Okay, so we’ve gotten the destination marketing essentials out of the way. I know some of them seem a little edgy, but it’s not all that bad. I just wanted to make a point; that point being this: most impediments to successful destination marketing are self-inflicted.

Will a little attention in a few key areas, you can create a simple, inexpensive marketing program that just kills last year’s numbers.

This site will be discussing the finer points of focusing on your target, hooking them with emotion and crafting a compelling story that will draw them in and make them just rabid to come see what you’re all about.

It will be more difficult for governmental agencies than for individual attractions, but not impossible by any stretch of the imagination. There are lots of great campaigns floating around out there. And that gives you lots of good ammo when convincing the higher-ups that if this is worth doing, its worth doing right.

But for the rest of you, getting there will be easier than you ever thought it would. All it takes is tapping into the resources that you probably take for granted every single day, and using them to build your destination into something that starts growing itself.

I hope you stick around to find out more. In the meantime, thanks for visiting Serious Destination Marketing.

A lot of time, destination marketing is marketing by committee. It’s a CVB or Tourism Board—an extension of city government, and there for tied to someone who has a job because of politics. And that really is a shame.

Because politics is a game of ego and agenda. As such, if someone in politics wants the venture to succeed, then they likely have a counterpart who wants to see it fail. Far too often destination marketing efforts are caught up within this dynamic.

Here’s the painful truth: your marketing can’t be about politics and be successful. It can’t be about ego and agendas, because it has to be about the traveler. If it’s not about the traveler, it simply isn’t going to be effective.

But even in a political situation, your success only needs one thing to get a foothold: one person to take a stand for it. And I mean really take a stand. Someone will have to be accountable for your program if it is to succeed.

Do you have the courage to do that? Because that’s what it will take. You will take the blame if it doesn’t work. And you will likely get begrudging credit if it succeeds. Unfortunately, it’s not going to succeed if someone isn’t there to act as a security blanket for the political process.

But if you are, if you can convince people to just get out of the way while you do what needs to be done to increase traffic, then you will succeed. Just remind them that the only ego that matters it the travelers, and the only agenda that matters is getting heads in beds and dollars in the doors.

Now, if you’re NOT a CVB or T&T Board, you’ve got it easy. That is, as long as you can get out of your own way long enough for the traveler to take center stage.

Thanks for visiting Serious Destination Marketing.

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.

The expensive destination marketing ad buys can get ridiculous. 5 figures for a one-time ad? Maybe 3 ads, depending on the publication you’re going after? And for what?

Half the readers of the publication aren’t even going to see your ad. And only a fraction of those that do are going to be in your target market.

Rather than shooting at everything that moves with a general ad that tries to appeal to everyone and hope you hit something worthwhile, you should be tightly focusing in on the particular marketing segments, and tailoring great ads to those specific markets.

So, you have great “outdoor life?” What kind? Families who are going car camping? Adventure trekkers out for a two-week hike in the backwoods? Off-road biking? Bass fishing? Fly fishing?

These are all entirely unique segments with little common ground between them…and that’s just the “outdoorsy” types. That doesn’t include your atrs scene, or your shopping and entertainment, or your history tours, or any of a dozen different great things about your location.

Your best bet, if you’re a CVB looking to get the most out of their destination marketing is to get yourself some local people who are into each scene (not business owners, but the actual patrons themselves)—say five or six people who are very active in their particular area of interest—and pay them $300 a month to maintain a blog about that (Three posts per week) and a special “press pass” of 50% to those venues where they do what they like to do.

Or find out who some big names are in those circles, and invite them on an expense-paid trip to experience everything your locale has to offer. What kind of publicity would that generate?

Or create a weekend festival to celebrate that aspect of your community.

Support the local venues in your community (I mean really support them), and they will build the word of mouth you need to bring in the visitors.

And the same holds true for restaurants, shops, tourist attractions, recreational facilities and resorts. Make it easy for the right people to find you, and you won’t have to go out looking for them.

Thanks for visiting Serious Destination Marketing.

Your destination marketing is a message best delivered by a single, specific, attitude-packed voice.

I know, you want everyone to come see how incredible you are. But that just isn’t going to happen. Period.

The more general and generic your message, the less effectively it will communicate what makes you so great. So step out of that “safe zone” and proudly tell those people who are most likely to get a lot out of a visit, exactly what it is they will get out of it.

And say it in a way that will resonate with those people, even if it runs the risk of turning off entire other demographic groups. Chances are, they were never “yours” anyway. And even if they are, we’ll look at how to get them back a little later.

Thanks for visiting Serious Destination Marketing.

*Shock!* *Gasp!*

“But we have so much to say about our exceptional destination! Marketing it depends on us getting our story out!”

No. It doesn’t.

Here’s a bitter pill to swallow: no one cares about you. They don’t care about you’re history, your excitement, your refurbishment or your long list of attractions or amenities. That’s the problem we have to remedy in the first place…and you don’t do that by talking about yourself. Even forget what you think you know about selling benefits instead of amenities. You have to go much further than that.

What do they care about, then? Themselves. You have to convince them that they are going to have an experience beyond compare. Not “a relaxing vacation,” or a “nice break from the normal.” But an transformative experience that will change the way they look at…something. Life. Love. Family. The beach. Crabcakes. Whatever.

How do you do that? By painting a picture and placing them squarely in the middle of it.

That is the crux of strong destination marketing. If you can do that (and deliver the experience in reality), then your traffic will grow year after year. One of the things we’ll look at here is how to do just that.

Thanks for visiting Serious Destination Marketing.

Okay, so here’s the overview: what must take place in order to create a killer destination marketing campaign.

1. Forget about your destination for a moment and focus on the traveler. Forget what you think you know about selling the benefits instead of the features. You have to go way beyond that.

2. Find a SINGLE VOICE that expresses the attitude of your destination. You can’t be all things to all people. And you’ll never create an ad that everyone likes. Focus on the people who SHOULD come to your place.

3. Put the shotgun down and pick up the blowgun instead. And, no, I’m not explaining this here…you’ll just have to keep reading.

4. If the story you tell doesn’t match reality, THEIR story will spread faster than yours.

5. There is no room for egos or agendas. Either it’s about the traffic or it isn’t. Leave the belt-notching for the WaterWorks Board.

There you have it, a crash-course in destination marketing. Follow these guidelines, and you can create a campaign that will generate traffic for a decade or longer. Ignore them, and go the way of the ghost town. Now…let’s look at how we put these into play.

Thanks for visiting Serious Destination Marketing

Destination marketing can be some of the most incredible work out there. Beautiful vistas, unique landmarks and truly inspired character gives businesses in this industry an advantage over many industries, where the only thing that differentiates one company from another is the name.

And yet, often as not, most destination marketing efforts fall sickeningly flat. The ads are boring. Informational. Safe. Bland. The positioning statements are dreadfully trite, or fantastically empty (I’m looking at you, Atlanta).

The entire point of this site is to start a conversation about the obstacles to great T&T marketing (not the least of which is politics…I’m no fool), and what we can do to get over, around, under or straight through them.

Because if we remember the true point of destination marketing is to help more people enjoy the things that make our destinations great, then it’s a whole lot easier to come up with a great, potent, effective campaign.

So sign in, speak up and let’s start making magic out there!

My name is Danny Thompson, and I’m a freelance copywriter specializing in destination marketing.

This blog is a manifesto of sorts on destination marketing. It’s intent is to help destination marketers create more effective efforts to increase traffic and revenues, whether you are a CVB, a tourism attraction, a hotel, vacation rental sales and booking agents or one of the ancillary industries that benefit indirectly from tourism and travel.

I’ve helped CVBs rebrand their cities, developers launch resorts and condo developments, and countless other T&T-related businesses create collateral material, educational programs and special events…but that’s not what this site is about. For more about me, visit my professional site www.lefthandedwriter.com.

Here, instead, you will find the philosophies that have helped me generate tremendous results for destinations.  I hope you find  the information here useful. Better yet, I hope it helps to raise the bar for destination marketing as a whole.

Thanks for vistiting Serious Destination Marketing.