Establishing Strategic Positioning

The first part of our strategic planning process is research and discovery. During this time, we interview organization leadership, hold a team visit in the case of destinations and attractions, conduct secondary research and host a creative strategy workshop with leadership and stakeholders.

We first started working with tour operator Old Sod Travel on their digital advertising in 2021 as people started returning to travel. During the research and discovery phase, we learned why travelers would want to use their service, what differentiates them from competitors, and what luxury travelers are looking for. The results of this research formed the strategic positioning for the brand:

• Transformational Experiences. Relaying the emotions of travel and connect with the aspiration of planning a trip of a lifetime.
• Authentic Luxury Tours. Guests wake up knowing they’re someplace special and spend the day among the new and different. This is about having cultural immersion within a destination, and soaking in high-end experiences.
• Hand in Hand Planning. Tours are fully customized for each trip, there are no pre-set itineraries. The travel consultants at Old Sod tailor each itinerary to the travelers wants and interests.
• Once, Again. Taking more than one trip of a lifetime. Crossing off multiple bucket list items with the singular experiences Old Sod provides to many destinations.

In addition to positioning themes, every strategy we work on contains strategic insights. Both the insights and strategic positioning form the basis for the key messages and inform the messaging across all channels. With these

What are Strategic Insights?

According to Mercer Island Group, a top agency search firm that works with some of the world’s largest brands, a strategic insight is “a penetrating truth that elevates strategy, enabling highly differentiated tactics.”

Defining a strategic insight starts with collecting research and data points that fit into several focus areas. We pull all that knowledge together through evaluation and analysis to come up with a strategic insight for each focus area. These focus areas typically are brand, consumer, and competition. We’ll sometimes bring in community for a focus area too, as it fits so well with destination marketing.

Using Your Data

Once the data is collected, we look at it to draw conclusions and comparisons about what is there. The data is telling a story, and we want to look at what’s on the page and make sense of it in terms of the focus area it’s in. As we pull these interpretations out of the data, we distill all of the research and work into clear, strategy-driving statements that will lay the foundation for messaging, approach and tactics.

The Overall Strategic Insight

Creating the focus area insights involves going beyond the data on the page, beyond the comparisons and coming to the big-picture truth for each focus area that makes the most sense for your organization. In defining a strategic insight, we look for the point where the insights from the 3-5 focus areas intersect. It is a compelling statement rather than a simple summary. It’s all at once an “ah-ha!” and an “oh! of course!”

Once we reach the strategic insight, it informs the messaging, tactics, approach and much of the rest of the strategy. It is a piece of the strategy that we come back to again and again to keep the marketing pointed in the right direction (the goals).

A Strategic Insights Example

This example comes from our work with Cayuga County, NY on the Harriet Tubman campaign. These brief summaries show a glimpse into the research completed and findings of the competition, product and consumer analyses. Then, you’ll see the corresponding insights and overall positioning statement.

Focus Area: Competition

Three other destinations can claim Harriet Tubman among their residents during her life: Dorchester, Maryland; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; St. Catharine’s, Ontario. Of the three, Maryland has focused most heavily on Tubman in their tourism marketing with both Visit Dorchester and Visit Maryland promoting her prominently on their websites.​ However, the communities don’t seem to embrace Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad story as most of the focus is on the history. 

Competition insight: Cayuga County has the opportunity to tell her story differently by embracing her spirit.

Focus Area: Product

Auburn is surrounded by places known for their part in the equal rights and women’s equal rights movements. Auburn is full of places Harriet visited and frequented along with tributes and sculptures. ​Unlike anywhere else, Auburn is Harriet’s final resting place, her chosen home. It’s where she brought her family, married her husband, owned her own home and land, and spent her time in freedom. Auburn is where she lived as an equal with her neighbors and found community.​

Product insight: Auburn has historically been a leading community in equal rights and still is to this day.​

Focus Area: Consumer

Social justice travel is an upcoming tourism trend. Socially conscious people’s demographics and travel patterns have not been widely studied. However, social justice tours and tour operators have started to pop up. Articles about how to travel in a socially conscious or equitable way are being written. These travelers’ interests overlap with popular travel trends today: conscientious spending, experiential tourism, connecting with nature, togetherness, demand for authenticity, searching for fulfillment. Socially conscious travelers want to learn the history that’s not taught in schools. They want to go deeper and especially show their children the Truth, the history and break stereotypes.

Consumer insight: Socially conscious travelers want to learn the history that’s not taught in schools.

The Overall Insight

Now with our insights identified, we looked at how these insights intersect and where Cayuga County could stand out from the crowd in telling the story of Harriet Tubman in Auburn, New York.

The challenge: How do we promote Cayuga County’s current and historical connections of equal rights to attract visitors?

Overall insight: Welcome visitors to walk in Harriet’s steps to discover their truth in Cayuga County.

The post The Art of Strategic Positioning for Attracting More Visitors appeared first on Travel Alliance Partnership.

It has been a decade of tourism marketing! The official date of incorporation for Break the Ice Media is October 14, 2009 which makes October officially our “birthday month”. As the marketing and tourism industries have changed, we have evolved right along with them. When we started our company, we were focused on integrating social media, which was basically Facebook at that time, with public relations to help small businesses reach new customers. Small businesses and the communities that they support are at the heart of what our company is built on. We have learned and grown alongside our clients and I wanted to share ten key changes that we believe have made an impact on tourism marketing.

Digital marketing is the new standard in marketing

Ten years ago, tourism brands and businesses in the industry were trying to figure out what to do about Facebook and Twitter. One article in PCWorld, “2009: the year of the Social Network” described it like this:

“It looks like 2009 will be known as the year that social networking went mainstream,” said Dan Olds, an analyst with the Gabriel Consulting Group. “This was the year when Mom, Dad, and even Grandma found Facebook and Twitter, and used them to make the Web a part of their lives — often for the first time.”

Flashforward 10 years and there are countless social networks with more than 4.4 billion users. More people are online than ever before and we have changed the way we search, recommend, shop and buy products, services and travel. Digital is no longer an added tactic in a strategic marketing plan, it is now central.

Greater focus on measurement and attribution

Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI) is not new. The importance of measuring results from a campaign or marketing program has always been on the minds of marketers, business owners and destination marketers. But with the advent of digital marketing and technology, there are more ways than ever to measure a campaign’s success. Tools like Google Analytics, Facebook, email marketing platforms and others offer resources for tracking and understanding campaign effectiveness. New tools and technologies such as Adara’s destination marketing cloud and Arrivalist help marketers understand how marketing campaigns convert target audiences from awareness to action. 

Expanding tourism product

We are seeing more destinations developing tourism product. From explosive growth in the craft beverage industry (think wine, beer, spirts and cider) to new hotel developments, to new tour products, to new ways to experience a destination (think AirB&B), we have been on an upward curve of tourism product development. This development brings new opportunities; new reasons for visitors to come to a destination and greater reach of tourism markets as this development hits second- and third-tier markets.

On the other hand, this growth has also provided some challenges as attractions and tourism businesses have seen declines in visitation because there are more places for people to be. This is especially noticeable in smaller markets where tourism product development may be outpacing visitation growth.

The insider trend

As more product and information becomes available online, visitors have been increasingly turning to the DMO for help and guidance. DMOs have found creative ways to deliver insider information to the public, basically sharing the inside secrets about where the locals go. We have seen this through focused blogs, newsletters, Instagram takeovers, video series and more.

Rise of the Influencer

Visitors and consumers are looking for ways to help them navigate the many choices available to them and Influencers have been able to fill that gap. Influencers come in many forms, from micro to macro, serving niche audiences from families to girlfriends to LGBTQ and covering topics from fashion to consumer goods to travel. With different needs and expectations than traditional media, reaching and working with influencers successfully has become an art in itself. To help our team and our clients approach this market, we wrote an ebook offering every tool in our toolbox.

Less focus on the press release

In 2009, one of the key tools in our PR toolbox was the press release. We used it as our cornerstone piece of content and then re-purposed it into social posts, email marketing and follow-up pitches. That is not the case anymore. One can no longer rely solely on a press release to do the trick. Most PR placements that we receive are accomplished through a strategic PR plan. That includes direct pitching, desk side visits, FAM tours, Influencer visits, media shows, reactive PR to inquiries from resources like HARO and occasionally a press release.

Changing local media landscape

As local newspaper, TV and radio outlets race to adapt to a digital world, we have seen a shift in focus, high turnover in journalists and strengthening of niche publications. National corporations have been buying local media outlets and centralizing reporting. Many times, those reporters are no longer in the local market. If they are, there are fewer of them and they are stretched thin. This has caused us to change our approach to local media, including keeping up with the changes as many news reporters leave. We work to pitch those local niche publications in a similar way that we approach national travel media. We have found success in helping overstretched reporters through release style outreach that they can repurpose into a story with little editing.

Marketing automation

Marketing automation is no longer just a B2B tactic. Today it allows marketers to automate tasks that guide individuals through the visitor journey. Effective digital campaigns use automation to increase conversions through on-going nurturing campaigns that lead a visitor from consideration to the decision to visit. Tools like Salesforce, Hubspot, Infusionsoft, and Sharpspring have made this tool more accessible and easier to learn and use.

Mobile websites are now table stakes

Most visitors’ first impression of a business is its website. More and more often, they are browsing those sites through their mobile devices, which can include phones, tablets and e-readers, rather than a desktop. That means it is no longer acceptable to have a website that does not adapt for mobile viewing. Many website designs are starting with a mobile first approach to ensure clients don’t lose potential business before they’ve even explored the site.

Freestyle trips in the group market

The groups and motorcoach market is stronger than ever. On a recent episode of Destination on the Left, a tour operator told me that these are not the golden years of travel, but the platinum years. Tour operators have been seeing steady growth over the last decade. What has changed is the types of groups that are traveling, their interests and how they want experiences. Group tours are starting to add in more “free time” and more “choice,” allowing individuals the ability to customize portions of their trip such as meals and excursions. This freestyle approach was taken right from the cruise industry where you see more choice for passengers than ever before.

The next 10 years

It has been a fun decade of growth, learning and evolution. We are excited about the next decade of tourism marketing and are already watching some trends that we believe are going to make a huge impact on the future. A few of those include:

• AI
• Data science
• Increased international visitors to U.S. 2^nd and 3^rd tier markets
• The evolving role of the DMO
• Accessible tourism
• Overtourism

But more on those trends later.

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Tactical marketing is marketing execution. As I mentioned before, it’s posting on social media, sending out newsletters and communicating with your consumers. Strategic marketing is marketing with a plan, tying it to business goals and executing the tactics in a way that aligns with the plan. You can have tactical marketing without strategy (although I don’t recommend it!) but you can’t have strategic marketing without tactics.

So how does one go about adding strategy to existing tactical marketing?

Since you’re already marketing on your social media and other owned channels (website, newsletter, etc.), keep going! We’re going to add strategy to the mix, which may change what you’re posting and how you’re saying it. There’s no harm in maintaining your current tactics while you develop a strategy.

Define Your Objectives

The objective is a business goal you want to reach through marketing. What are your top business goals? How can marketing support them? Maybe you want to drive more traffic to your website, bring more people to your storefront, or sell more packages or products through an online store. These objectives will work toward increasing business in an obtainable way.

Develop Your Strategy

Strategy is how you are going to achieve the objectives. It helps you focus on the big picture before going into the day-to-day tactics. If a goal is to build brand awareness in a community, then a strategy may be to gain coverage with local media. If a goal is to drive more traffic to a website, your strategy may be to promote website content. Strategic marketing also means defining a target audience, positioning and evaluating your resources.

Tactics

Yes, you already have tactics in place. How can you adapt them to your strategy? If we’re looking to increase website traffic, and promote content, tactically you have a lot of options. You can come up with a content marketing plan to create fresh, shareable content. You can also evaluate your current channels. How often do you include links to your own website on social media? Newsletters? Are people clicking when you do?

This is also a good time to evaluate your tactics in relation to your new strategy. Do all of your channels make sense? Should you consider adding a social media channel?

Now that you have a strategy in place, you can continue to build on it. Revisit your strategy at least once a year, or more often depending on what you’re doing. Pull statistics for your tactics and use that to evaluate growth toward your objectives. Add on and adapt your strategy as you grow and as your business goals change.

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