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Ah, life on the beach. It’s many people’s dream retirement destination. Luckily for us, and everyone else that calls the Gulf Coast their home, someone else’s dream is our life. But as great as it is living by the water, for businesses in our area, it can be extremely profitable. Living in an area where tourism is a main profit-generator, businesses can be either very successful marketing their brand, or sometimes miss the mark.
As tourism fuels our economy here, local businesses look forward to times of the year when tourists are most abundant. Summer, as you can imagine, is the peak-season to travel to the beach for vacations. Spring break and winter getaways are also very popular. But the times of the year people visit the beach play into their demographics too. Fall and winter yield a higher number of elderly visitors, seeking refuge from the harsh winters in the northern parts of the United States, while spring is when many college students vacation for their Spring Breaks.
Local businesses prepare for tourists year-round and adjust their marketing programs based off of the season and the common demographics of visitors for each season. At least most business do. Now that digital marketing is here to stay, and is an important player in the marketing sphere, make sure your tourism marketing includes digital.
Facebook Advertising
Targeted social media advertising lets you select exactly who you want your ad set to reach. Whether its adults aged 55 + whose interests are traveling and shopping, or adults aged 18 – 25 whose interests are water sports and the beach, you can determine your exact audience with Facebook advertising. This lets you get your message out to the people that are most interested in your product.
Social Media
Facebook represents one of the largest online communities in the world. You can connect with friends, groups, and business pages. Set up a business page to engage with fans and followers, inform them of yours services and products, specials and discounts and create a two-way conversation with them instead of just spitting out promotions. Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest are just a few others that have excelled for businesses. Travelers will look up businesses on social media channels to see if they are still in business, check out user reviews and what the business is posting about. Check out BIS Designs' social media services.
SEO
Provide travelers with the information on destinations they are looking for at every stage of their planning process. When deciding upon a destination location, internet users go to search engines, with Google dominating the market at 67%. Google is the key search engine that you should focus on because of all the applications Google owns, such as Google Maps and YouTube, which aids in SEO. The higher your business ranks for your specific keywords, the easier it will be more tourists to find your shop, restaurant or whatever your business may be. Google Maps is now becoming a fast and easy way to search for businesses in the user’s location. There is a lot of SEO works that goes into making your business searchable. Page titles, great content, meta tags, backlinks, and HTML code are just some ways to use SEO to increase your ranking. If you feel overwhelmed with the task of SEO, that is what BIS Designs is here for.
Pay-per-click
PPC marketing uses search engines in a different way to help market your business. PPC is paid advertising that shows up at the top of the search results. Say someone searched “water activities in Gulf Shores.” You can use PPC to have your water recreation business show up at the top of the search results for a limited time. This does not take the place of organic SEO, but helps to showcase your business quickly.
Websites
Make your website responsive on mobile devices. This is a MUST. The majority of travelers, and online users in general, use their mobile devices to search locations and business. In 2014, one half of all local searches were performed on mobile devices. This number is higher in tourists because they are on the go and don’t have a desktop readily available when they are traveling. Use landing pages attached to your website that redirect searchers to coupons or discounts on your products.
Travel Blogs and Review Websites
Reach out to travel bloggers. These bloggers are followed by thousands of people and are opinion leaders online. Pitch your business to a well-known travel blogger and if they agree, these bloggers will come visit your business and write about their experience. User reviews on businesses hold more sway than traditional advertising. You can manage your online reputation through blogs and business review sites, such as TripAdvisor. Review website are a key component to reaching travelers and helping make their decision whether to visit your business, or not.
These suggestions are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to digital marketing designed for tourists. There are many different outlets and methods to help communicate your message to your target audiences. At BIS Designs, we have a highly-educated staff that understands digital and how to effectively market your business. Give us a call today! 251-923-4252
As 2015 is winding down—with only a couple more months left until the New Year, we want to discuss some marketing trends to look out for in 2016.
One main theme we can expect is the continuing evolution of technology and how it will affect our marketing strategies. We can expect that 2016 will only become more wrapped up in the latest apps, social media platforms, and the mobility of the internet.
We’ve seen a rapid growth in the amount of internet users getting online via cell phone and tablet as mobile devices have advanced. And as mentioned above, with technology only becoming smarter, faster and more portable, it’s clear the majority of internet users are leaving the desktop computer in the dust.
But just what exactly can we expect for 2016 in terms of digital marketing? Well no worries, don’t expect something completely foreign. Actually, there will be many marketing strategies from the past few years still taking the limelight, but just progressing more. For example social media.
Social media has been around for the past decade, at first attracting only a few pioneers and internet savvy-users, but now everyone and their grandmothers have a Facebook account. Social media and the terms we use to describe social media are growing at a light-speed pace. Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Snapchat, are some social media channels are just a few out there. Everyone is searching for the next social media app. And businesses can make great leaps in their marketing as they embrace social media.
So without further ado, here are the predicted marketing trends we should expect to see in 2016:
1) Social media is becoming a main resource for articles and information.
Facebook and Twitter particularly have seen a big increase in users reading articles and watching videos on their platforms as opposed to reading articles and videos on the actual publisher’s website.
This means social media marketing will become even more important for your brand. If users are getting a brand’s information straight off social media and rarely going to its website, that means you need to be active in social media if you want to be heard. The more social-media centered our society gets, the more people will be looking for brands on social media to get their information from.
Note: This does NOT mean you should not have a website. Websites should be a mandatory tool for a company. Websites help in SEO rankings as well as provide necessary information to customers that you just can’t put on a social media channel.
We all know social media is key to creating two-way communication with your customers, as well as creating meaningful relationships with them. A.k.a. not just spitting advertisements and promotional material in their faces. Refresher: social media should be used to engage and entertain your customers and potential customers, not directly promote your brand: Think that more PR and less marketing.
2) Desktops are being left behind.
Mobile usage has gained rapid popularity and will only gain more traction in the future. In fact, it’s looking like the desktop may never go back to what it once was. As of this year, roughly 2,000,000,000 global internet users get online on a mobile device, which has surpassed the number of global users that use a desktop computer.
Google even decided that in order for a company to be ranked in SEO, the company has to have a mobile-friendly website, but doesn’t have to have a desktop-compatible website necessarily.
Put simply, if your company’s website is not responsive to different devices, then expect to be hidden from a majority of your potential customers.
3) Video Advertisements will grow.
You’ve seen them in many places already- on websites, before your video on YouTube and in social media, but in 2016 video has the chance to become a mainstream digital advertising component. Currently, Google Search is testing out video advertisements. So instead of just those sponsored ads you see at the top of the search results page, embedded ad videos will live there too.
4) Personal, meaningful content will be more important than ever.
As mentioned above, digital marketing needs to be relevant and useful for a company’s target audience.
It should be about providing interesting, relevant information that is within your business’s industry. For example, social media is where people want to read about topics that are important to them – not read about why they should buy your product. Entertain them, provide them with information they are interested in, but don’t try to directly sell them.
When it comes to a website’s content, make sure it remains meaningful and interesting to your visitors. Give them targeted messages that appeal to their interests and preferences.
This is true when it comes to content and digital advertising too. There are so many ways to collect consumer insights: what they use, what brands they like the most, what products are of most interest to them. By finding out these insights you can target your content to appeal specifically to a certain group of people.
If you walked onto a car lot and told the salesperson exactly what you wanted and they showed you cars that were completely outside of your preferences, you would be confused and probably aggravated, right?
Create content that is purposeful and specific to your target audience.
We can expect to see more than just these four trends in 2016, but the trends listed above will be more important and influential.
The only question is: is your business ready for the change? We know digital, that’s why we are in the digital marketing business. Our goal is to help businesses get the most out of their marketing efforts and help them navigate effectively through the digital world. Let us help you!