ONLINE MARKETING

Digital action plan for tourism

While the pandemic presented massive challenges for the hospitality industry in 2020, Rob Edlin, director of digital marketing agency Niddocks, has some advice to help tourism businesses bounce back in 2021.

Communication has always been the key to success in business, now more than ever we need open and honest communication in our marketing, advertising, policies, procedures, terms & conditions. Digital marketing makes communicating your brand, message, offer, destination, accommodation, attraction, activity or other entity much easier and cheaper than it was 30 years ago when many tourism businesses relied on newspapers, magazines, tele-marketing and travel agents to attract customers. Although easier and cheaper, digital marketing is still confusing to many.

Much of the work can be carried out by yourself now and Devon and Cornwall are full of really good small businesses that can help you with all or some of what you need to do if you need a helping hand.

Having looked at the data from hundreds of businesses, we have noticed some interesting trends amongst all the difficulty and confusion that has surrounded tourism and travel throughout the last 12 months.

A few key points are worth highlighting and I recommend that you take time out to audit your own digital marketing activities, advertising and web presence to ensure that you’re ready for whatever 2021 has to throw at you.

The two most significant things I’ve observed are: 1. There are many more people visiting websites in Devon and Cornwall that have not visited before - the figure varies from business to business but as an average, we’re seeing almost twice the number of “new” visitors to websites, in real terms this means tens of thousands more people are looking for holidays in, services provided and products to buy from the south west. 2. Search patterns and terms have been very different, people are searching for things to do, more information, Covid restrictions, opening times, delivery

information, cancellation policies, places to visit and generally we’re seeing searches for terms that indicate that people are new to the area or the products and services offered in Devon and Cornwall.

With the above two points in mind, now is the time to make sure that you are being found for the problems and solutions that people are searching for.

My recommendation for getting started with this is to address the problems and the solutions in the content on your website and social media.

For Example, somebody might be searching for the problem “what to do on a wet day in Cornwall with kids” or they may search for something that more resembles the solution like

“indoor playground in Newquay” - you can address both the problem and the solution in your content by working the content up into a useful paragraph of text such as “Not sure what to do on a wet day in Cornwall with the kids?

Our indoor playground in Newquay is open to small groups from the same household on an hourly basis, book your half hour slot online now.”

The following should help you organise and prioritise your activities over the next few months: • Be consistent with your communication across all platforms - make sure that your opening times, delivery schedules and any Covid-19 restrictions are displayed on your website, adverts, Facebook,

Google My Business, Instagram and any other platforms that you use • Ensure that your information is up-todate and, if relevant, let people know when it was last updated as the rules and guidance around Covid-19 keep changing • Make sure you have your website backed up and you know where your data is and how to get it back up and running within a few hours if you get hacked. Sadly, we’ve seen an increase in website hacking, mainly through out of date plugins or missed security updates • Change your passwords regularly and where possible enable two factor authentication • Test your website performance and

improve it or get your web developer to improve it for you if it is slow or has issues with Although easier tools such as tools.pingdom. com or www.thinkwithgoogle. and cheaper, com/intl/en-gb/feature/ digital marketing • testmysite Enable a caching plugin on your is still confusing website to speed things up to many. • It sounds odd to me to say this now, but make sure that your website is mobile friendly and supports

Accelerated Mobile Pages technology • Take control of your own SEO and

Content Optimisation by making sure you have an SEO plugin on your website (such as Yoast for WordPress) - pay particular attention to optimising Titles,

META Descriptions and Headlines (H1) on each page • Wean yourself off online travel agent/ booking websites that take hefty commissions, there’s more demand now than supply in most cases, if you don’t get away from them now then it’s going to be more difficult for you in the future • Consider using Google Ads,

Microsoft Advertising and Facebook

Advertising to run some very targeted campaigns to attract last minute business or target the shoulder season which is likely to be much busier than normal in 2021 as international travel will still be difficult for people • Don’t worry about the summer season, save your advertising budget for the shoulder season, add negative keywords for summer etc • Try display & search remarketing • Add a mini Tourist Information Centre to your website, point people to popular attractions, places to eat, places to stay, places to visit, places to drink etc. • Check that your Google Analytics account is up to date, consider upgrading to GA4 which has been recently released and check that revenue/booking tracking and attribution is in place • Allow payments online Our websites (for reference) • Be very clear about COVID-19 specific restrictions/guidelines that are relevant niddocks.com niddocks.net to you and your customers, draw swc700.com attention to your booking/cancellation/ hyggeandrea.com refund policies. southwestcoastroadtrip.com