Living in a hot tourist destination, like Southwest Florida, opens up online marketing strategies that are much different than marketing a B2B website. Recently, Pinterest, the latest social media darling, brandished its marketing chops to the travel industry. Jetsetter recently held a travel contest (reports Mashable) that increased their metrics considerably: 100% increase in referral traffic, 150% boost in page views.
I see a number of tourist businesses who could benefit from Jetsetter’s success by understanding the following:
Know your target audience. Travel and photography appear to be a no-brainer for a photo sharing site like Pinterest. The “pin it to win it” contest engaged readers where they live. Adding the Jetsetter Curator title conveyed both status and authority, helping to create brand ambassadors overnight.
Innovation is not just for big brands. Small business and nonprofits can learn from Jetsetter’s creative use of content curators. This was a key component to demonstrating engagement with their target audience, and they did it on a shoe-string budget.
Every business has a unique selling proposition. Brainstorm areas in which you can confer authority to a typical customer. A hardware store could create a “Nuts & Bolts” Curator. A confectioner could identify “Chocolate” Curators. A non-profit food bank might create a Food Trucks photo collage, and so on.
Google loves user-generated content. An unspoken benefit to the contest is that Google seems to award a degree of authority status to Pinterest links. Create a Pinterest board of photos compatible to your industry and link to a handful of social networks, like Google+ and Facebook, and watch what happens when you perform a search query for your targeted keyword phrase. So far, this basic tactic is being rewarded.
Use research to create more engagement.The contest also provided the actual editors with ideas for future destinations they could focus on, giving their members a better overall experience in the future. What would catch a visitor’s eye that would send them to your website? Then, once they arrive, how might you turn a visitor into a buyer? Split testing an email popup to snag a new visitor’s email address would be one option.
This case study proves that engagement need not be as difficult as you might think. Old school marketing principals, like knowing your target audience, still apply in the online world. It’s just that now the person who starts the conversation is your customer, not you.
