marketing + strategic Project
management

Planning

We help destinations become very clear on who the most profitable visitor personas are for their destination, and then map out the key messages, touchpoints, gain points and pain points across their whole travel purchase journey.

We analyse and curate numerous sources of data and insights (desktop and stakeholder consultation) to develop these personas and maps, to ensure validity of the project.

Implementation

Once the Personas and their Journey Maps are established, then we develop a project plan to attract and convert more of these Personas to the destination.

The project plan includes, but is not limited to:

• • Undertaking a digital audit of the optimisation of the Persona's new touchpoints, and identifying opportunities for digital optimisation, product and experience development and engagement with the Persona across their travel purchase journey
  • Implementing experience development strategies to ensure the destination has the right experiences on the ground to deliver the experience and support the Persona's travel motivations
  • Plan and implement strategic Always On and Campaign marketing messaging on relevant platforms to drive demand and conversions from the Personas

Managing the 'Always On' marketing initiatives for a destination is a critical, and strategic marketing and visitor servicing project.

Always on Marketing Management encapsulates the day to day content marketing actions for a destination, including management of social media, email marketing and blogging strategies. All three work hand-in-hand to inspire new visitors, and help those who are committed to travelling to your destination with their visitor servicing needs.

Planning

It's really important that the destination has developed their Visitor Personas and Journey Maps prior to getting started with this project - as this infrastructure and intel is required in order to implement any messaging online.  If this project hasn't been completed, it is our recommendation that this is the first step.

Implementation

Once Personas are developed, the project plan deliverables include:

• • Auditing and optimising your channels to ensure to best practice standard and to ensure consistency
  • Plan and implement an ongoing content calendar across multiple channels (using segmentation variables to deliver specific messages to relevant Personas) 
  • Measure and report on relevant KPIs on a regular basis, identifying engagement and trends

We know that one of the ongoing projects for destination marketers is to constantly evaluate and manage a visual asset library.

With a professional photographer on our team (Lachie!), how could we not offer his skills, expertise and creative eye to destinations seeking assistance to optimise their visual asset library to better inspire visitors!

In a nutshell, we can work with a destination to:

• Undertake a gap analysis of your visual asset library (as it relates to your visitor personas and key experience themes)
• Categorise and systemetise your visual asset library
• Plan and execute strategic photo and video shoots to produce the right content for implementation across multiple channels to support your destination marketing strategy
• Professionally edit your assets for specific purpose (social media vs website implementation)

Supporting Visitor Servicing teams to evolve their activities to provide visitor servicing support when and where their high yield visitors expect it is a non-negotiable.

While we support destinations and visitor centres via our annual Visitor Servicing + Destination Marketing Bootcamp, we know some organisations are looking for an extra hand to activate the many projects they have on their to-do list.

These type of special projects could include:

• We can undertake a Visitor Servicing Review - Review all current visitor servicing touch points (including the ROI of your Visitor Centre) and analyse the performance of those touchpoints against your destinations visitor personas travel purchase journey. Provide recommendations for consideration to improve the engagement of your visitors with your visitor servicing investment.
• We can audit your Visitor Collateral and provide Recommendations for Improvement - Strategy + Content + Distribution Review + Updates, to ensure collaborative, streamlined, on brand and relevant collateral across a destination's multiple stakeholders, to ensure it drives real dispersal, length of stay and bookings/visitations for a Region.
• We can perform an Online Listing Audit for your destination - TripAdvisior, Google My Business, WikiCamps, ATDW listing. We can audit and identify key gaps and train staff how to update these to ensure your destination has a comprehensive digital footprint to help capture and convert visitors in the region.
• We can develop a Local Advocacy Plan - Local residents and businesses are highly trusted and key visitor servicing advocates, and can help with strategy and implementation. 

Building a destination website can be an overwhelming and all consuming project, that you swear you'll never do twice in a lifetime! 

Our approach to destination websites is iterative, rather than all consuming. We recommend using data and insights over a longer implementation process to help develop a customer-centric destination website that effectively attract and convert more of your destination's Visitor Personas.

Whilst we don't build destination websites ourselves, we've worked with many website developers in the past (great and not so great) and through this process have a qualified understanding of the requirements to building a site that converts more visitors to actual visitors to your destination.

There are several ways we can work with you to deliver a strategic destination website:

• We can train your staff in best practice destination websites - so your team can confidently plan and implement your own destination website strategy
• We can write your website strategy - which includes training on best practice destination websites, so you understand the language and intent of the strategy.
• We can develop a website development brief and manage the tender process on your behalf - as well as appointing and briefing your new Agency to complete the build. This is a collaborative project, as it's important the Project Manager understands the 'why' behind the brief, and liaises with the Agencies from the start!
• We can project manage the build in consultation with your team - as I said earlier, this is a longer burn iterative project, using real-time data and insights to build the website over a longer period of time.

We have a keen interest in working with destinations to deliver special projects, specifically around experience design and development.

These type of special projects could include:

• Working with your destination's stakeholders on a 'game changer' experience eg. activation of National Parks, RoadTrips/ Journeys.
• Undertaking a product gap analysis and recommendations report, to uncover the opportunities within your destination to attract more of your high yielding Visitor Personas

A galvanised local tourism industry is key to driving sustainable growth of your visitor economy.

An engaged and supportive industry enables:

• Your organisation to better implement your projects, as you will have the support of your industry
• Positive local advocacy around the value of tourism, and increased understanding of role of the visitor economy more broadly
• Councils and other organisations to continue to invest in visitor economy projects
• Collaboration between operators to deliver exceptional experiences

We work with destinations to review and recommend actions and provide education to stakeholders on how to improve engagement within your industry, to strengthen your industry from the inside out.

Obtaining relevant and valid data is an essential ingredient to be able to make sound decisions when it comes to investment in your tourism industry.

We have experience in briefing and managing research agencies on behalf of destinations to implement projects to gain a deeper understanding of their visitor economy.