Oh North Dakota Tourism—are you pure genius or did your weak will create a new wave in ad-making?

The point of quality print ads and ad campaigns make suggestions, and hint towards something that will create controversy. Well maybe not controversy but at least a reaction to catch the eyes of people. Let’s face it, America is just a little on the prude side—I guess we can chalk that up to the conservative fanatics that can’t have a change of mind or heart since their mind rules their heart.

That’s the case we have here; so what, the ad is a little edgy and at my first glance I’d say a legend would be similar to a cowboy, a cowboy cruising modern-day North Dakota who lives a single life hittin’ the saloons and ready to do what people in the prime of their life do—go out and have fun. Maybe North Dakota has a new Vegas-like ad campaign, even if they didn’t mean for it to be seen by the portion of people who think where what happens in Fargo doesn’t really happen, we just wish it would.

North Dakota’s ad works if their intent was to be racy and cause controversy to make their ads stand out more. I feel that if I saw their ads straight up that it wouldn’t make me book a trip to North Dakota nor even give anything close to North Dakota chance. What does work for the N.D. ads is being a little too edgy and having some people overreact to the point where the ads get pulled—that might make me think whomever let the ads get published knowing there would be hubbub where the creator of the ad itself took a little step too far and is now getting the dirty end of the stick pointed at by some—so maybe it’s a small success wrapped in a big package.

^{Guest post provided by Mike Ribaudo}

Strategic Marketing Group Releases 5^th annual Tourism Outlook Whitepaper

South Lake Tahoe, CA – While many look to the New Year as a celebration, the Strategic Marketing Group (SMG) sees it as a time for reflection, as well as publishing its annual Tourism Outlook.  It has just released its 5^th annual Tourism Outlook whitepaper, a comprehensive review of relevant economic and travel industry data as it relates to the California tourism industry.  Carl Ribaudo, President of SMG, also includes insights and personal observations from his extensive work with DMOs throughout California.

“The Outlook is our take on the tourism industry as we move into the new year, including both the good and the bad,” notes Carl Ribaudo. “This is our gift to the tourism industry, and we hope it is useful as DMOs plan for 2012.”

The Tourism Outlook is a must-read for any destination marketing executive.  It includes a wide variety of information including federal and state level economic data, airline, lodging and other pertinent travel data, along with SMG’s robust analysis and forecasts.

Download your complimentary copy of the SMG 2012 Tourism Outlook today.

Marketing 101 on the street

Everyone knows that selling hot dogs on a New York Street corner is a dog-eat-dog world, what with competition from other vendors as well as traditional brick and mortar restaurants that can be found everywhere.  So to survive and thrive in this rough-and-tumble world you need to know something about marketing. Take our friend here in this picture, a resilient entrepreneur, and look at what a great job of marketing he has done, lessons to be learned by all.

1. Location, Location, Location – Notice how this entrepreneur has set up right on the corner for potential high traffic and visibility.
2. Brand Awareness – Note the branding message Sabrett, one of New York’s finest hot hogs, located on umbrellas. This high visibility approach is done to get the message out and create as much awareness as possible.
3. Product Lines – Note the multiple product lines Hot Dog, Hot Sausage, Hot Pretzel, Hot Knish and Beef Patty.  This product mix is designed to both attract different segments from a snacker who just wants a pretzel to someone who wants a hot sausage and even cross selling..”Would you like a pretzel to go with that dog?”
4. Merchandising- Notice how well this entrepreneur merchandises his products, Photos for the food, actual  bottles of drinks (and notice the variety, not just Coke or Pepsi) and if you look close enough you can see the fresh pretzels right where you check out and pay (spontaneous purchase).
5. Customer Service – Notice how this entrepreneur is face to face with his customer, it creates a great opportunity for warm human contact.

All in all this vendors marketing efforts are concise, aligned and designed to take a potential customer from brand awareness to purchase in a very short time. Lessons to be considered in the new year.

What’s up with travel in December and January, and more importantly will it ever increase? A quick look at the occupancy trends in California reveals quite clearly that despite an overall occupancy rate of about 63%, December and January fall of the cliff with about a 50% occupancy rate.

2010 California Occupancy Trends

The conventional wisdom has been that most people who travel in December do so for family reasons around the holidays and that many people don’t travel in January because they are recovering from all the spending that they did for the holidays. The question I have then is is this all there is? Will the occupancy for these months always just be what it is?

Let’s look at another example.   Years ago Halloween was a sleepy little night where kids went out trick or treating. Then came a Coors promotion using Elvira and the rest they say is history. Halloween is now one of the most popular events every year, for both kids and adults.

Maybe December and January is just waiting for some very interesting new and exciting marketing. Anyone know if Elvira is free?

May your December be a balance of reflection and celebration, and may 2012 be successful in every way.

We at SMG aren’t good at tooting our own horn, but Carl’s recent award by the local Lake Tahoe South Shore Chamber of Commerce deserves mention, as much for the terrific video produced by our friends at Outside TV as for the recognition.

Carl makes some great points in this video, which are valid whether you’re a public agency or private organization.  Creating an environment that welcomes innovation and change is something we’ve tried to foster within our own company as well as with our clients.  So the award is a nice affirmation from the local community.

In an economic era that has been as challenging as we have ever seen, in a tourism industry that has also been slow to recover and in a time when the consumer has more choice an control of the purchase transaction including weather to take a trip or not, what kind or lodging to stay and what activities to do it all comes back to hospitality. According to Encarta World Dictionary hospitality is defined as “kindness to visitors: friendly, welcoming, and generous treatment offered to guests or strangers”.

Here is a great example.  There’s this little lodging property located on Highway 395 in Walker California. Walker has two or three lodging properties and a couple of seasonal restaurants. Most of the people visiting Walker are passing through or staying for fishing along the Walker River. But to their credit this property sends an important message to all the motorcycle touring riders that they are welcome at the property and they make the claim explicitly. Now I know it’s not possible to tell every segment they are welcome using a banner, but it is important to be reminded that the essence of the business we are in is to make people feel welcome. Too often our focus is rooms sold or average daily rate but it is just as important to let visitors to your destination know they are welcome. After all isn’t that what the business is all about?

Think about it. Perhaps the best marketing strategy for these challenging times is the simplest.

This week SMG hosted the 2nd annual Tourism, Technology + Marketing Workshop in South Lake Tahoe, CA. We saw nearly 100 attendees from the Lake Tahoe region and beyond, and were really excited about the roster of presenters, whose session ranged from immersive multimedia to developing an interactive strategy. While the topics were varied, if I had to distill the various sessions into a few words, it would be relevancy, content and strategy.

As Troy Thompson, Principal and Senior Consultant at Travel 2.0 Consulting Group noted during his keynote, relevancy is everything. Just because there’s a shiny new social media app out there, consider whether it really serve the purposes and needs of your consumers before jumping into it. If it doesn’t provide value to your audience, is it worth the investment?

If content creation or curation isn’t part of your strategy, then it should be, according to more than a few speakers. As Colleen Dalton, Director of Guest Experience at Mammoth Mountain noted, blogs are the rocket fuel of content creation. And for destinations, video is a powerful way to sell the experience of travel, as Mike Henderson, Owner of Arborglyph explained during his session on creating video. Or as Greg Murtha, President of VTour put it during his presentation on immersive multimedia, video speaks louder than words.  Jake Fields, Creative Director of Treeline Interactive, spoke about mobile and the role it (and mobile content) plays in his session on the future of the guest experience.

Content goes beyond what you create on your own. Think user generated content (reviews, blog posts, Tweets, videos). Impossible to control but necessary to monitor. After all, we all have online reputations, whether we’re aware of it or not. Recognizing that and understanding what and how to monitor (and respond) is both an art and a science, and dare I say a strategy. So the presentation by Kyle Duffy, Vice President at Revinate, on online reputation management was useful.

In terms of technology tools worth investing in, many will agree that Facebook is where their audience spends time. Out&About Marketing President Milena Regos’ presentation on Facebook for Business was relevant, offering up some good examples of brands doing it right. Along with a few shout-outs to local businesses.

A strategy can serve as a blueprint for action, and Eric Bengston, General Manager of Swift Digital, showed how to do just that in his session on developing an interactive strategy. Rob Gaedtke, VP of Creative Services at KPS3 Marketing, showed attendees how to map technology & media to the travel buying process, and better match their products and services to their consumers place in the sales funnel.

Huge thanks to all our presenters for being so generous with their time and expertise, to our sponsors for their support, and of course the attendees, for asking great questions (and talking about it on Twitter).

There was a lot of information to absorb, so much so that I know I missed some key points. So feel free to help out by sharing your thoughts and takeaways in the comments.

While it may seem that that the world of marketing is changing at a dizzying pace, it still makes sense to have a strong actionable marketing plan. Technology marketing has become increasingly important within the travel and tourism industry, but the process of market planning is indispensable in order to understand and clearly outline goals, objectives, strategies, implementation steps and measurement for any organization.

The lodging industry has seen the evolution of new distribution channels and the ability for consumers to assess the price and value literally hundreds of offers with the roll of a mouse.  Lodging properties need to be able to clearly define their offerings and to target the appropriate segments in order to be seen and heard in the ocean of options.   Having a marketing plan can serve as a blueprint for action.

SMG has developed a free market planning presentation specifically for the lodging industry.  Building Your B&B, Inn or Independent Property Marketing Plan is available below.

Nielsen’s quarterly report on the State of Social Media was recently released, providing an overview of how Americans used social media in Q3.  It’s clear, even without research to confirm, that social media usage is on the rise.  As you might expect, usage is growing among many segments, and a few of the more interesting statistics are summarized below.

• Social networks & blogs represent 23% of all the time U.S. Internet users spend online
• Women and the 18-34 year old demographic are the most active segments on social networks (women represent 62% of the total page views on Facebook alone).
• U.S. Internet users spend more time on Facebook than any other social site.
• While most users access social networks on computers, mobile use is growing.  In fact, the number of people over 55 years who access social networks via mobile phones grew by 109%.
• Nearly 40% of all social media users access networks via their mobile phones
• 70 percent of active online adult social networkers shop online, 12 percent more likely than the average adult Internet user
• 53 percent of active adult social networkers follow a brand

There are plenty of takeaways from this report, including the following:

One, destinations need to have a social media strategy and be present on these sites, particularly Facebook, which sees an enormous amount of visitation and time spent on the site by U.S. Internet users.  Identifying where your segments spent time online is an important piece of the strategy development – and you might find that the best performing social sites are not necessarily the ones with the greatest number of users.

Two, content is an important piece of this strategy, for it is content (both created and curated) that can be viewed, read, watched and shared.  For lack of a better metaphor, it’s the fuel of social media.

Three, mobile can’t be ignored, especially with the increased adoption of the mobile web by the Boomer generation.   At a minimum, it’s a mobile website.  At a maximum, it’s a full-fledged campaign.  Again, it’s important to identify what your segments are doing on the mobile web to ensure that your efforts are effective.

Finally, recognize that social media is something that can help influence trip decisions, so it’s important to make it easy for fans, followers and others in your audience to share your destination with their friends and family.

Got any other suggestions? Share them in the comments.

Shameless plug: You can learn more about creating a content strategy as well as a social media strategy at the SMG Tourism, Technology + Marketing Conference on October 12th in South Lake Tahoe.