Have you heard of the Do Lectures? It’s all based on the idea that ‘people who go and do things can inspire the rest of us to go do things’… and it came from a small but clever country called Wales. Each year they invite a bunch of interesting and inspiring people down to West Wales to tell their story. The talks are available online and what they have developed is a great resource that anyone and everyone can dip into.
I’ve been following a guy called Gerd Leonhard for some time now. He calls himself a media futurist, I buy into what he is saying and I like the way he says it. He spoke at the Do Lectures last year around what he calls ‘the journey from egosystem to ecosystem’. It’s worth watching.
Thinking about some of the things I am involved with right now – including the interesting and big challenge which is how to get a whole country behind sharing good quality content in pursuit of becoming a more attractive and successful travel destination – a lot of what he speaks about resonates with me. That includes the following … in his words plus some of mine (and I guess that’s the point).
We used to live in an egosystem. Everything was big. Big companies, big government and of course big budgets. That has changed in so many ways. We are starting to figure out the value and benefit in small and the challenges and problems associated with big. We have been hugely empowered and we are living in a hyper connected economy.
Collaboration is increasingly becoming the business model of the future. Whilst not impossible, it is going to become increasingly difficult to achieve things on your own. The smartest stuff is often ‘proudly found elsewhere’ and there is nothing wrong with that. Embrace it. Add to it. Make it better. Success is increasingly dependent on return on engagement rather than return on investment. But in pursuit of that success we might have to give up some of the things we like and have become accustomed to. Including control.
These days nothing is ever finished and things are in a constant state of evolution and flux. Being in permanent Beta can be stressful. We have to get used to it.
Interestingly enough much of this will happen in the developing world. Places which are less constrained by ‘the way we do things’ and the structures that exist around them. Increasingly the wisdom of the crowd is driving new ways of doing things and a win win for all concerned.
Regarding that challenge I mentioned earlier these are exactly the sorts of things we are becoming acutely aware of where rising to that challenge is concerned. And I am pretty excited about it. More on that in the New Year so watch this space.
I remember recently seeing something like this on twitter, ‘When I don’t tweet I don’t get any work. When I do tweet I don’t get any work done’
Blogging is a bit like that and I have woefully disregarded our blog for more than a few weeks now. My head has been well and truly in the “do”. Do as in “doing”, not do as in “do do”. Sound familiar? Well here are some thoughts on how to keep ahead of the always on and everyone is a publisher game … or maybe just cope when you are not.
Prior planning and preparation prevents piss poor performance. Do they actually say that in the British Army? I imagine they probably do and, guess what, they are right. There is a lot of truth in the post Seven reasons why your blog sucks and what to do about it. Have you got a plan?
Of course that is a bit like your Mum asking you where you saw it last when you have lost something. A bit annoying. The other thing you can do is give yourself a helping hand and become better at curating content. For starters try the three things mentioned in the post How to use content curation to add value to your own website.
So, what about when you are really struggling? Well hopefully you’ll stumble across something that really resonates with you and some of the things you are working on. Close to the bottom of the list maybe but there’s even value in recycling good content across your own network.
Here’s a good example. We are talking to a bunch of people around paid search and how we might use the channel differently. Less as a direct channel and more of a brand channel. The video describes it better, ‘A Peer branding campaign. A media buy that is not a media buy. A way of tying Converse directly to consumer interest’. When God made Americans he must have had videos and presentations like this in mind. Neat!
We’re developing the web strategy for a new DMO (Destination Marketing Organisation) website. We’re currently looking at segmentation – building out our current approach to segmentation so we have something more granular that supports the development of specific customer personas. Once we’ve defined these groups and fleshed out a clear rationale for going after them we’ll present our approach to key stakeholders.
Getting collective and organisational buy-in around our approach to segmentation and targeting is critical before we move into defining a user experience for each group – mapping out appropriate user journeys and considering the resonant content to meet the needs of each one. Once we have clear picture of the desired user journeys associated with each customer group then, and only then, can we move onto defining detail around the information architecture, content strategy and functionality requirement …
As we’re working through this process I’m mindful of some of the bigger issues facing a DMO. Here’s a recently published presentation from the Manolis Psarros at AbouTourism that looks positively at some of the challenges. It’s well worth taking the time to watch the videos too.
Here are the presentation slides for today’s keynote at ENTER 2011 – the international conference on IT in travel and tourism. Big thanks to the keynote team – Jason Ryan from iCrossing and Tom Hall from Lonely Planet.
If branding online is at least in part reputation management destination brands face a number of key challenges – including content, socialisation, integration and measurement. We used to pay particular attention to things like tone of voice, style and design. In our new world we need to pay attention to things like our point of view and the way we behave as brands.
The emotional journey a customer undertakes with a destination brand involves a journey across awareness, engagement, emotional attachment and advocacy. From a marketing point of view the starting point used to be very much awareness. Now we can kick off that journey at the advocacy stage – harnessing the power of those that love us most and help drive awareness.
We drive awareness through seasonal planned activity. Our marketing campaigns. There is now a very real opportunity to amplify existing attention. Be it events big and small or that which you are gaining through social channels. That conversational content can be used to drive both awareness and engagement.
Test and learn is important. Figuring out how to do things – and more importantly how to do them well. Execution is as important as ever. Digital has empowered marketing departments the world over. The relationship with their agency teams is becoming more collaborative and one much less based around them and us. A relationship where everyone is learning by doing.
We still need a unifying idea. That big idea used to be the starting point. Integration used to be about delivering that idea across the full range of channels – traditional and digital. We need to develop models that support proper integration across owned, earned and bought media. One such model might be putting the big idea in the middle of everything and supporting it through targeted engagement initiatives which crowd source content, develop that content and the communities that exist around it. Through the creative use of paid media channels we achieve further amplification around those initiatives and we wrap it in our brand – or our point of view.
If a lot of what we do in the digital space is always on – including PR, social media, search and content development – one of the challenges is how we wrap that around our campaign activity and support it. So not only are we amplifying what we do where engagement is concerned we are using that engagement to support what we are doing across paid media channels. I talked about simple unifying approaches in the previous post Looking at trends. Is digital growing up? Developing a content strategy based on a content calendar might be one of those approaches.
We need to support such activity with a user centric approach to measurement. One that looks beyond traditional campaign metrics and web analytics by evaluating visitor engagement through measuring user behaviors both on-site and across the networks and communities our customers participate. One that focuses on Awareness (Do people know about us?), Actions (What are they doing when they find us?) and Advocacy (how do they feel about us?). A scorecard approach can be used to track an appropriate set of metrics and help deliver always on measurement to support always on marketing.
We’ve compared the waterfall marketer and agile marketer in previous posts – specifically Agile marketing and ‘give it a go and see what happens’. We’ve been talking here about how that relates to the agency world and it came up in a conversation I had yesterday too. So I went back to the original post – Sex and the Agile Marketer – and asked myself how does this apply to the agency world? Are there fundamental differences between agencies and what are they?
If the waterfall agency does exist is this a valid description?
Focus is on fixed annual marketing plans
Repeats familiar programmes
Runs a few expensive programmes
Focuses on the size of the budget associated to an account
Creative over analytical
Sees things as predictable
Brand is rooted in strategy
Makes decisions based on data from media owners
Fights for maximum budget each year
Sees client supplier relationship as them and us
By comparison does this describe a different type of agency?
Builds monthly, weekly or even daily plans
Is always testing new programmes and media
Runs many low cost programmes and the successful ones get scaled up
Focuses on the results delivered on an account
Analytical over creative
Lives in an unpredictable world
Brand is rooted in customer experience
Invests mostly in measurable programmes
Justifies budget from bottom up based on objectives
Sees client supplier relationship as an extension of the internal team
Clearly different. Either end of the spectrum maybe but there definitely seems to be a new breed of agency that has a different mindset and approach to things. One where fail better and fail faster is entirely acceptable.
If you are thinking ‘holiday accommodation where?’ you are probably not alone. We’ve just launched a small site for one of our clients in Portugal to support the accommodation side of their business. Built on WordPress it utilises the same custom template and resources their larger site is built on. Not only was this a very cost effective way of doing it but it also means the site retains the look and feel of the main Alentejo Adventures site. We worked with the online reservations site www.booking.com to set up online availability and reservations and integrated this functionality on the new site. Portuguese version coming soon.
Fair enough. But where is the Alentejo again? The opening paragraph in the Lonely Planet guide goes something like this and in my opinion like most of the stuff you read in their guides is pretty bang on.
Alentejo is like Portuguese fado music – ultra traditional, intriguingly diverse and lingeringly sentimental. Covering one-third of the country, Portugal’s largest region is bewitching, with its dry, golden plains, rolling hillsides and lime-green vines, rugged coastline, tiny whitewashed villages and majestic medieval cities. Its people are fiercely proud, yet somewhat melancholic.
So what’s the problem? Bottom line is, certainly in the UK, a whole lot more people are searching for holidays in the Algarve rather than holidays in the Alentejo. The difference in the volume of searches is startling – for some keyphrases the Algarve equivalent drives over a thousand times more volume than the Alentejo equivalent. There lies the next challenge and one that you can help crack if you can get the national tourism organisation working with the regional tourism organisation and both working with the businesses on the ground. You can probably guess where we are going with this so watch this space!
On some level, when a company offers me a form or an e-mail address as a way to get in touch, I feel slightly snubbed. Why so bloody aloof? Why keep me at arm’s length? I’m an alright person. My needs are not wholly unreasonable. I just want a few answers to a few questions that I can’t find the answer to on the website.
I feel pretty strongly about ‘Contact Us’ pages. They should be welcoming and encouraging. After a first date with someone you really quite like you wouldn’t ask them to leave a message so that you can pick it up at your earliest convenience. Surely you’d make yourself as available as possible. In fact if you really liked them you’d be waiting by the phone, e-mail, text and Skype! After all, this is the critical phase of what could turn out to be lovely long term relationship. Every move matters.
Here comes the trumpet blowing.
On one of the sites we’ve recently been working on we’ve been improving that all important ‘Contact Us’ page. Built on Word Press, it’s not as big and elaborate as a lot of the sites we work on but it doesn’t mean you can’t do things well. We think the end result is human, welcoming and super encouraging to ‘get in touch’. Like most of our website development work it all starts with a sketch and a conversation with the client and then (and only then) do we move into wire framing, information architecture and the techie build. I do the doodles and Pete and his team work their magic on design and build.
The final solution.
Here’s what we decided;
Introduce the lovely staff. Include images and links to find out more about them.
Offer four different ways to get in touch – telephone, e-mail, Skype and a call back form.
Reassure that there is no question too silly and that the staff speak good English.
Be upfront about response turnaround times, call rates and office hours.
Wrap it all up in a bunch of useful content and information. Flickr, YouTube, downloadable brochures, weather and the location.
Offer the option to sign up to hear from them again and win a holiday.
We also worked with the client to set up appropriate telephony and route calls via Skype so the customer only pays for a national rate call. Here’s the end product. You can let us know what you think and what we’ve missed by leaving a comment below. Thoughts welcome!
Yesterday I attended the Digital Marketing Briefing in London. It’s one of those meet the buyer type events and in my opinion one of the best organised ones. They do a good job at attracting good people and making sure they engage with each other. You know … the sort of thing that happens automatically at a conference in the US but something us ‘Brits’ often need a bit of help with.
They top and tail it with some great speakers – this year Chris Hunter got everyone sitting up in their seats with his reflections on a high threat bomb disposal tour in Iraq. Drawing parallels with the digital marketing world of course. Now I know that when I am under pressure and I find myself momentarily unable to speak it is because my body, in it’s wisdom, has decided to send my blood to the really important bits and not the front of my brain. Ambushed and hugely outnumbered by insurgence for him. A 5% increase in our average £CPC for me. More tangible parallels included ‘If there is no one in your team that can do your job should you not be around anymore you have failed to do your job as a team leader’ and ‘Your enemy are getting better and better. And they are getting better faster’.
Some of the other sessions were more the sort of thing you would expect – like digital futures and the inevitable ‘What does social media mean for your brand?’ Extremely valuable for sure but I can’t help thinking when I am at events like this that we can all consume this kind of content in the comfort of our own homes and the most valuable thing that comes out of an event like this is face to face contact with your industry peers. Yep, we are all connected through a multitude of social platforms but sometimes it’s really good to talk, empathise and get to grips with what people are really feeling, winning with and struggling with on a day to day basis. Furthermore, you very quickly become aware who is worth pursuing a longer term relationship with. I guess that’s the point. That’s speed dating.
We work across a wide range of sectors – from Dingo Hire Melbourne to Water Resistant Jeans in terms of what people might be searching for on Google. Our smallest client is an activity holiday business is Portugal. Well, actually not so small – the sister business supplies vegetables to the likes of Marks and Spencer and turf to Real Madrid. I am not saying that the other business is any less interesting but travel and tourism is a great platform for user generated content. Have a look at this and if you like it forward it to those you follow and look up to. Produced and directed by a bunch of Canadians while on holiday with Alentejo Adventures. Brilliant.
Good timing too. At the same time we were discussing the Alentejo Brand and what the essence of that might be. We reckon the video encapsulates it perfectly – let the good times roll! Alentejo Adventures might not be our most profitable account and it might not be as big as some of the other things we work on but sometimes it’s more than enough to work with nice people doing nice stuff. What’s more the holidays are great too and I would recommend them to anybody.
ENTER is the International eTourism Conference, promoted by the International Federation of IT in Travel and Tourism. This year it is being held in Lugano, Switzerland in February with keynote speakers from, amongst others, Google, Expedia and Switzerland Tourism.
We have been invited to speak as part of a session looking at Online Branding for Destinations chaired by Robert Govers, author of Place Branding. The session also includes speakers from tripadvisor, Tourism Montreal and Tourism Queensland.
Our section will cover building stakeholder communities online and will discuss some of the things covered in our recently written book chapter ‘The Digital Challenge’ to be published later this year in the 3rd edition of Destination Branding – creating the unique destination proposition. Including;
Digital channels have grown up – it represents a fundamental and revolutionary change.
Customers are getting increasingly turned off by one way dialogue. Customers are truly empowered and taking control of their relationship with brands – they are shaping brands.
Tools, technologies and channels – what’s available and how they are currently being used in the area of travel and tourism.
The four key challenges facing destination branding within the context of digital – Content, Socialisation, Integration and Measurement.
What does this mean for destination, travel and tourism brands?
What does this mean for the Destination Marketing Organisation (DMO) website?
