Destination marketing should tell a story… a compelling story about the traveler and the transformative power of their visit to your location. The story should be simple, and powerful, and compelling.
Of course, such a story will be setting an expectation for the traveler. If you set the stage, the traveler had better experience something exceptional. Otherwise, he will leave feeling duped…and that’s bad.
And I don’t mean bad as in you’ll lose a fan and he’ll never come back. It’s not just the old saw about keeping a current customer being far less expensive than winning a new customer. That’s old news.
The new news is that, this traveler is on MySpace, and Facebook, and LinkedIn, and Flickr. This traveler has a blog. He’s on Twitter. He has a group of close friends in the dozens, an intimate network in the hundreds, and an extended network in the thousands. And with a few strokes of the keyboard, he can let them all know that you’re full of it. And he’s not likely to be flattering or to pull any punches.
An essential aspect, then, of your destination marketing is authenticity. If you’re genuine in your message about what visiting your location entails, if you can deliver on what you’re promising your targets, then that same traveler will tell his network how incredible you are. He’ll write about it, and he’ll talk about it and he’ll probably post pictures of it.
And if you can’t tell your story with compelling authenticity, you have a problem destination marketing can’t fix. You might not even have a destination at all.
Thanks for visiting Serious Destination Marketing.
