By Abigail Thorpe
The tourism industry is a giant moneymaker—$3.1 trillion each year, to be exact—which means it should be an important part of your marketing strategy. On and off season, many businesses rely on visitors to their area to boost their sales, especially if they’re in the hospitality or a related tourism industry.
Like any marketing plan, your tourism marketing plan starts with strategy. Determine who your target audience is beyond just tourists. Do you appeal to families, adventurers, millennials? Next, what are you looking to do through your marketing. Attract new business? Grow your name? Become the place to stop for new visitors to your town?
Next up identify what makes you a place your target tourist demographic would want to stop. Are you unique to your town or area? Can you provide information they won’t get anywhere else? Do you have an experience to offer that sets you apart? Maybe you source ingredients that are specific to the region for your food, wine or beer. Or perhaps you offer the ultimate in a unique experience visitors don’t regularly have. Whatever it is, identify what makes you “vistitable”, and use that to promote your business through storytelling and advertising.
Local guides are a great way to promote your business and offerings. Utilize them to highlight your business and offerings through unique stories, vivid pictures and up-to date information, event listings and contact information.
Beyond local guides and publications, social media is a great way to reach visitors. Utilize your sites as a discussion platform to answer questions about the area or what to do, and to drive excitement through events, stories and even user-generated content. Whatever you do, show people why you make a difference in your community, and why they should want to make you a stop along the way.
Need some help generating new ideas, strategizing or managing and creating your social, digital, and print content? Rocket Fish Digital is here to help, just drop us a line.