300 skilled and business immigrants and their families through this program.

Encourage Online Interaction and Collaboration
There are numerous other examples of effective marketing to immigrants on the Web, but they have one general weakness – they tend to present information in one direction and do not facilitate interactivity. Your business attraction site targeted to new immigrants could gain an advantage by incorporating blogs, surveys and comment boxes, opening up a dialogue with the immigrant communities you wish to attract.

All of this activity would increase the rankings of your site in search engines and draw larger audiences to your messages. So would linking your site to online communities that are already a focus for activity among immigrant business people.

They are not hard to find. Think of how your community’s prospects for enhancing its immigrant work force could be strengthened by associating with groups such as, say:

      •Latin Immigrant Niagara Community Association, http://niagara.cioc.ca/record/NIA5922 
      •Ethiopian Community Association of Chicago, www.ecachicago.org/OurPrograms.asp
      •Greater Chinatown Community Association in New York City,
       www.design21sdn.com/organizations/316

Such groups are everywhere and can be approached to become allies to excite interest in your community as a place of opportunity. And they are not just on the Web but on social-networking sites and services. Facebook is a good example. Do you know how many organizations you can find by searching for “Latin people of Columbus, Ohio” (http://www.facebook.com/s.php?q=Latin+people+in+Columbus&n=-1&k=400000000010&sf=r&init=q&sid=9563136ed2f03cd1c5d428875dc7550c) or “Portuguese people of London, Ontario (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2244241716) ?

Reach out to New Immigrants
You can market effectively to new immigrants by reaching out through the web and social-networking sites to those already in your community, engaging them in dialogue, getting them involved in your investment-attraction programs and stimulating online activity. Your community could find itself at the very top of results pages when people search on the web for economic opportunities for immigrants.

Anya Codack, CEO

Yfactor.com

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1-877-793-5016