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Essential tools for tourism marketing

Sabrina Martinez

May 19, 2020

Originally published by Beacon Media + Marketing. Updated and revised by Jennifer Gracey, Web Content Strategist & Writer on 07/14/23.

Making a significant post-COVID comeback, the tourism industry is roaring back to life with exciting opportunities in tow for travel agency and hospitality-based businesses, brands, destinations, and cultural and heritage experiences in the city.

In fact, CEO and President of U.S Travel Association, Geoff Freeman is on record saying, “Robust domestic leisure travel demand has been the driving force in the overall [travel] industry’s post-pandemic comeback… the surge we experienced in [2022] is starting to moderate, we expect [the trends in] this top customer segment to remain resilient in coming quarters.”

If you’ve not yet prepared your tourism marketing strategy, now is the best time to begin. Especially if you’re aiming to get and stay ahead of the competition by capturing your portion of the market share. Whether your primary clientele caters to domestic leisure, domestic business, or international inbound travelers, incorporating some (or all) of these 5 focus areas into your overall tourism marketing strategy will help your marketing campaigns gain traction, attract, and produce results.

Want help with your tourism marketing strategy or just want to talk business? We’re here for that! Schedule a free consultation.

1. Marketing for Hospitality

If you’re marketing your business in the hospitality sector, showing your potential customers what a great experience they can have is as important as telling them. Whether you run a restaurant, or a boutique accommodation experience, showing your customers and guests where they’ll be staying and eating allows them to not only feel confident they’ll enjoy the experience. But, it also allows them to more accurately visualize themselves having the same experience.

Visual Storytelling: What’s your story?

Taking time to review where you’re currently with your story-craft and overall tourism marketing strategy will be tremendously helpful in determining what direction to take things next. Set aside some time to do an in-depth internal audit of your company’s visual imagery. You’ll want to look at your:

Website
Blog Posts & Articles
Social Media Profiles (FaceBook Page, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, TikTok, etc)
Google Business Profile
Crowd Sourcing & Review Sites (Yelp, Foursquare, etc)
Listings on Booking & Reservations Sites (Booking.com, Expedia, Airbnb, etc)
Anywhere else your hospitality company appears online

There are some significant questions you’ll want to ask during your visual imagery audit. They should cover things like:

Does everything I’m seeing across our customer-facing visuals look like my brand and the picture I want to paint for my visitors and future guests?
Do our visuals match the experience guests and customers expect to have when they come?
Do the colors, shapes, fonts, artwork, photographs, and videos tell a cohesive story that not only makes sense as a whole but, compels an emotional response from our customers?
Does the imagery invoke a positive or negative emotional response? Why? How?
Has the approach we’ve taken with our visual imagery so far been strategic and consistent in telling our brand story across the board or a hodge-podge mash-up?
In order to level up our first impression to potential guests, is it time to rebrand or get more serious and focused in our approach to visual storytelling?
Will it be a better investment of my time and skill sets to do a rebrand ourselves or hire branding and marketing professionals to really help elevate my brand?

How do you use Google Business Profile?

If you’re not yet taking full advantage of Google Business Profile, you’re really missing out. Previously known as Google My Business (the name changed in 2021 in Google’s attempt to simplify the user experience) Google Business Profile is a powerful tool every business should take advantage of — particularly for companies, as it’s FREE. When utilized regularly, a well-set-up Google Business Profile can really help drive organic traffic to your company’s website.

Your Google Business Profile will contain the name and address of your company, operating hours, website URL, and a detailed description of your company and types of service offerings. It also allows you to post updates on special promotions or events, your customers and guests to post reviews, and more. If you’d like to learn more about Google Business Profile and what it can do for your marketing strategy, click on the linked article below for a more detailed overview.

Read more: Google My Business is the perfect tool for a tourism marketing strategy tourism marketing

Want to get started with Google Business Profile and not sure where to begin? Or need help getting the most out of this tool? Get in touch — as Google Certified Partners, we’re here to help!

2. Marketing Tourism Destinations

Is your company a destination or experience-centric business? There many tools available for you to use in order to gain attention from visitors. Among the ones you’ll want to seriously look into and take utmost advantage of is: search engine optimization (SEO). SEO refers specifically to the strategic use of specific and related keywords that users type into their Google ‘search’ bar when researching a specific topic. When properly integrated into your tourism marketing strategy — having a well laid out SEO strategy exponentially increases the likelihood your webpages, blog posts, and other content appear higher in the SERP (search engine results page) on Google as well as other sites your company may appear on or have a profile set up with.

We’ll summarize a few of the techniques we use here, but if you want to learn more, this post we wrote on blogging for Arctic tourism is an illustration of how blogging can help get the word out about your destination and inspire people to come visit.

SEO for Your Website

A foundational premise of good SEO is: write engaging, informative, and relatable content people want to read. This is Google’s benchmark for providing quality content to people and continuing to build their reputation for being a good search engine. Really search engine optimization is your way of helping Google, and them helping you in return. Here are some more basics:

Read more: Top tourism marketing strategies for 2020 and beyond.

With the travel industry and tourism on the upswing, it’s safe to assume people are looking for your specific destination. Because of this, it’s important your website is the one they see at the top of their SERP on Google. By optimizing your content to rank for certain keywords (as mentioned already in the paragraph above) you increase your chances of getting eyes on your website. To help your site list higher on the results page than your competition here’s two of our top must-do SEO optimization tips:

Use the name of your destination in headers and in your body text.
Use the name of your destination in the alt-text of any images.

When auditing your existing website (or building a new one), it’s vital to remember: Your website is the online equivalent of your physical premises. And, it’s critical the way your website looks and feels to users should represent your company as accurately and relevantly as possible.

Information Maintenance: Keeping Your Website Accurate

Ensuring your website stays up-to-date and easily accessible by providing information people want to find in the places they expect to find it is critical when talking about tourism marketing strategies and how to give your potential guests a positive first impression.

Initially, people may use your site as a tourist information resource. And this is where providing them with accurate, high-value, and actionable information encourages them to take the next step by visiting you in real life. To learn more about the process we use at Beacon for building websites for our tourism and hospitality clients, click the link just below:

Content Marketing: Key to Capturing Your Audience’s Attention

In a nutshell, content marketing is: Marketing intended to garner an audience’s interest in products or services. It does not involve direct selling and nor does it typically involve paid ads. Content marketing does, however, make use of both written and visual content to show what your business offers, build support, and reinforce your SEO strategy. In fact, the purpose of content marketing is often categorized in the following ways: educate, entertain, inspire, and convince. This is where blogs and social media really help to build out a brand’s content marketing strategy. The most obvious forms of content marketing are:

text (such as blog posts)
video
imagery
customer reviews

Blogs

If you’ve not already developed a robust blogging strategy for your company, you’re truly missing out. Why? Well, they’re truly a perfect match for your tourism marketing SEO strategy! Blogs are an excellent convergence point for the integration of features Google loves. Blogs can also be used to implement a few sneaky tricks in order to get extra engagement.

The Inbound Marketing Approach

At Beacon, when writing blogs for our clients, we make use of a philosophy called inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is best understood with a bit of help from a cat. For example:

What happens if you stand up suddenly and begin chasing a cat? Typically skittish animals, the cat will be surprised at your unexpected and sudden movement then scamper off as fast as it can.

What about if you stand perfectly still while holding out something our cat really wants (like a piece of freshly cooked grilled fish?) If it’s like many cats we know, it’ll come right up to you and quite happily take the fish from your hand.

In this illustration, think of your clients and customers as the cat. Inbound marketing tells us to, “Provide clients and potential guests with content they find useful and interesting.” That way, when they’re in need of your particular services, they’ll remember you and trust your business.

In the context of tourism, this could mean: writing insightful, value-added blogs highlighting the locations you run tours in, the specific activities you organize, the equipment that you rent out, etc.

The Waterfall Method

We also make use of the waterfall method. This is a strategy that makes Google’s algorithm rate your blog posts more highly. Google really likes it when external websites provide links to your pages. These external website links are the digital equivalent of the more traditional word-of-mouth customer referral.

The reward is: Because someone likes your content enough to refer and promote it to others, Google notices and ranks your page higher thus moving you up in the SERP.

The caveat is: External links just because someone liked your content aren’t easy to come by. To help things along, we use our own blogs to provide those links by creating a waterfall structure of interlinked content! By writing an overarching “summary” blog designed to provide a high-level overview of a specific subject or group of interrelated topics, and then writing more detailed blogs on each facet of that subject, we link all the blogs together. Thus encouraging Google to trust that the content in each post is useful.

Videos

Video marketing is something we’ve discussed lots lately and for good reason: Video is the closest we come to genuine human interaction, without physically being together in person. This is why video is so exceptionally powerful right and why it’s only going to continue growing in relevance and importance as a powerful communication and connection tool.

A Powerful Visual Content Marketing Tool

We’ve written before about stats that show why you should be using video. (Those are available here.) The important takeaway is: video can and should be used everywhere. This includes in blogs to provide a quick synopsis or to further illustrate/highlight a key feature. They can run in your ads, on your website as a personal introduction, or welcome to the company — a message from or interview with the founder is always great. In short, videos should appear anywhere and everywhere you post content about your company.

Video is Memorable

People love video because it’s easy to consume and makes it easier for people to recollect the information presented. To briefly tie this back to something we mentioned before, “Give the consumer what they want and they’ll come back time and time again.”

The tourism marketing and hospitality industries are particularly well-suited to video. You’re offering experiences that people already crave, which look visually appealing, and that inspire people. Make the most of it!

3. Marketing Heritage and Cultural Tourism

When marketing heritage or culture, the most important and foundational thing you can do is: identify your target audience. When doing this, keep in mind, different aspects of heritage or cultural traditions may appeal to different demographics. You’ll have the most success in this as you work to tailor your marketing plans and strategies to appeal to the interests of each of those specific demographics.

Content Marketing and Immersive Experiences

When we discussed content marketing in point two above, we pointed out its ability to immerse people in the experience. This immersive experience aspect is even more valuable when talking about marketing something as story-based as culture and heritage.

Harness the Power of Story-telling Mediums

The use of high-quality, engaging written and video content really allows you to showcase the story of your site or attraction. By giving them a taste of what it looks, sounds, and feels like to be there and feel the age or the atmosphere of a cultural site is an incredibly effective way of drawing them and giving them a small taste of the reality.

Direct Advertising: How to Draw Attention

In order to draw even further attention to your company and more specifically, the cultural and heritage sites you run — making successful use of direct advertising is important. With paid Google and Facebook ads, it’s possible to make use of all the content marketing mediums: text, imagery, and video. By strategically weaving them all into your marketing strategy, you’ll really show off the best of your company and everything you’re offering customers. The outcome of this brings us back to our cat illustration from point two: You’ll have far more hungry cats coming up to you looking for that tasty, appealing morsel of their own volition than you’ll get chasing them around.

If you want to learn more about social media advertising or Google advertising, these two articles are great places to start.

Want to talk strategy or ask us some questions about the waterfall strategy we used in this blog post? Schedule a free consultation and let’s chat!

Seth Godin is still right: Content marketing is the only marketing left

Adrienne Wilkerson

May 19, 2020

Originally published on August 19, 2016. Updated on May 19, 2020.

Seth Godin is considered by many as the “godfather of modern marketing,” and back in 2015 he made the bold statement that “content marketing is the only marketing left.” By this, he meant that marketers should create content their audience genuinely cares about and wants to consume, instead of creating content that contains only thinly-veiled and re-purposes advertisements.

In the years following the release of his first book, Permission Marketing, the marketing industry has changed significantly. In fact, the communications revolution that followed the internet (and more specifically, the smartphone) is quite possibly the biggest change since the invention of the printing press, because the modern marketing environment has essentially required us all to throw the rule book out the window and start inventing new ways to connect brands with people.

We’ve moved away from traditional advertising methods, which placed attention-grabbing brand messages in front of the public. Instead, we’re utilizing the philosophy of inbound marketing to squeeze the maximum value from our budgets, ensuring the right people can find us when they need us. It’s flipped the brand/customer relationships on its head, and it’s a good thing for both sides.

Already know what you need? Schedule a free consultation.

How content marketing works

Content marketing requires brands and media agencies to act more like publishers than advertisers. Internet culture encourages users to share quality content, from humorous memes to informative blog posts and interesting videos. Basically, “quality content” means content that will add value to someone’s day and evoke some sort of positive reaction or response, such as a like or a comment.

It’s all about giving the public things they want to consume, and introducing your brand in a helpful way that makes it clear it will add value to your customer’s life. When content marketing is done right, followers become fans and even promoters of your brand because you have provided something they want and need. Content marketing leverages the words we use in online searches (SEO) to get responses (engagement) and drive action (conversions). It means you can’t just sell. You have to engage in conversations, share helpful information, and develop a brand personality.

Best practice is constantly evolving as content marketing becomes more sophisticated.

Developing a content marketing strategy

There are lots of different ways brands can use content to connect with customers. The key is to remember you’re not here to sell; you’re here to help answer a question or solve a problem. Keep this in mind as you’re developing content to ensure it’s attention-grabbing and engaging for all the right reasons. That will open the possibility for each reader to enter the path to purchase.

Video marketing

There is no escaping the fact that video marketing is the most popular form of content marketing around today and it will only continue to grow. There are lots of different forms, including livestreams (such as Facebook or Instagram lives), pre-recorded video (polished content for YouTube or Facebook) and real-time video (such as Facebook or Instagram stories, SnapChat or TikTok).

You’ll need a content marketing strategy specific to each platform, because they’re all favored by different audiences. Facebook might resonate with a middle-aged audience, for example, while TikTok is a great way to make an impact on people aged 18-30. YouTube is the perfect platform for beautifully-produced videos, while shorter conversational-style clips are great for IGTV.

The key is to make sure you plan your video ahead of time. Make sure you’re 100% clear on what you’re trying to communicate and how long it should take so you your message isn’t drowned in a rambling stream of consciousness. Think about the basics, like sound and lighting, to make sure people can hear and see you, and shoot a few takes so you can choose the best one to post.

Email marketing

The traditional newsletters we used to get in the mail, with those goofy little circle tabs (remember those?) have evolved email marketing blasts. Some brands still treat marketing emails like the newsletters of old, and pack them with as much information as possible, but there is definitely a better way. Take it as an opportunity to wow them, to maximize the chance of engagement.

Marketing e-mails have to contend with a lot of other mail, and you want people to look forward to getting yours. Make it boring or annoying, and you risk being relegated to the spam folder! Use interesting images, incorporate engaging videos, and make it personable. They want to connect with a person, not a corporate machine, and they want to read things relevant to their experience.

Keep the text to a minimum, with clear subheadings that make information skimmable, and always include a link to a landing page where people can go to find more information.

Social media marketing

It seems like there is a new social media channel popping up every other week. The weirder the name, the better (we’re looking at you, TikTok). Some are a flash in the pan, like Periscope, while others have become juggernauts, like Facebook). You don’t need to be active on every single social platform. In fact, it’s better to nail your strategy on one than maintain a mediocre presence on all, because a strategy that drives genuine awareness and engagement will make a much bigger impact on your sales funnel than a few posts a week that only your mother and grandmother bother to like.

When it comes to social media, it’s important to remember that people are likely engaging with you in their spare time. They might be on the bus on the way to work, eating a packet of chips on a break, scrolling through their news feed on the couch after dinner, or (God forbid) in the bathroom. No-one wants to be sold to in those contexts, so it’s important to keep your messaging, well, social.

Create original, short-form content with strong visuals to maximize engagement. Make sure you respond to every question and comment to make the audience feel good about engaging with you. The key is to be consistent and to focus on content that is helpful, interesting and full of personality.

Blogging

Google is always looking for fresh content, which means you need to constantly update your website with new information. The best way to do this is with blogs, as they’re very SEO-friendly and can be easily shared across other platforms, such as social media, to encourage discussion.

Blogs are essentially articles, typically 600-2,000 words in length, that discuss an issue relevant to your business. For example, you could answer frequently asked questions, address common issues that come up in sales discussions, talk about new products or services, provide an opinion about something that’s happening in the industry, introduce your team members, or educate the public.

They often provide the first port of entry for a new person coming across your brand, so it’s important to ensure they’re high quality (hello, spell check) and that they reflect your brand’s personality. Make them interesting and informative, and don’t be afraid to have a little bit of fun with the tone and style. They’re a great way to make a good impression on each person who clicks through to read.

You may find that blogs are enough to make people engage with you and take the first step on the path to purchase, whether that’s signing up for a special offer, scheduling a free consultation, or contacting you with a question. Whenever given the choice, we will tend to do business with those that we know, like and trust. When prospects can feel a connection to your business, your brand, they are more likely to call you when they are ready to buy. Keep that in mind as you write.

Webpages

Of course, the content on your website is just as important as the content you release on the internet in the form of videos, emails, social media and blogs. It’s important to tune-up your website every 2-3 years to ensure all the content is up-to-date and that your pages work as they should. There’s no point doing all the hard work to draw someone into your digital ecosystem if they click on a broken link!

It’s important to make sure every page on your website is clear, well-organized and helpful. People won’t spend a lot of time looking around to find the answers they need (at least, not on their first visit), so you need to optimize it and make everything as easy as possible for them. Use text, images and videos to your advantage so it’s clear exactly who you are and what you offer.

One of the most important pages is the “about us” section. People want to do business with people, and often this is the most-visited page on business websites. Trust is important, so use this page to your advantage and make sure your customers are invested in your brand story.

It’s also important to ensure you have dedicated landing pages for all products and services you’re looking to promote. These pages will ensure people’s questions are answered the instant the page loads, which will position your brand as being helpful and friendly, and it will make it clear what the next steps are to doing business with you. It’s a good opportunity to ask for information, such as an email address, so you can provide something of value and take the relationship to the next level.

Content marketing can revolutionize your marketing efforts. We’d love to help.

Ready to get started? Schedule a free consultation.

How to prepare for the return of tourism

Sabrina Martinez

May 14, 2020

Big opportunities are coming for tourism marketing!

With America beginning to open up for the summer, the market is going to be getting very competitive. Fewer people are going to be vacationing at the start, but businesses will be wanting to open as soon as possible to get their cash flow going again. This means you’ll be competing for a smaller clientele. It’s important that you start preparing for this now so that you can beat out the competition and retain your market share, or even increase it!

So what is market share?

Market share is defined by Investopedia as “the percentage of total sales in an industry generated by a particular company.” It essentially represents the number of sales your company make in an industry, and how you compare with your competitors. Gaining market share means that you are gaining customers faster than your competitors.

Here are some tips to help you maximize your impact with the right kind of marketing.

(We’ll share a few helpful links along the way where you can learn more about the topics we cover. Most of them refer to marketing Arctic tourism, but the principles apply to any type of tourism business. We’re also happy to answer any questions you have, so please feel free to schedule a consultation.)

Building brand awareness

In this period before people start booking their next vacations, it’s super important to build awareness of your brand. This ensures you’re front of mind when people are ready to book their next vacation.

Your brand is your visual identity – it is what people think of when they think of your tourism business, so it needs to reflect your reputation and what people think of you. When we create brands for our clients, we go through a process called the “brand discovery meeting” to help clients understand their brand story. It’s an opportunity to involve your whole team and get creative to help figure out what story you want to tell.

When we have a brand discovery meeting with our clients, we like to guide them with a series of questions:

Describe your business in two sentences or less. What is your “elevator pitch?”
A brand is a promise. What does your brand promise its customers?
What is the current perception of your tourism business? What is the desired perception?
How do you want to position yourself in the marketplace? Are you the “value” company? The expensive boutique? The innovator? The “tried and true?” The academics? The quick fix? The thought leaders?
What is your big-picture mission?

Your primary focus in this part of the process involves identifying your competition and figuring out how you can differentiate yourself from them. This is especially important in a reduced market. Differentiating yourself early on allows you to put your company in a position where potential customers think of you first. You also want to identify your target customers and work out how you can appeal to them.

Once you’ve understood what your brand is, and how you’re going to adjust it, you must maintain it.

Maximizing inbound leads

In order to get customers, you need to be getting leads. The more leads you get, the more customers you’ll get, the more your market share will grow. So, how do you maximize your leads?

Up-to-date website

Your website is the most important part of your online presence. It represents your physical location in the digital world. You want your tourism business to look good, provide people with the information they need and inspire them to get to know more about you. This applies both in the real world, and online.

Websites should be updated or redesigned entirely every 2-3 years. This is because best practises change so frequently online and you need to keep up to date so that you don’t fall behind the competition. Additionally, you’ll want to make sure your staff, products, and services are all up to date.

Here are the steps:

Meet with your team: We always recommend that web design be a team process. Get everyone, or at least the key players, in your business in one room and try to answer some key questions. We recommend asking yourselves what the purposes of the website are, what information you want customers to be able to find, what features you like about other websites in the same industry.
Map out your design: Using a document known as a wireframe, we map out the location of all components of the website. That includes text boxes, images, videos, headers, etc. This is complemented by a sitemap, which describes the interaction between all the pages of your website.
Content: Once the website is fully mapped, both in terms of pages and contents, it is time to actually write the content to go in those boxes! This is the time you really want to start thinking about Search Engine Optimization. Simply put, this is the process of making sure your web content is easy for search engines to find. To find out more about SEO, check out our blogs on web design and blogging for arctic tourism.

Targeted advertising

Targeted advertising has become increasingly popular in recent years. It allows you to put ads on Facebook, Google, and other platforms which are based on people’s online behaviour. So as a tourism business, you could target people who have been looking at vacations in your area, or people who have shown an interest in the tours and experiences you offer. It’s incredibly powerful – you can click here to learn more about retargeting.

Active social media

Social media is another vital aspect of a business’s online presence. One of the best things about it is the opportunity to interact with people in an organic, natural way. This gives the opportunity to present your tourism business’s unique culture and present a welcoming face to potential customers. Best practice varies from platform to platform, so here is an insight into social media best practice for businesses.

SEO

SEO (or Search Engine Optimization) is all about pleasing the algorithm Google uses to rank results on their search results pages. One of the most important things Google looks for is quality. If you provide content that people want to read, Google can recognize this. You can make sure that your content does this but researching what people are asking about certain topics and writing content that answers those questions. Here are some tips to create a show-stopping SEO strategy for your business.

Converting bookings

So, you’ve reached potential customers and piqued their interest in your tours and activities. Now, how do you convert those leads into bookings?

Sales funnel

One of the most successful strategies for converting customers is the sales funnel. This uses a multi-stage process to gradually draw potential customers further into the “funnel.”

The first stage is the awareness stage, where you first gain their attention. Next, you get their interest. This is where you use your content to present solution to people who are looking. The goal at this stage is to remain in people’s consciousness, by having them subscribe to your mailing list or social media. The third stage is the action stage. At this point, the person becomes a customer and closes a deal with you. Finally, and perhaps not obviously, there is another stage of the funnel: retention.

The best customer is the repeat customer. Keeping them happy will keep them coming back for more – perhaps every summer for the rest of their lives. Running a successful tourism business and creating happy memories for your customers will mean adding new customers at the top of the funnel, but also growing the pool of repeat customers at the bottom. Is there anything better than becoming part of a family legacy?

Human connection

We discussed earlier how this is the perfect time to start marketing to prepare for reopening your business. A great tool you can use to bring in customers is your authenticity and real human connection. This period has demonstrated the value of human connection as many people have been deprived of it.

We hope this post will provide some insights into the tactics you can use to get your tourism business ready to reopen in the coming weeks and months as people start looking to go on vacation again.

If you want help marketing your tourism business you can schedule a free consultation.

Top tourism marketing strategies for 2020

Sabrina Martinez

May 11, 2020

The tourism industry has faced unprecedented challenges in 2020, but restrictions are lifting, and the time is coming for the sector to make a comeback. That means you need a strategy, and you’re going to need to pull it together relatively quickly.

Why is tourism marketing important? Well, when the economy starts to re-open and people start thinking about their vacations again, companies are going to be competing to win customers, but from a smaller pool as tourism tentatively resumes.

Since you’re going to be competing harder than before, you’re going to need to make sure that everything counts. Also, as people are more likely to take local trips rather than interstate or international, you’ll need to switch your marketing focus to capitalize on domestic travelers. These will form your core audience for at least the next few months.

So, how do you compete effectively in this market? You’re going to need to start thinking about this in advance and creating a strategy that you can implement in sufficient time to get a head start over your competitors. Here are three highly-effective options to consider.

Want to talk to a real person? Schedule a free consultation today.

SEO: You’re open for business!

Right now, people have plenty of time to research their vacations and daydream about where they’ll go when it’s safe to do so. There’s one main place they’re doing this: Google!

It’s surely no surprise that most people never look beyond the first page of Google. One study even found that only 0.78% of searchers clicked on something on the second page of Google. Obviously then, it’s imperative that you appear at the top of people’s search results if you want to be competitive. This means your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy needs to be on point.

If you haven’t already claimed your business listing on Google My Business, do it now. That’s essential to helping tourists find you (instead of your competitors!). Once you’ve taken care of that, give your website a quick overhaul to make sure everything is up-to-date, including details of your products and services, pricing and contact details for the upcoming season.

It’s worth considering a pop-up or a banner to let people know you’re open and accepting bookings. Many businesses have let their websites sit and gather technological dust during the lockdown, which can make it hard for customers to know whether you’re open or not.

Take the guesswork out of it by making everything as clear as possible.

Content marketing for tourism

SEO is not a stand-alone tool. Rather, it should be incorporated into as much of your online marketing as possible. It particularly lends itself to content marketing, especially in tourism where a brand’s story is such an essential component of the customer’s experience.

Content marketing includes all production of digital content, including blogging, video marketing, social media, and user-generated content such as reviews. Let’s take a look at some of the content marketing methods you can utilize:

Blogging is one of our main services at Beacon and is a highly effective method of getting your website to rank on Google. This is because it capitalizes on multiple SEO techniques. Blogs promote the use of keywords, which target topics that people are searching for, so it’s an easy way to provide useful content to consumers. Now is the perfect time to be putting out content online, as people have more time than ever to read it! If you’re interested in learning more blogging for tourism, check out this post on the ways blogging can boost Arctic tourism.
Video marketing is another powerful tool that Google loves for SEO. It also really helps your customers as it’s easily digestible and has been shown to have higher retention rates than text. This article by WordStream has some incredible statistics on the success of marketing with video, for example, “Sixty-four percent of consumers make a purchase after watching branded social videos.” To learn more about video marketing, check out our blog post, here.
Social media marketing is a rapidly expanding, highly effective technique. It allows you to connect more directly with customers. This, when done well, can be a valuable tool that adds credibility and a personal touch to your business’s online presence. The goal of social media marketing is essential to promote positive stories about your school. While doing this, it’s also important to effectively manage negative feedback. If you want to learn more about social media marketing, check out this blog we wrote on optimizing social media for schools (don’t worry, it’s just as effective in tourism!).
User-generated content is always compelling, but it’s particularly persuasive in tourism because people love to share their vacations! The PESO model for content marketing strategy includes Paid Media, Earned Media, Social Media, and Owned Properties. In this context, social media includes reviews as well as content shared on platforms such as Facebook. Reviews are critical for online success, as they allow potential customers to see that your business is as good as you claim it is. It’s also important to remember that a well-reasoned and polite response to a negative review or comment can reflect better than a 5-star review!

Influencer marketing for tourism

Influencer marketing is a strategy that has grown enormously in recent years with the rise of video content on social media platforms. Influencer Marketing Hub is a great place to start if you’re looking to learn all about this growing industry. Ready for a crash course? Great!

Influencer marketing is described by Influencer Marketing Hub as an amalgamation of both traditional celebrity endorsement and modern content marketing. Influencers are able to build their brands online, usually on video platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, by establishing themselves engaging content creators and trustworthy and impartial authorities on different brands.

Influencer marketing is especially successful in tourism, because inspiration is everything. They can share their experience with their audiences, and potentially inspire thousands of people – whether that’s the magic of gliding over the crystal clear waters of Lake Tahoe on a paddleboard, the awe of climbing their first mountain in Alaska and taking in the view, or the joy in sharing a truly wonderful meal. It’s also really helpful in establishing trust and distinguishing you from your competitors.

Influencer marketing is a strategy that aims to emulate the advice one receives from a trusted friend, and successful influencers regularly put out content that generates strong engagement from subscribers and followers. One article in The Guardian says that “almost half of marketers spent more than 20% of their budget on influencer marketing” in 2019.

It lends itself to tourism particularly well, as people are always keen to see pictures and videos of beautiful places and people having fun. Many businesses have had success in luring influencers by offering free stays in hotels, free tours, and free experiences in return for the exposure to a targeted audience.

Right now is the perfect time to engage with influencers. Summer is coming, America is beginning to open up, and social media use is at an all-time high!

We hope you’ve found this post helpful in providing some ideas that you can use to prepare for the end of lockdown. We have a whole host of useful articles on our blog, which you can use for a more in-depth look at the services we offer and some of our insider tips and tricks.

Ready to get started? Schedule a free consultation with our experts today.

Facebook vs. LinkedIn: Which one is the B2B marketing winner?

Adrienne Wilkerson

May 6, 2020

Originally published on August 16, 2016. Updated on May 6, 2020.

Facebook and LinkedIn are both social media juggernauts and they’re both competing for the B2B marketing dollar. Which one is the best? More specifically, which is the best for your business?

If you’re like most busy business owners, you only have a limited amount of time each day to focus on B2B marketing. The question weighing most people down is where do they spend their precious moments? It is a very, very good question, because the right strategy can make a big difference when it comes to generating leads and converting sales. Here are some points that will help you find a solution.

Back in 2015, Think With Google reported that, “90% of B2B researchers who are online, use search specifically to research business purchases. On average, B2B researchers do 12 searches before engaging on a specific brand’s site.” It’s still true in 2020, which is why a solid B2B marketing strategy is essential. Business leaders know exactly what they’re looking for – and if that includes you or your products or services, you need to be easy to find.

Want to skip ahead? Schedule a free consultation.

Every B2B marketing strategy starts with people

Many people exclude Facebook as a realistic B2B marketing platform because they see it as the “fun channel” while LinkedIn is the “serious channel.” It’s true that there is a lot of fun to be had on Facebook, and that LinkedIn is more focused on business-like interactions. However, people don’t stop being business professionals just because they are on Facebook or having fun because they’re on LinkedIn.

When you look at the straight numbers, the two platforms are very competitive in B2B marketing. According to a Statista report from December 2019, Facebook has 190 million active users in the United States; meanwhile, a report from April 2020 reveals LinkedIn has about 160 million active members. On the face of things, Facebook lends itself to quantity and mass reach, while LinkedIn lends itself to quality and better leads.

That’s not to say the quality isn’t there for the taking on Facebook. Keep in mind that when people are using Facebook, they’re looking to be entertained, so to have quality B2B marketing on this platform, it’s important to focus on the story of your brand and to engage with people in a very community-minded way. It’s a great way to build brand awareness, show off your culture, build loyalty and drive traffic to your website. It’s not the place to hard sell through posts on your company’s Facebook page, because that’s not what people want to see.

There’s a knack to B2B marketing on LinkedIn, too. Yes, the audience will be much more open to hearing business-focused information and learning about new products and deals, but they’re people too. Brand story is just as important, as is community engagement, so take time to build genuine influence before you try to sell.

Read more: Is marketing the new sales?

Know your B2B marketing target audience

Successful B2B marketing strategies depend heavily on knowing your target audience. At the core of every good campaign is a solid knowledge of who wants to know, what they want to know, and why they want to know it (their pain point). Digital marketing is the same, and when you are looking to optimize your social media strategy, it’s vital to define your target audience so you can get the most out of your time and money.

(We always recommend a multi-channel approach, but we understand that can be tough if you’re short on time. It’s always better to excel at one than to spread yourself too thin over two or three.)

Facebook and LinkedIn both offer excellent audience analytics tools for B2B marketing, which means it’s easy to focus your messaging on the types of people most likely to become customers. For example:

82% of internet users between the ages of 18-29 use Facebook vs. only 22% of internet users in the 18-29 age group that use LinkedIn
79% of internet users between the ages of 30-49 use Facebook vs. only 32% of internet users in the 30-49 age group that use LinkedIn
64% of internet users between the ages of 40-64 use Facebook vs. only 26% of internet users in the 50-64 age group that use LinkedIn

If you’re looking at number alone, Facebook is the clear B2B marketing winner. However, it is important to know the what and the why. As we said, people tend to go to LinkedIn looking for something specific, which makes it a great platform for growing awareness of your products and services and generating qualified leads. If Facebook is a casual networking lunch, LinkedIn is an industry-wide conference.

Know what your target audience is looking for and find a way to connect.

Read more: Using buyer personas can help convert more leads.

Engage in B2B marketing in a human-centered way

Once you connect with the right people, your B2B marketing plan needs to allow room to engage with them. Both Facebook and LinkedIn have some specific avenues for businesses and individuals to engage with the public.

Let’s start with LinkedIn. The most effective interaction is typically found in groups. LinkedIn has always done an excellent job of facilitating groups where like-minded people can come together and share ideas. Its professional forums can be particularly effective for B2B marketing if you regularly participate by asking questions, responding to issues and comments, and posting information or articles that are helpful to the group at large.

As with anything worth doing, this takes a dedicated investment of time and is more about you building your personal brand or by association the brand you work for. No-one wants to hear a sales pitch or unabashed self-promotion. Engaging in groups and publishing original, quality content will help establish you as an expert in your field. Again, the focus is still primarily on you as the person and not on the company first.

Facebook, on the other hand, focuses on the business first. Huh? OK, this statement does sound a bit strange considering Facebook is all about casual, personal engagement. However, founder Mark Zuckerberg figured out pretty quickly that his platform was going to have to cater to companies, and B2B marketing, if he was going to take over the world. While every company account must connect to a personal account, business accounts and pages have a tremendous amount of flexibility in how they connect to and engage with social media users.

In recent years, LinkedIn has tried to follow suit, but their system is nowhere near as intuitive or user-friendly. It is more about a company brand interacting with their customers and fans than it is an individual building their personal network. Both have value, but we think Facebook takes the win in this category of B2B marketing.

Ready to kick-started your B2B marketing plan? Call us.

Get creative with your B2B marketing ads

Facebook has dominated digital ads and promoted posts in the B2B marketing space right from the beginning, and everyone else has struggled – and is still struggling – to keep up with its monopoly on social advertising dollars. That being said, LinkedIn has stepped up their game a bit in recent years. As the adage goes, better late than never, but Facebook is far ahead with a sophisticated, yet simple, advertising solution.

Facebook does a thorough, to the point of invasive, job of collecting data for marketers and professionals to use to target their promoted posts and ads. It offers businesses a chance to target people by age, location, gender and even interests. This changed the face of B2B marketing forever, due to its incredible specificity.

Additionally, it offers retargeting ads through the use of a pixel put into the code of your website or landing page that can track when someone has visited either one. Then when they show up on Facebook, ads show up based on which pages a user has visited and what they are interested in. This custom feature is a little bit creepy, but it’s very powerful for B2B marketing.

Read more: What are Facebook Ads and how to we use them?

Facebook vs. LinkedIn B2B marketing score

For a company looking to maximize their essential and often limited time, Facebook marketing is the clear winner. However, if you’re a business owner looking to connect person-to-person, then we still recommend LinkedIn first – despite the hype, it generates much better B2B leads.

The truth is that your B2B marketing plan should use both to capture different people in different ways. If you’re looking to optimize your social media strategy, it may be worth engaging a marketing agency. Doing social media well requires a clear and consistent strategy as well as a significant investment of time.

The potential to generate leads and convert sales, however, makes it well worth the effort.

Want to talk strategy? Schedule a free consultation.

Inbound marketing is a perfect fit for functional medicine

Adrienne Wilkerson

May 5, 2020

Originally published on June 21, 2018. Updated on May 5, 2020.

Inbound marketing and functional medicine are a perfect match. Inbound marketing, also known as content marketing, focuses on the brand story and we rarely find more sincere, heartfelt and compelling stories than in the functional and naturopathic medicine fields.

If you’re reading this and you’re a functional medicine provider, we’re willing to bet you started your practice because you had a driving desire to change the world of your patients. You wanted to make a difference and follow a less walked but more transparent path.

This is great for two reasons. First, you change people’s lives. Second, it’s marketing gold. Don’t believe us? Author and motivational speaker Simon Sinek once said, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” As a general rule, a company’s “about” page is the second-most popular page on their website after the homepage. Why? It’s because people want to do business with people. They want to know who you are and what you’re about, so don’t be afraid to share your story. What motivates you?

Stay with us and we’ll run you through the basics of inbound marketing, including how it works to generate leads, the basic theory of how to get started, and how to convert sales.

Want to skip ahead? Schedule a consultation today.

What is inbound marketing?

You might be wondering what inbound or content marketing actually is, so let’s start with the definition. HubSpot, a software company, is widely credited with pioneering the concept. It defines inbound marketing as follows:

“Inbound marketing is focused on attracting customers through relevant and helpful content and adding value at every stage in your customer’s buying journey. By creating content designed to address the problems and needs of your ideal customers, you attract qualified prospects and build trust and credibility for your business.”

That’s probably the most concise definition out there. It gives you a great 10,000-foot view, but if you’re anything like use, at this point you’re probably thinking, “Well, that’s nice, but what does it mean for my practice?” That’s a really good question and we’re glad you asked.

To answer your question, we have to start with a bit of history. The internet and social media have forever changed the way consumers make buying decisions. The term “buying decisions” doesn’t just refer to shoes anymore, either, but all decisions to spend money.

Historically, functional health patients would have made a decision based on word-of-mouth, or perhaps a traditional marketing method such as a TV commercial or a print advertorial. Modern functional medicine patients, however, have more resources available than ever before. They read widely, they search for reviews, they’re swayed by opinions and trends on social media. This is important, because it essentially gives you a whole new set of tools.

People are looking to build a connection. If given any kind of a choice at all, we will all choose to do business with those we know like and trust. The internet and social media now provide practitioners the opportunity to meet your potential patients and build a connection with them before they come in. You can provide the knowledge and education they need.

“Start with the soul and end with the sale. Not the other way around.” -C.C. Chapman, content marketing expert and author.

Read more: The evolution of marketing

Inbound marketing is transparent

Transparency is critical in functional medicine practices. Modern consumers are drawn to services that help provide the answers they need – quickly. They also want to make genuine connections with practitioners. Inbound marketing forces a level of transparency in the advertising world that hasn’t existed before and education is a core component of proving value.

As a provider, you can leverage social media channels like Facebook or Instagram, increase awareness of your practice and your mission while educating and engaging with prospective customers. Your website and the articles you post on it become a powerful tool to disseminate information to searchers, establish your credibility and help develop your influence as a thought-leader.

Inbound marketing levels the playing field because it gives a voice to anyone willing to invest the time to create and distribute quality information that people want to read or watch.

Education is key to inbound marketing

Functional medicine typically operates adjacent to, and in some cases instead of, traditional medicine. Education is essential because prospective customers may not be aware of the different ways functional medicine can alleviate chronic symptoms. It’s critical to show them why your service is valuable. This includes explaining why their bodies and minds are behaving in a certain way, what symptoms can be treated, and how you plan to do so.

Search engine, social media, websites and blogs are all essential tools in a successful inbound marketing strategy, because they provide information to the people seeking it. When it’s done right, it’s not going to go everywhere. It’s going to go to the people who need and want it most. This makes it incredibly valuable, because it essentially qualifies all new leads. It’s the most effective way to use a marketing budget, because you’ll be targeting an interested few instead of the entire public.

What this means for you as a provider is that inbound marketing provides you with a dynamic platform to do what you already naturally do: educate. Again, content or inbound marketing is first about education, community, and establishing a trusting connection.

Once that’s in place, the sale will naturally follow.

Read more: Is marketing the new sales?

Inbound marketing delivers results

Anyone who has worked with people for any length of time knows how unique each person’s challenges are. Functional medicine practices strive to develop solutions as specialized and individual as the people they treat. The sector is renowned for being willing to explore new and historic solutions to medical challenges and look at problems from different perspectives.

Inbound marketing came about because traditional marketing was not adapting fast enough to a changing market. Marketing today requires more flexibility from its practitioners than ever before, because it’s constantly adapting to new technologies. Modern marketers must be willing to learn, explore, and embrace each new phase of advertising technique.

That’s why we can say from experience that inbound marketing delivers results. It’s how we generate our own leads and drive our own sales. This blog is an example, and we know it works.

Once you’ve made a connection with a prospective client and taken them through the education phase, it’s time to close a sale. This means following up with clear and strong calls to action and a personal follow-up, whether that’s over the phone or by email. You’re here to help solve their problems. Remember that, keep it front-and-center in your approach, and you can’t go wrong.

Ready to get started? Schedule a free consultation (see what we did there?).

Social media networking vs. word-of-mouth networking

Adrienne Wilkerson

May 4, 2020

Originally published on April 10, 2017. Updated on May 4, 2020.

Does word-of-mouth networking even work anymore? Or has it been replaced with digital or social media networks? We hear this question a lot. We believe they are both integral to any business’s marketing plan and should be strategically planned and implemented.

Networking is an important part of business. It will help you stay on top of the latest trends in your industry, find new business opportunities, meet prospective partners and clients and build awareness of your own brand. At the end of the day, people do business with people and connections matter.

Benefits of social media networking

Social media is a fantastic method of networking, in fact, we are big fans! The stats are impressive regarding the power of social media to influence consumers through people networking digitally. For instance:

50% of shoppers have made a purchase based on a recommendation through a social media network
51% of Facebook users are more likely to buy the products of brands they follow online
The average consumer mentions brands 90 times/week in in their interactions with other people.

There are a few best practices that we have found to be helpful for business professionals who want to use social media networking as part of their marketing plan.

Focus your time and energy on two social media networks. In Alaska, we have found that Facebook and LinkedIn are a great combo for business-to-business networking (B2B), while Facebook and Pinterest is a good option for business-to-consumer (B2C) industries
Be consistent with your interaction. Here are 10 tips to optimize your social media.
Offer helpful information that your target audience will find useful in their daily lives. We’re here to add value to their lives by helping them find the products or services they need, so don’t sell your products or services directly. This is important – you can read more about whether marketing is the new sales.

There is no denying the power of networking through social media to a wide range of age groups, but it’s most effective when coupled with word-of-mouth networking. Word-of-mouth is the original and best form of marketing. We can come up with effective digital strategies until we’re blue in the face, but if your product or service is good, people will talk about it. It’s the most effective marketing tool you’ll ever hope to have.

Benefits of word-of-mouth networking

Some refer to this style of networking as “old fashioned” or “traditional” networking. It’s been around since the first product was put up for sale and it’s still incredibly persuasive in purchase decisions. In fact:

3.3 billion brand mentions in 2.4 brand-related conversations happen offline in America ever day
54% of Americans say that their purchase decisions are driven by word-of-mouth
59% of Americans believe offline or word-of-mouth to be highly credible

Word-of-mouth networking gives people a chance to build deeper relationships and increase trust. This increased trust often leads to more qualified referrals, longer professional relationships, and more profitable transactions.

As part of a targeted marketing plan, we recommend business professionals be part of at least three face-to-face networking groups. The best combination is to join two soft touch groups and one referral, focused group.

For example, if you live in Anchorage, AK, you could try:

A local or state chamber of commerce like our local Anchorage Chamber.
A professional association for your industry like the American Association of Graphic Designers Alaska (AIGA) or the Public Relations Society of America Alaska (PRSA).
Service clubs like Rotary or Lions , which often include many local business leaders.

A referral based organization like BNI is what is called a hard contact referral network because the whole organization’s focus is increasing the business for each member through referrals and word-of-mouth networking. This is also a good option to consider if you’re looking to drive brand awareness quickly.

Secrets to effective networking

No matter your target audience, it’s important to get the most of our networking and leverage the power of both social media and word-of-mouth. Used together, they allow business professionals to be highly effective at not only getting their message out to their target markets but also to build profitable client relationships.

The key, either way, is to follow up. Take your connection to the next level and get to know your new contact as a real person rather than an opportunity to boost your business. If you’ve met online, follow up with an email linking an interesting article or asking for an opinion. If you’ve met in person, follow up with an invitation to coffee or another industry event. No-one wants to stay connected with a robot.

Networking is a two-way street. It’s not just about what they can do for you, but what you can do for them as well. Connect thoughtfully. Ask people about themselves. Talk about their projects. Offer considered thoughts. Give advice if they ask. Successful networking requires give-and-take, but who knows who you’ll meet?

Need help developing your brand? Schedule a free consultation today.

How Much Does Hiring a Marketing Agency Cost? A Beacon “How To” Guide

Adrienne Wilkerson

April 30, 2020

Originally published by Adrienne Wilkerson, CEO, Co-Founder. Updated and revised by Sara Jokela 3/13/25

You may have heard, “Digital marketing can be an expensive endeavor, but the ROI has great payoff.” There’s truth to that statement — especially for digital marketing done well.

However, feeling hesitant about pouring money into marketing or having reservations about the but when considering whether to shift gears by hiring a digital marketing agency is normal. In fact, at some point every business owner grapples with the question, “Is marketing a good investment?”

Trusting someone else to capture the heart and essence of your brand is no small step of faith. Neither is trusting a particular advertising agency will deliver on what it says it can do — get you more customers or increase sales. The daunting reality is: the list of questions and unknowns is real and can profoundly impact your business.

What is a Marketing Agency?

Definition of a Marketing Agency

A marketing agency is a company that specializes in helping businesses attract potential customers through various traditional and digital channels. Also known as advertising firms or marketing companies, these promotion experts can focus on one or many techniques to boost a brand’s visibility and engagement. Marketing agencies play a crucial role in developing and executing strategies that drive customer acquisition and retention, leveraging their expertise to navigate the complex landscape of modern marketing.

Services Offered by Marketing Agencies

Marketing agencies offer a wide range of services to help businesses achieve their marketing goals. These services may include:

Social Media Marketing: Creating and implementing social media campaigns to engage with target audiences on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. This involves content creation, community management, and paid social advertising.
Content Development: Producing high-quality content such as blog posts, videos, infographics, and eBooks to attract and retain customers. Effective content development helps establish a brand’s authority and fosters customer loyalty.
Advertising: Designing and placing ads across various media channels, including digital, print, and broadcast, to reach target audiences. This can encompass pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, display ads, and traditional media buys.
Digital Marketing Strategies: Developing and implementing comprehensive digital marketing plans that may include SEO, email marketing, and online reputation management. These strategies are tailored to meet specific business goals and drive measurable results.
Value-Based Pricing Model: Pricing services based on the value delivered to clients rather than the hours worked or the specific tasks completed. This model aligns the agency’s incentives with the client’s success, fostering a more collaborative relationship.

By offering these diverse services, marketing agencies provide businesses with the tools and expertise needed to navigate the ever-evolving marketing landscape and achieve sustained growth.

Questions to Ask Before Outsourcing Your Marketing

The benefits of outsourcing your marketing to a digital agency (with a proven track-record) far outweighs the list of unknowns.

Choosing to use a digital marketing agency can (and does) trigger important questions — especially for business owners exploring this route as an option for the first time. A few questions you may find yourself pondering are:

How much does it really cost to hire a marketing agency?
Why is digital marketing so expensive?
Is it really worth it?
If I pay this much for marketing, will I actually turn a profit?

Understanding advertising agency pricing can help break down project costs and clarify potential confusion during the sales process. Using specific services or projects as examples can help clients understand the various factors that contribute to the overall cost of a branding project.

We know these are significant questions. Particularly when deciding if investing in marketing is the right (and best) choice for your business. That’s why we’ve prepared this how to guide — we want to answer some of those questions by highlighting the benefits of partnering with a digital marketing services company.

This guide is for you if:

You want to learn more about how much hiring a digital marketing agency costs.
You’re curious about how agencies structure their fees and service packages.
You want to discover how that partnership can pave the way for future growth and success for your business.
You’re researching digital marketing agencies and want to do your due dilligence ahead of your consultation meeting.

Are you interested in how Beacon Media + Marketing can help your business? Learn more about our work and how we can help your business thrive!

Why Do Costs Vary When Hiring a Digital Marketing Agency? Understanding Marketing Agency Pricing

The cost of hiring a marketing or advertising agency depends on multiple factors. Some of these variables include:

company size (yours and theirs)
reputation (theirs)
the scope of work (they’ll do for you)
geographic location (yours and theirs)

Marketing Industry Billing Trends Have Shifted

Previously, digital marketing agencies billed clients on an hourly or per-project basis. As we’ve collectively rolled into the 2020’s, most marketing firms have since changed tack. Along with the internet, the digital marketing industry itself has matured and evolved. So have standard operating practices and procedures. Most commonly seen practice these days? Client billing for ongoing monthly revolving services.

Typically, businesses prefer monthly revolving payment schemes to an hourly charge. This approach makes monthly budgeting predictable and more manageable for both sides. It also gives an agency’s clients peace of mind knowing they’re not being nickel-and-dimed.

An Agency’s Cost Per Hour Is Variable

You may observe rate variations for things like: project management, graphic design, illustration, programming, creative direction, content creation, strategy development, etc.

Our increasingly digitized world means demand runs high for skilled, senior-level staff — their talent comes at a price. Skill and experience of those doing the work as well as current market rates impact total hourly costs. Thus explaining why agencies log different hourly rates for their services.

The Per Project Billing Approach

The per project billing approach takes into consideration the different rates and skill sets for each team member assigned to a specific project.

Those individual rates are then complied and packaged into one flat fee for an entire project. This places the burden on the agency to ensure they’re working efficiently and to deadline. It also helps them make sure they’re meeting their own profit and revenue goals.

Marketing Agency Pricing Models

Marketing agencies employ various pricing models to charge for their services, each with its own set of advantages and considerations. Understanding these models can help businesses choose the best fit for their needs and budget.

How do Marketing Agencies Charge Their Clients?

While there’s no concrete answer to the question, “How much does hiring a marketing agency cost?” Each of these four variables factor into the overall equation:

hourly billing
project billing
revolving charges
managing budgets

What Should Your Marketing Budget Be?

Company size and overall revenue determine a company’s annual marketing spend. The budget set aside to spend on marketing contributes greatly to finding the right marketing agency for your business.

On average, companies allocate the following percentages of their revenue on marketing:

Small Business: 7–8%
Mid-Sized Business: 10%
Enterprise Business: 15%

Keep in mind: marketing is an investment. And knowing your options is essential for great payoff.

Hourly Billing Means Unpredictable Costs

Similar to accounting or legal firms, digital marketing agencies can bill by the hour for some projects. You’ll find, the ones who do so in this space are typically marketing consultants or freelancers.

As you may anticipate, multiple factors contribute to hourly rates. Geographic location, for example, will make a substantial difference as local competition is taken into consideration.

Case in point — a marketing agency in New York City. They may bill an average of $500+ per hour. In contrast, other regions of the United States, $300+ per hour is considered standard billing (according to the American Associate of Advertising Agencies). In smaller areas or markets, an average cost ranges anywhere from $95-$335 per hour. Naturally, this also depends upon the skill of the individual supplying the service as well as the specific service itself.

Many agencies have pivoted to a blended rate which, is the rate (roughly averaged) across all services and skill levels. This approach to agency billing helps simplify accounting and can work out to your favor. Especially when working with smaller marketing agencies — you’re likely to have senior-level staff involvement in your account.

Project Rates And Budget Creep

When assessing the cost of hiring a marketing agency, getting whole project quotes rather than per hour, can prove tedious. Especially as, the agencies you’re considering need time to create estimates for you. You’ll want to shop around and evaluate your options for price and quality before settling on the most appropriate fit for your budget.

A point to note is that the project rate approach makes space for budget creep. For example: A simple website redesign could be tweaked to include one or more of the following: a blog roll, social media management, or corporate photography. Adding in any of those will bump up the price. Generally speaking, a project will go up in cost when your marketing agency identifies how adding a particular service option will increase your success.

A common project many businesses turn to a marketing agency for help with is website redesign. The average prices for updating your website range between:

Website Design: $2,500 – $100k / website
Website Copywriting: $25 – $25,000 / page

Marketing agencies must accurately estimate the time their staff will take to complete the job, and they are betting on little to no issues arising. As such, this model is much less flexible. The agency must ensure its staff is working efficiently and on point if it wants to make a profit. This can both help and hinder the client.

Keep your budget in mind as you’re talking with your marketing agency about the project you want to do. Depending on your financial range and industry, your project limitations will change.

If the scope of work is clear, you’ll only pay one flat fee, making the cost of hiring a marketing agency simple and easy to assess. This arrangement benefits small businesses operating on a tight marketing budget.

Be Specific About Project Scope

If there is any wiggle room or ambiguity about or in your project brief (or the budget,) making adjustments down the line will be harder. Because of this, paying careful attention to the project scope before accepting a bid is critical. A project scope should be explicit and specific — look for the details outlining what the price does and does not cover.

Speaking from experience, vague scopes of work leaving a lot to a agency’s imagination or that are open for interpretation are high on the things to be aware of list. Be intentional and talk with the agency about the specifics of their project brief. Doing this upfront will not only save you both time and money, it will also mitigate any potential misunderstandings and correctly establish your expectations.

If you’re interested in what kind of work they can provide with your budget, it’s important to ask for examples. This is an excellent way to clarify what your expectations should be in addition to understanding better the value of what you’re getting for the price you’re being asked to pay. It’ll also help you visualize what you want the final product to look like and more clearly communicate your vision with the marketing agency.

Revolving Charges Ensure Predictable Costs with a Value Based Pricing Model

Inbound marketing is changing the scope of services and introducing a new paradigm of how billing is done to benefit the client. Revolving billing brings in the best of the project world along with the advantages of a long-term agency relationship. This makes the cost of hiring a marketing agency more straightforward and transparent than ever.

A social media marketing agency can provide comprehensive social media management, including pricing, content creation, and advertising strategies, making it easier for brands to manage their social media presence effectively.

Many agencies have a tiered system of packages that can be adapted to a specific client or project as needed. These packages, as they’re not based on monthly billing, allow marketers to provide consistency in monthly billing. They also make room for you to upscale or customize services as your business needs ebb and flow. This means: you know exactly what services you’re paying for each month! And this is a tremendous asset for annual budgets.

Below is a rough pricing guide for revolving marketing services:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): $1,500 – $5,000 / month
Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising: $1,500 – $10,000 / month or 5-20% of month ad spend
Email Marketing: $300 – $5,000 / month or $0.1 – $0.5 / email
Social Media Marketing: $900 – $20,000 / month
Content Marketing: $2,000 – $10,000 / month

These revolving services make understanding and estimating how much you’ll spend on marketing each month easier and more simple — especially for those with tight budgets. With the advice and input of your marketing agency, you’ll also more quickly identify which services provide the best ROI for your specific business. As your business grows, adjusting your budget (or services) depending on the new goals you’re trying to reach will be an easier, more straight forward process as well.

Do you want to see what services Beacon Media + Marketing can provide? Learn more about the excellent marketing services we can offer your business!

Simple Tips for Keeping the Cost of Hiring a Marketing Agency Manageable

Keeping your budget under control is crucial, especially for small and growing companies. Having worked in the marketing industry for over 20 years, we’ve learned a few essentials. We’ve acquired a lot of experience helping businesses afford the cost of hiring a marketing agency.

When considering social media services, it’s important to understand the pricing and offerings available for businesses looking to manage their online presence. This includes monthly fees and hourly rates for consultants, as well as the range of services provided by marketing agencies.

To get the best value possible for your marketing budget, do this:

Match your company with a similarly sized agency. Larger firms often charge more than smaller ones, so choose a marketing agency to match your size and business goals. Not only with the cost be within a reasonable range, but the agency should understand where you’re at as a company, your goals, and even your struggles because they’ll be in a relatable position themselves.
Have open and honest conversations with your marketing agency about your budget constraints. Most often, this will empower your agency to make the most of what you have to make service or strategy adjustments as needed.
Establish benchmarks for the project based on results and only increase the budget as current marketing efforts increase your company’s bottom line. This ensures the cost of hiring your marketing agency stays within your comfort zone.
Commit to a long-term relationship with an agency. Often, marketing agencies extend special pricing to companies willing to commit to working with them for longer. Marketing isn’t magic, it’s a process and sticking with an agency allows them to work through different strategies in order to arrive at the most successful and effective plan for your business.

What’s the Value of Investing in a Marketing Agency?

Encapsulating the true value good marketing can make to your business is challenging. It’s a given that marketing a business helps with brand awareness. However, other marketing services such as Google or Facebook ads also help escalate business by bringing client conversions.

Over time, companies have invested more money in marketing than their sales teams. Nowadays, marketing strategies take up a large chunk of business success. And with more investments happening towards marketing, finding an agency that’s well suited to you is even more critical for success.

Benefits to hiring a marketing agency include:

Having professionalism and expertise in the marketing industry.
Widening the talent pool of marketing experts who work on your business.
Gaining new perspectives to brainstorm the best method of marketing your company.
Staying up to date on all new effective marketing strategies.
Controlling and interacting with everything to ensure that it reflects who you are.
Focusing on growing your practice by providing your products or services.
Saving money by outsourcing your marketing instead of in-house marketing.
Creating a cohesive marketing strategy for long-term growth and sustainability.
Obtaining more content with the efficiency of a marketing team.
Achieving greater results with concrete data and client conversions.

Although you can do some marketing services, the whole scope of marketing is a huge undertaking and can take away from your business if done wrong. Pairing with a marketing agency allows you to benefit from a cohesive and effective marketing strategy guided by experts.

It also lets you understand which marketing aspects are doing well and what could be improved upon. For example, your website is one of the most critical aspects of your marketing. The Hubspot State of Marketing Report (2021) states that your website is the number two channel used in marketing behind social media. Similarly, their 2023 edition points out most website traffic is now flowing inbound via mobile devices and a mobile-optimized web experience can impact your ranking on Google.

In other words, if your website is outdated or not creating a positive user experience, this can significantly hinder your client conversions. Working with a marketing agency lets you have data on how well your website functions and get professional advice on what would be successful. You can then utilize their website design and development services for updates and watch your customer numbers rise through organic website traffic.

How to Choose Your Marketing Agency

Other than the cost of hiring a marketing agency a critical question to keep in mind is, “Is this agency a good fit for my business?” A good fit isn’t only about financials — that’s only one element. Evaluating based on experience, creative approach, company values, business procedures, the agency’s skill set and quality of work is also important.

Discuss the cost of hiring a marketing agency and your budget expectations with potential partners upfront. Here at Beacon, we’re firm believers in transparency and community. Make your needs clear and make decisions based on alignment with your company values. This could be the beginning of something beautiful and it’s important to lean in.

Take Your Business to the Next Level with Beacon Media + Marketing

Are you ready to see how a digital marketing agency can transform your business? Take your business to the next level with Beacon Media + Marketing! We offer several services that improve customer conversions, such as website design and development, content marketing, social media marketing, paid advertising, branding, and more. Our Beacon Media + Marketing team is excited to work with you to appeal to your target audience and encourage them to take the next step.

Are you ready to see how Beacon Media + Marketing can elevate your business? Schedule your free consultation today!

Why is corporate branding important? (VIDEO)

Adrienne Wilkerson

April 21, 2020

Originally published on November 21, 2017. Updated on April 21, 2020.

What is a corporate brand?

It doesn’t matter if your company operates on an international, national, regional, state, city, or neighborhood level; no matter the size, you have a brand. It really doesn’t matter if you have invested millions or nothing at all in your brand, it still exists. Your brand is the heart of your company; it is what comes to the minds and hearts of consumers and employees when they think of your business.

Every time anyone interacts with anything that has to do with your company it is reinforcing an idea about your business. Your brand is much, much more complex than just your logo and the colors you choose to put on your website. Your brand is so much larger, and it impacts your business on every level.

When companies are first starting up, it’s common for them to skip the branding conversation. After all, there are product lines to develop, services to perfect, and sales to be made. However, every company should start by answering two questions: who are we, and why are we doing this?

This is the core of your brand, and it will set the stage for everything else.

Want to talk corporate branding? Schedule a free consultation.

Designing a corporate brand

Part of a strong brand is knowing what sets you apart from your competition. This should become a cornerstone in your company’s messaging, both externally through marketing and also internally. Your employees should be just as aware of what makes their business different and be able to take pride in what they do every day.

Consumers and staff alike have access to more information than ever before. They have more choices, so it becomes even more critical that your company knows that it knows that it knows why it is different. We’ll give you a tip here: in our current marketing economy, it is not about the “best” product or service.

It’s about the experience. The relationship.

Take Apple for example. It has built such a strong brand around its products that fans will stand in line and even camp out overnight to get their new devices. There is a culture that has evolved around Apple fans to the point that people become Apple fanatics. They will pay more for Apple products just because they are Apple products. Apple carefully cultivated this brand and developed the fan base the followed the brand.

Economic value of a brand

When you’re looking at the value of your business, you must always consider both tangible and intangible assets. Successful organizations know that their brand is one of their most valuable intangible assets. Every year, Interbrand ranks the best brands around the world on their value. How do some of our favorites rank?

The Lego brand comes in 67th with a brand name value of almost $6.7 million. Nike ranks 18th with a brand value at $25 million. Disney’s brand name is worth almost $39 million dollars. Amazon ranks 8th but has the fastest growing brand name value at $50.3 million and 33% growth in 2016. Who were the top three?

Coca-Cola took home the 3rd place spot with a value of $73.1 million; Google captured the second-place spot, their brand is considered to be worth $133,252 million dollars. And drum roll please… Apple stands alone in the first-place spot with a brand name value of $178,119 million dollars.

Now, if you’re running a small to medium-sized business, you might wonder what all of these big names have to do with you. These are some pretty impressive numbers. They illustrate on a brand scale what a brand name can be worth when a company invested in developing the brand. The same principle applies to any business.

For example, the difference in the value of the brand between known competitors Coca-Cola and Pepsi is staggering. Coca-Cola’s $73.1 million is more than three times what Pepsi’s brand name is worth at $20.3 million. The companies both started in the 1890’s a mere five years apart, and yet in the last 120 plus years, Coca-Cola has consistently had a stronger brand. Why? They invested heavily in their company brand.

Brands reinforce values

One of the reasons why brands like Coca-Cola and Apple consistently beat their competition is because they understand the brand guides their company. Their brand answers the question why. Why does the company exist? Why do employees want to work there? Why should consumers buy a Coke versus a Pepsi?

Every company, no matter the size, should be able to answer the why questions on a deeper level than just “because we’re better.” Anyone can say that. You have to go deeper, you have to understand why you are coming to work every day, why your employees should (beyond the paycheck), and why your clients keep coming back.

Salim Ismail, lately of Singular University, writes in his book Exponential Organizations about the importance of a Massive Transformative Purpose (MTP). The MTP is the “higher, aspirational purpose of the organization,” he says. It doesn’t try to describe what the business does, but what it’s aspiring to accomplish. This is the heart of your brand – not the colors or even the logo, but the why. It’s the purpose of the company!

Corporate brands attract loyalty

Your brand makes promises to customers, fans, and prospects. In every way your company interacts with and communicates with the public, you are either reinforcing that promise or weakening, maybe even breaking it. When that promise is reinforced, time and time again, your customers know what to expect.

That builds loyalty. Let’s take Coca-Cola, for example. Its brand consistency is legendary, while it has updated parts of its messaging, it has never ventured from reinforcing their core message:

To refresh the world…
To inspire moments of optimism and happiness…
To create value and make a difference.

This is its mission, it’s MTP. Time and time again, Coca-Cola has proved it can connect emotionally with its customer base. It’s been in business since 1892, which means its appeal spans generations. That’s some serious longevity.

Ready to get started? Schedule a free consultation today.

6 must-read tips to rocking your online reviews

Jennifer Christensen

April 15, 2020

Originally published on July 5, 2018. Updated on April 15, 2020.

We’ve all heard, at some point in our lives, someone tell us: “Words can’t hurt you!” Oh, but they absolutely can, my friend. Words can implode relationships, ruin careers, and even destroy a business.

There have been far too many stories online about the person who tweeted an insensitive joke and suddenly lost their whole career after a massive public outcry, or a business owner who responded to a negative Yelp review with angry curses and insults and soon found themselves without any customers.

Words DO matter, and in an online world you never know who is watching and reading. Just as words can break you down, they can also build you up and help you soar – okay, we’re getting a little too excited here.

Want to skip to the part where we help you? Schedule a free consultation today.

How to deal with bad online reviews

We know that many consumers read online reviews when they’re making a decision on what and where to buy. It can be easy for you, the business owner, to feel like you must do everything you can think of to keep customers from ever seeing negative reviews of your business, but don’t let that fear bring you down! Negative reviews may be scary or disheartening, but they don’t have to be the Mark of Death. I’ll tell you why in a minute.

Truthfully, if someone is looking up your business online and they see no negative reviews whatsoever, their first thought is likely going to be, “Ooooh I get it, they’re just deleting all the negative ones.” Modern consumers are smart and cynical, and they’ll absolutely judge you like a gang of junior high mean girls.

If they see a negative review and see that you’ve responded with name-calling, cursing, customer shaming, or outright out-of-control rage, it gets even worse. They will instantly want no part of whatever you’re selling. They’ll gladly take their business elsewhere to someone who has shown their ability to remain professional.

The truth is it’s possible to use bad reviews to your advantage.

How? We’re so glad you asked.

Read more: The evolution of marketing.

Make your online reviews work for you

1: Pay attention to social media.

Social media can be both good and bad. Don’t just focus on comments let on Yelp, Google and Facebook. Think of it like high school – if you only pay attention to the rumors they write on your locker, you’re going to miss out on all the great rumors they’re starting about you in the lunch room at that table where the cool kids sit.

If you’re not sure where else to look, we highly recommend using tools like Google Alert to find out when your business is being talked about online. This will send you emails when a news site, a blog, or any public page mentions your product and service. You can gain so much valuable information by keeping an eye on all of the online spaces where your business might be a topic of discussion. It might even give you new ideas!

2: Remember that it isn’t personal.

We’ll say it louder for the people in the back: THIS IS NOT PERSONAL. PEOPLE LIKE YOU. YOU ARE GREAT. YOU ARE A FIRECRACKER AND NO ONE CAN DOUSE YOUR MAJESTIC FLAMING – okay, sorry, we’re getting too excited again. Ahem. Seriously, people are going to talk about businesses, about products, about the service they received, the thing they ordered, and so on.

Yes, sometimes what they say will be negative. Sometimes it’ll be angry, or disappointed, or insulting. Yes, those words can hurt like a knife in the heart. A knife covered in lemon juice. That is also on fire. We feel you. We’ve all been there, we all understand that flaming lemon-knife in the heart. But please, whatever you do, don’t react in anger. Don’t let emotion write your words, because you can’t take them back.

3: Respond promptly, personally, and calmly.

When you’re calm, remember that many times customers can and do have a very legitimate complaint. Take your time to read the comment and think about what’s been said before you reply. Have a cup of tea. Put on some sitar music. There, feel better? Also, always keep in mind that Facebook will track business response times and display that as a badge on your page, so try to respond within an hour if you are able. This is your chance to do two things:

First, respond personally and start by acknowledging the person and their complaint (instead of a copy-and-paste canned response, which is like a neon sign saying “THIS BUSINESS REALLY DOESN’T CARE AND JUST WANTS YOU TO GO AWAY”). This will show your customers, and potential customers, that you listen and pay attention to their needs. Don’t build a fort out of sofa cushions and pretend you didn’t read it.

Second, make sure your response is calm and clear. Showing everyone online that you’re cool, professional, and respectful under tough circumstances can drive customer confidence through the roof. Your words on a public page are showing the customers who you are as a business owner, which builds trust. Figure out what the issue is and decide what you, or an appropriate employee, can do to resolve it. Let the customer know this, and give them an estimate of how long it will take to resolve it or to hear back from you.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: In some cases, it is okay to hide or delete a complaint, such as when the complainer is using vulgarities or the complaint is not based on a product or service but is instead an attack against you or your business. On Facebook, it is easy to remove complaints. On Yelp, there are certain rules for which complaints you can remove and which you cannot. If you’re not sure, contact the platform to ask for help.

4: Show the customer that you care.

If the complaint arose because of a mistake, acknowledge it. Sometimes, mistakes just happen – and by honestly addressing the issue, you will raise people’s respect for you. Do not fall into the trap of arguing in public, because it will do nothing but reflect badly on you. If it turns out that the customer was wrong, that can be addressed in private messages. In public, show the world your most professional, concerned, and responsible face. It’s not always easy, but it will benefit you in the long run. Also, we strongly recommend against using free products to try to make the customer go away, because this habit absolutely will be abused.

Read more: Rise of the idealistic marketer.

5: Get the conversation away from the public eye.

Once you’ve publicly acknowledged the customer, offer to private message them, or talk about the resolution via email or by phone. In today’s world, the longer you try to converse in a public forum the more time there will be for trolls and troublemakers to jump in and try to start conflict. Let the customer know you heard their concern, publicly acknowledge that you are aware and working on a resolution, and then get it out of the public eye ASAP.

6: Follow through.

Responding and acknowledging is great, but that alone won’t solve the initial customer issue. It’s like staring intently at a pile of laundry on a chair, hoping it will become clean (oh man, it would be great if that actually worked!). You need to follow up with the customer to be sure that their issue was resolved satisfactorily. This assures the customer that your concern is sincere and that you value their business, and it also gives you an opportunity to get feedback that can help you develop your products or services in the future.

Of course, we can’t make everybody happy all of the time, but you and your business will only benefit if you take the time to make your customers feel heard, valued, and important. The more professionally you handle issues like negative reviews, the more you can demonstrate your caring, the more likely a customer is to return to you in the future, and recommend you to friends and associates. Word of mouth is still the best advertising you can ever hope to have, and a little effort on your part to protect your relationships with customers is priceless.

Want to turn your online reviews around? Schedule a free consultation today.

Alaska business owner’s #1 marketing tip for the new norm (VIDEO)

Sabrina Martinez

April 8, 2020

Jen Motyka has a unique perspective when it comes to running a business during a crisis. She has two of them, and she says they’ve responded very differently to the lockdown.

She owns Blitz Promotions, an event planning and business consulting service that aims to empower local businesses in Anchorage, Alaska. She’s been running it for about three and a half years and says the transition to an event-free world has been very challenging.

She’s also a founding stylist at Color Street, a beauty brand that specializes in colorful nail art, which she does from home. She says things with this business have been “really easy.”

The difference, she says, comes down to one simple thing.

Marketing 101: Solve problems

“Right now, finding really innovative ways to still connect with your customer base, obviously while following social distancing guidelines and being safe, is the key,” she says.

“My home-based business hasn’t had a glitch. If anything, it’s really taken off because it’s nail polish. A lot of people are having to grow-out their nails, they can’t go to the salon right now so they’ve been [looking for alternatives]. I think with any business, it’s about problem-solving. That’s Marketing 101. You want to provide a solution for your customers, so how are you going to do that?”

She already had a website in place, which means she’s able to continue operating without having to leave her home to do any deliveries or expose herself to any health risks.

Things with the event-planning business, on the other hand, have been “very difficult.”

The lack of physical events means Jen has been looking for ways to pivot and find new ways to connect with people. She says it’s amazing how creative the industry has been, from organizing virtual events to drive-ins, where everyone attends while staying in their cars, a safe distance from one another.

“We’re finding better ways to connect. A positive to come out of this, if we can find them – and I think it’s important that we do – is really nurturing those personal connections. We’re not sending mass texts anymore, it’s ‘How are you doing? How’s your family doing? How can I help you?’ It’s really reinforcing and nurturing those relationships.”

Looking for a way to help your business pivot? Have questions about digital marketing in a crisis? Simply need a sounding board for new ideas? Join our Facebook group.

Nurture connections with others

One of the most interesting things to come out of this period, Jen says, is the stories.

“Stories are such an authentic way to connect with other people and say, ‘Hey, it’s OK to be scared – I’m also scared. It’s OK to be overwhelmed – I’m also overwhelmed. Here’s how I’m helping, here’s what I can do, here’s something to make you feel a little bit better about where you’re at,’” she says.

“Connections keep us safe, keep us healthy, keep us occupied. I think those have been the key, for me, to help me keep moving forward because it’s really easy to just get complacent.”

It’s important to be patient with yourself, and allow yourself a little grace, while you’re figuring out the next step. She notes it’s equally important not to be afraid to ask for help.

“I suggest looking up YouTube Tutorials, reaching out to other businesses – if you have a friend you know does a lot of videos on Facebook, for example, you can ask them for help. Even now, when I see my face on the screen, I’m like “Oh!” even though I’ve done tons of videos. It doesn’t matter how many you do, there’s always that sort of stage fright – I don’t want to say the wrong thing or touch my face! It’s about having a little grace,” she says.

“Mistakes are going to happen and that’s OK. We’re all in this together. You’re not alone in not knowing or being scared.”

Allowing yourself some grace

It would be impossible to count the number of times we’ve heard the word “unprecedented” in recent weeks. None of us have experienced this before, so cut yourself some slack.

Jen says in her experience, the little things have made a big difference – no matter how silly they may seem. She laughs as she cites her conversation with us as an example, explaining she actually really enjoyed the chance to let out her “mom bun” and do her hair.

“Women are trying to figure out how to home school and run our businesses and cook three meals a day and it’s this long laundry list. Our personal self-care goes out the window, because we have all these other things to do. How do we find a little happiness? It might be superficial, but if you look good, you do feel good. Even today, I put on some mascara and I was like, ‘Oh yes, that’s right!’”

With this in mind, she’s currently working on a series called In Between Beauty, which she hopes to release in coming weeks. It will feature a range of different people giving home beauty tips to tide them over until they can resume supporting local business and return to their favorite salons.

“It will be tips to keep you going in that in-between time, because that’s what this really is. It’s an in-between time that we’re stuck in. People need to remember that. There was a time before coronavirus and there will be an after.”

For more stories about businesses finding ways to pivot, as well as crisis communication tips, digital marketing advice and a sounding board for ideas, join our Facebook group.

How to market Lake Tahoe tourism businesses best

Sara Jokela

March 16, 2020

Lake Tahoe is a popular tourist destination, with over 2.7 million visitors per year. If you’re a small business owner in the Lake Tahoe area you may be wondering how you can capitalize on the ever-growing tourist industry.

It has a great variety of tourist attractions, from the stunning natural beauty and hiking trails, such as Eagle Rock, to winter sports, including some of America’s best skiing. If you prefer a more laid-back approach to vacation, there are stunning beaches as well as high-end shopping and dining along the north shore. Alongside these are historic sites aplenty, including Tallac Historic Site and the Ed Z’berg Sugar Pine Point.

Lake Tahoe is so stunningly beautiful you don’t have to convince people to visit.

However, the local tourism industry is well-established and highly-competitive, a lot of competition, with activities, beaches, and sight-seeing destinations all vying to catch the attention of visitors. An effective marketing strategy will distinguish your business from others and make sure customers find you first!

Beacon Media + Marketing has an office in downtown Reno, but our story started in Anchorage, Alaska. We have plenty of experience in developing and executing successful marketing stratgies for the competitive outdoor tourism sector. Here, we’ll summarize some of our most successful tricks of the trade, giving you an insider’s view into the world of tourism marketing.

Small business marketing

We mentioned before that we are well-placed for providing insight into marketing for the tourist industry in an area of outstanding natural beauty, which also includes historic sites and plenty for the outdoor sports enthusiast.

Here we’ll summarize some of our tips that are applicable for Lake Tahoe tourism companies, from a series of blogs on marketing for tourism and related businesses that we’ve written.

Blogging

You may have heard that blogging is important to growing your business, and it is. There are a few tricks to effective blogging. The primary thing to remember is that consistency is key! You need to be publishing regularly to get the results you want. Here are some proven methods of blog marketing:

The inbound marketing philosophy is a simple concept. People are online all day, every day – this means that putting quality content in front of them is easier than ever. The core tenet of the inbound philosophy is that if you consistently provide useful content to people, they will remember you and seek you out when they need your services.
People use Google to ask questions, so it’s super effective to answer them. If you’re the one people can rely on when they want to know something, they’ll remember you when they want to buy something.
The waterfall method of blogging is a highly successful, and slightly sneaky, trick for getting your posts to rank on Google! Google highly rates backlinks: that is, other credible websites linking to your blog. Links of this kind act a bit like a referral, but it can be difficult to get links from other websites. So, we do what is called backlinking. This involves using your own website to provide links! A common way of organizing this, which you can use successfully for your Lake Tahoe tourism business, is called the waterfall method.

To see an example of one of our blog waterfalls, and to read more about our blogging strategy, read our blog on blogging for arctic tourism here.

Google Ads

There are two types of Google ads: display ads and search ads. Display ads pop up on websites, they are usually a graphic or image and can be identified by grey “advertisement” text above them. Search ads appear at the top of your search results page, very effective for putting you in your customers’ eye-line.

Google uses an algorithm to determine which ads you see when you search. In the fraction of a second after you press search, it takes an inventory of all the ad accounts that contain keywords or phrases used in your search.

If you want to read about google ads in more detail, including how the algorithm works, and how they can help tourism-related businesses, head over to another blog we wrote here.

Branding

We at Beacon Media + Marketing have a 5-step process for developing a strong brand.

Here is a quick overview:

Understand what branding is. Your brand is your visual identity, it’s what people will think of you
Brand discovery. Your primary focus in this part of the process should be focused on identifying your competition and how you can differentiate yourself from them. You also want to identify your target customers and work out how you can appeal to them.
Naming. Sometimes naming can come naturally, but other times it can be the hardest part of the process, so we offer some advice:
1. Look at competitors
2. Consider using names of founders
3. Consider using your location
4. Alongside a name, you should come up with a tagline

Choosing iconography, color, and font. The icon is the part of your brand that most people think of when they talk about the “brand” or the “logo”. It is the part of your brand where you can use form, rather than text to communicate your brand. It can be used to represent name, location, and mission in a quick and easily accessible manner.
Management. A mismanaged brand can become messy and inconsistent, which dilutes the effectiveness of your brand. At Beacon Media + Marketing, we provide clients with a style guide that informs staff of what logo, colors, and fonts to use and how to use them.

If you’d like to learn more about branding, you can delve into it in more detail in a blog we wrote, here.

Web Design

Experts recommend that you redesign your website every 2-3 years. Why? Because product changes, staff changes, fashion, and best practices all change rapidly in business and online.

However, we appreciate that this can be a daunting task. We at Beacon Media + Marketing have 20 years of experience in the marketing industry, and a proven process for website design.

You can read about our process in more detail, here.

Meet with your team

Before you get started on your website design, it’s vital to get a handle on what exactly you want to create, what you want to say about your tourism business, and what your goals are.

We recommend gathering all the key people in your business into one room and asking yourselves questions to determine this. It is often helpful to look at some of your competitors and determine what aspects of their website you like, and what you don’t like, to help you generate some ideas .

Map out your design

Now that you have an idea of what your website should look like, and you have some concrete features you’ll need, you can create an outline.

For our clients, we create two documents to provide a guide for the website: a site map and a wireframe.

The site map is simply a flowchart or bullet list of all the pages on your website and the order in which they will derive from one another.

This then provides the foundation for the wireframe, which is a set of images in which you show the elements you want on each page and how they relate to each other.

Despite the technical name, a wireframe is just a rough sketch of what you want your website to look like and where you want the elements to be.

Write the content

Having created the wireframe and left spaces for paragraphs, it is now time to write the content that goes into those boxes. We recommend three best practices for content writing, which will allow you to produce attention-grabbing and engaging content:

Keywords
- Choosing keywords that people are searching on google, and ensuring you use them throughout your writing, is a good way o rank on Google
Headers
- Including your keywords in your headers helps Google know what your content is about. Writing catchy headers also helps draw in readers, often people just skim over the text looking for their interests; you want to catch them and keep them interested.
Quality
- Google can tell if your content is low-quality as people will quickly leave a page if it doesn’t have what they’re looking for or isn’t nice to read. If lots of people do this, Google takes it as a sign that your content is low quality and will be less likely to recommend it.

Develop your website

The site map, wireframe, and content are all going to come together in the final web design. The first step in developing your website is deciding which software to use to build it. We typically recommend WordPress, which is an industry-standard solution that is completely customizable.

When building your website, be sure to stick to your brand guidelines. A well-managed, and cohesive brand is vital for a good-looking website. (Remember, we talked about this earlier!)

Go Live

Once your website is ready to go, it’s time to publish and set it live.

If you’ve found this insight helpful, and want to learn more, be sure to check out our other blogs that go into more detail on each of these topics. Alternatively, if we’ve convinced you that your business could benefit from our expertise, you can schedule a free consultation.