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.

1. Do Your Research

Get a hold of data to inform your strategy all the way down the line. This could be primary research, like a survey to gather data from your customers/visitors. It could also be secondary research, performed by another company, that you find online. There are lots of great resources out there start with some of our favorites in the travel, tourism and hospitality industry:

• ADARA
• Destination Analysts
• Family Travel Association
• Longwoods International
• MMGY Travel
• NYC & Company
• US Travel

2. Write a Brand Summary

Start from the beginning. A clear understanding of your brand will strengthen your ability to differentiate your company from the competition. Understand the following questions: Why & how did the brand start? What need did it fill? What are its values?

Consider where your company and brand are today. Where are your major markets? What are your feeder markets? What markets would you like to expand into? Are you seasonal? How many customers do you have? What is your 12-month goal?

In creating a marketing plan, also consider what channels you currently use to market. Do you forecast an increase, decrease or status quo in your marketing budget in the next 12 months?

3. Define Your Target Audience

Who is your target audience? Understand who you are talking to, what is important to them, what their wants and needs are, and how your brand can fill them. Consider demographics, psychographics, lifestyle, brand perception, and beliefs of your audience.

Understand the perceptions in the marketplace about your brand. By tapping your current customers, you can gain valuable insight to help identify growth markets, pinpoint new product offerings and make marketing decisions easier. Year-end is a great time to conduct an online survey of your customers to collect new information.

4. Add a Situational Analysis

Strategic marketing plans must consider what is happening in the world around your organization. Consider trends, current issues, competitors and the competitive environment when preparing your plan. Strengthen this section of your plan with a SWOT analysis.

5. Outline Marketing Objectives

Good marketing objectives or goals will drive your marketing plan. These are obtainable goals that are set after you have identified problems and opportunities. They are the highest level of your strategic thinking and each plan may have more than one. A strong marketing plan will have measurable goals.

Sample Marketing Objective: Increase hotel occupancy during off season of November – February by 3% over the next 3 years. 

6. Create the Marketing Strategy

The strategy is how you will achieve your objectives. It’s the big picture game plan on how objectives will be reached. The strategy includes audience(s) to be targeted, desired positioning, allocation of resources and marketing mix. A plan may have multiple strategies.

Sample Marketing Strategy: Promote winter activities to reach winter-minded audience.

7. List the Tactics and Implementation

A tactical marketing plan is an actionable marketing plan. These are the tasks; the detailed action plan that includes timing and details of all major steps.  Tactics include collateral, digital marketing, social media, websites, public relations, and trade shows. Other tactics include conferences, email marketing, word of mouth, direct sales, and lead generation. These are all the things that you will do in order to accomplish your objectives. This section includes a tactical implementation strategy and/or timeline.

Sample tactics:

Increase photography library with shots of destination during November – February 

Develop relationships with tour operators specializing in winter tours 

Host 2 winter-activity focused influencers 

This section needs to include your marketing budget and you will need a detailed budget for each tactic. We have seen many businesses create fantastic marketing plans that sit on the shelf because they did not have adequate funding for the implementation. Consider your existing resources and capacities against your dream tactics. Be realistic with the amount of tactics and your timeline. A solid strategic marketing plan is one that clearly identifies the objectives, strategies and tactics and includes the resources to get it done!

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How Often to Measure

First, consider when you’re going to pull your results. It’s easy to pull it all at the end, when the campaigns are complete and the metrics are crystal-clear, but that doesn’t help you pivot and consider your strategy throughout the campaign.

Most of our clients receive monthly reports from us, but we are actually checking in on the data every 1-2 weeks, depending on the tactic. This level of scrutiny helps us understand the fluctuations as they may align to key moments in time, in order to make adjustments as needed. We also pull cumulative key metrics for longer periods of time, such as quarterly or annually, in order to spot variations and trends. Try setting up a schedule to look over your metrics regularly, in addition to a comprehensive report at the conclusion of a campaign to help determine its success.

Now, let’s break down the type of data you will be measuring, and the timeline based on the PESO model.

Measuring Paid Tactics

For paid tactics that are digital, data is provided right from the get-go. Within hours of launching a Facebook or Instagram ad, you will be able to see the number of people your ads reached and some of the early actions taken based on your campaign objectives – like link clicks, likes or shares. Even with these early insights, it can be important to let your ads run as planned without making knee-jerk reactions. These are important to monitor, but especially on Facebook, your ad may still be in the learning stage and improve as time goes on.

If you’re running digital ads, check on them each week and pull a report at the end of the month (or even slightly before) to analyze,  in order to create the next month’s plan before seeing final numbers.

For ad placements in traditional media, you’ll typically receive the data available at the end of the run. But you can ask what data is available to you and request a specific data set in your report from a media partner prior to the campaign’s end.

Measuring Earned Tactics

The data for earned tactics comes mostly from media placements. We use the Barcelona Principles for measuring media placement success on a 100-point scoring scale, and to recognize the full impact of earned media outreach campaigns. The Barcelona Principles identify the importance of goal setting, the need for outcomes instead of output-based measurement, the value of social media, and take a holistic approach to measurement and evaluation. As a measurement tool, the Barcelona Principles also help us make note of which earned placements generate the most traffic to a client’s website or social media accounts or encourage readers to complete an action such as buy a specific package or purchase tickets to an event.

Additional Earned Tactic Metrics

In addition to those scores, it can be important to consider what topics were pitched during the month, how many media you’ve reached out or responded to and what publications they represent. Look at the number of media members you’ve invited on a FAM tour, the number of individuals you’ve hosted, and the number of partners you featured on their itineraries. When working with influencers, plan out ahead of time what stats they are willing to provide and within what timeframe. Ephemeral content – such as Snapchats and Instagram stories – disappear after 24 hours, so you will want to make sure your influencers are capturing and sharing stats associated with these posts. Even for those hosted media members that may not be considered influencers, we keep track of their social media posts that mention the client, destination or partners.

While you may not pull numbers and measurement until you’re ready to report, we highly recommend reviewing any earned placements as soon as you see them. This allows you to take immediate action if a link is pointing to the wrong website, a fact needs editing, or a name is spelled wrong.

Measuring Shared Tactics

Social media analytics for shared tactics are always available, and there can be a lot of data to sort through. Consider first what metrics are available and more importantly, which are most relevant to your goals. It might be follower growth if you are looking to broaden your audience in key markets, or engagement numbers if you are looking to inspire your audience to take a specific action.

These numbers can fluctuate from week to week, but like digital ads, we recommend keeping an eye on the data each week and adjusting as needed. Monthly reports then give you a full overview. Look for other available insights – such as the breakdown of your audience by gender, age or location, as well as what type of devices people are using to browse these sites. It may also be important to note what days of the week and time of day the majority of your followers are on the platforms. Facebook will tell you how successful different types of posts – such as videos, links or photos – are with your audience. Using this data, you’ll be able to make informed decisions of what kind of content you share and when you share it.

If you have Twitter, you’ll need to activate your analytics before you can see any data at all, at Analytics.Twitter.com. And you will need an Instagram Business Profile to gain access to Instagram Insights.

Measuring Owned Tactics

Google Analytics tracks owned tactics like your website and blogs. We recommend pulling stats at least every month, although you can review your dashboard to see metrics at any time. While you will want to pull the data that relates to your specific goals, there are general insights that are often useful. For example, the number of new visitors will tell you how many people are finding your site, while the number of pages viewed per session, time spent on the site, and bounce rate will give you an idea on whether your website provides the content these users are looking for. Keep track of these numbers monthly in a chronological chart so you can spot developments and trends.

We also recommend keeping yearly data readily available in order to easily compare annual trends or spot areas to turn your attention to. For example, you may notice that your website traffic always drops during the shoulder season and picks back up a few months later.

Other Owned Tactics

Other owned tactics, such as webinars, podcasts or videos, can be measured by the number of registrants, listeners or downloads you receive in a given period. Observe what topics seem to do better than others, what speakers seem to draw in a bigger crowd, or how far out you need to promote a webinar in order to bring in enough registrations. You may also be able to pull demographic information such as the location and age of your viewers, or upon launch, how many viewers watched the presentation in its entirety or who engaged further by downloading additional resources.

For email newsletters, track the number of subscribers you have, open rates, how these relate to the subject lines, click rates and what call to actions perform the best. You will see some data immediately after the newsletter goes out – but be sure to give your newsletters a few days to settle in people’s inboxes before pulling the metrics. Measure these on a similar basis to your distribution – whether it is weekly or monthly.

Putting it All Together

Whether you are reporting for yourself, a small team or an entire board of directors, it’s important to not only keep track of these measurements but pull them together into a summary on a regular basis. Consider benchmarks or industry standards, and once your report is complete, start to analyze your metrics as they relate to the greater goals you set. Interpretation is where these data points turn into a story – and the more often you analyze these, the better you’ll get at seeing the trends in the data.

Whatever you do, choose a measuring system that makes sense for you, the size of your business, and the scope of the campaign. Results are the best way to meet your goals – but they are also key in setting sustainable goals and determining the future of your organization.

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