Top 10 Marketing Tips for the credit crunch

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1 Top 10 Marketing Tips for the credit crunch Laurence Bresh, July 31st 2008

2 1 PR If you have absolutely no marketing budget at all there is no better place to start than PR. Research shows that consumers are much more likely to act on something they have read in an editorial article than paid-for advertising with journalists seen as a more credible, neutral source of information. Ensure that you court your local or regional media journalists and get a feel for the kind of stories they are looking for. Don t forget some journalists may be receiving scores of press releases or phone calls at their desk every day, so what story do you have that is going to make your business stand out from the crowd? Perhaps you would like to offer a familiarisation trip for a journalist or organise a photo call if you have a new addition to your business you want customers to know about? If you are writing a press release never forget the 4 W s What, Where, When, Why in your information to ensure you cover the salient points. If you have a story of national importance, work with the Enjoy England PR team who are constantly selling in stories to national travel journalists every day. Don t forget PR does not just have to relate to print media. How about fixing up a slot to be interviewed on local radio or TV? Online media outlets, such as Times Online or Guardian Unlimited now have huge coverage too.

3 2 DECIDE ON YOUR USP Many businesses try to be all things to all people but often end up with the lowest common denominator. With 150,000 tourism businesses in the UK why should a customer come to your one? Some of the more successful businesses have decided to focus on a specialism that can really help them stand out from the crowd. In marketing jargon, this is often referred to as the unique selling point (USP). Some examples of USP s may be tourism businesses that provide special facilities or services for walkers or cyclists or a special welcome for customers with pets or families with young children. In fact there are often special quality assessment schemes that can guide you in making the necessary changes to your business if you are interested in these audiences ( It is generally good marketing practice anyway to target markets into sectors do you want to achieve a 40/60 split between business and leisure visitors, for example, or target guests from overseas from specific countries? Try not to just use the traditional marketing descriptions of age and socio-economic background it s easier if you can think of them by lifestyle type real people with real needs that you can meet. Writing a brief pen portrait of your preferred target markets will save you time later and make your marketing sharper. It may also make you think about tweaks to your product to appeal to these customers e.g. sustainable toiletry products for green customers. Each target audience will need a different marketing approach.

4 3 THE LITTLE TOUCHES/ ADDING VALUE Paying attention to the little touches can make all the difference to a weary traveller. They can take time to implement but are worth doing for the sake of satisfied customers, positive comments in your guest book (or, even better, web site) and those all-important word-of-mouth recommendations to future customers. For all tourism business, cleanliness is the number one factor that can make or break a successful visit. Here are some quick suggestions but brainstorm some others with your partner or staff: Drinks on welcome/ a welcome basket Books about the area Local leisure club pass Wi-fi Discount on local attractions/hotels Concierge service Disabled access Games for children while dining Express check-out Business card prize draws A pick up/drop off service

5 4 MAKING PAID ADVERTISING WORK HARDER FOR YOU When budgets are limited you need to make every penny work. Find out as much as you can about your current customers and what they read when they re not on holiday. For example, if many guests come from a similar area of the country it might be worth advertising in their regional newspaper. Official tourist board directories and publications have a very long shelf life and are often consulted as reference tools, so can offer very good value. Niche and special interest magazines can be better value than more mainstream publications. You might find that your customers are mainly city dwellers but aspire to the country way of life, in which case magazines like Country Living are ideal places to advertise. Think about the USP s you have pinpointed (above) and relevant publications that target these audiences excel in food?...bbc Good Food Magazine; family friendly?...family Magazine; upmarket travellers?...condé Nast Traveller; gay customers?...the Pink Paper. Ads need to catch your eye and have a clear call to action for your web site or other contact details. Sometimes less is more the old adage that a strong picture is worth a thousand words can be very true when it comes to advertising. Always make sure you negotiate a good rate and remember to track effectiveness! Make sure you find out how customers came to find out about your business and work out conversion rates from your advertising. If you have a web site you could even set up separate web entry points to track effectiveness e.g. yourbusiness.com/ fm if you were to advertise in Family Magazine for example.

6 5 WEB SITE It has never been more important for tourism businesses to ensure they have their own web site. - with 71% of Brits now searching out information on travel and accommodation on the Web it is no longer an optional extra. If you are a quality assessed accommodation provider or an attraction signed to the Code of Practice you are automatically entitled to a free entry on enjoyengland.com and visitbritain.com which, with 40 or so versions around the world, receive more than 20 million unique visitors per year. Make sure you work with your local/regional data steward at your regional tourist body to ensure your details are completely up to date. It s recommended that you keep any information you include on the Internet as up to date as possible with the correct prices, images and information as this often puts you at the top of a search list for a while. Also, web users will not have confidence in your product if the information isn t current. Entice and engage visitors more by promoting what s on and close to your business. One way of doing this is by linking to the relevant destination guides on enjoyengland.com, which help to show the wealth of activity on your doorstep. With more people being influenced by recommendations from other customers you can also get involved for free with social media sites. Activity can be broken down into two areas: a) Monitoring what people are saying about your brand which you can do through sites like Trip Advisor and by setting up Google Alerts ( with various terms such as your business name. b) seeding out information about your site and any special offers onto relevant blogs and forums such as regional ones, or relevant activity or special interest sites. Or you can set up your own blog and encourage people to leave comments about their stay and the location on it. Software such as TypePad ( is very low cost. Many tourism businesses are now moving to the next level with real-time booking. Again contact your regional tourism body for details bookings can be passed to you directly via the national, regional and local web sites.

7 6 GOOGLE ADWORDS Although there are many other search engines on the Web, Google is acknowledged as far and away the market leader and often delivers the bulk of traffic to your web site. There are two main ways of ensuring your businesses gets noticed on Google. The search results on the main/left hand half of the page are known as natural or organic results. Speak to your web editor about search engine optimisation techniques to ensure your site comes high in the search rankings. On the right hand side of a Google search results page you will notice the paid results. You can purchase your advert here via Google AdWords ( google.com) and, of course, this is a self-selecting customer base for you. You create ads and choose keywords, which are words or phrases related to your business. When people search on Google using one of your keywords, your ad may appear next to the search results. Now you re advertising to an audience that s already interested in you. The system works on a bid system other businesses may want the same set of words. Broadly, whoever pays the most will appear nearer the top of the paid search results. Generally, the more generic the terms e.g. England short breaks the higher the cost, the more specific Brighton Sea View Hotel the lower the cost. These costs can start at only a few pence per click-through to your site. The ranking also relates to the relevance and amount of content you have on a page linked to the term you are sponsoring.

8 7 EVENTS Why should customers return to your business throughout the year? Often events will provide that extra trigger to spur them on to revisit a location. Speak to your local Tourist Information Office, tourist board or look in your local newspaper to check out local events that are coming to your area. Is there any chance of organising a package deal with the event organiser? E.g. customers stay in your hotel while visiting the event? Perhaps the organiser can even work with you to provide free tickets that you could offer to guests as an added value incentive or as part of a sweepstake prize?

9 8 PACKAGING WITH OTHER BUSINESSES Sometimes tourism businesses can work together to ensure they provide a very attractive package for potential visitors. Are you able to talk to local partners about providing a combined accommodation/attractions/transport/food deal. The easier that you make it for customers to make an impulse purchase, and to save them having to carry out the research themselves, then the more successful you can be. But what about non-tourism partners? Why not see if you can agree a contra-deal with local retailers or pubs for instance to promote each others businesses? One memorable example of this was a joint promotion between Harvey Nichols department store and the V & A Museum in London the store promoting a fashion exhibition at the museum with branding across its floors and vice versa. Speak to your local tourism body, Business Link or Chamber of Commerce about putting you in touch with potential partners.

10 9 WORK WITH YOUR TOURIST INFORMATION CENTRE There are more than 500 Tourist Information Centres across England each providing free information to thousands of visitors and local residents alike. If you have a brochure of leaflet does your local TIC have a steady supply? Are the staff fully briefed on your business if they are asked by customers for recommendations? Perhaps you could organise a familiarisation trip for the staff to your business so they understand it first-hand? Do you produce a newsletter with information that may be relevant for visitors to a TIC? If so, why not add them to your distribution list. The TIC s often come together in a region to share ideas and they are also networked across the country via an extranet so that they can also swap information. Those TIC s with the Enjoy England Official Partner status (approx 260) offer information not just about their local area but also the whole of England. For accommodation providers, TIC s also offer the BABA service (Book a Bed Ahead) service. TIC ss are usually located in areas of high commercial value - can this be utilised?

11 10 WORK WITH YOUR TOURIST BOARD AND ENJOY ENGLAND Enjoy England works very closely with your regional tourism body and local authorities/destination management organisations. Try to provide as much information as possible to these bodies as they will, in turn, ensure we use this at a national level wherever feasible. We run a variety of brand, theme and tactical campaigns throughout the year ranging from Rural Escapes, City Breaks, Family Fun and marketing tied to films or TV programmes. We use an array of marketing channels from radio, outdoor posters, PR and national press supplements but at the heart of all that we do is the national tourism web site enjoyengland.com. Take a look at it now and consider how your business could fit with our marketing. Some of our marketing opportunities are either free or start at 1k for national exposure. In the short term, we will be running a campaign in Autumn 2008 to address the economic downturn and to position England as a value for money destination. Let your regional tourism body know if you can provide great offers or added value to customers in line with some of the suggestions above.

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