Standing on the ‘stand on the shoulders of giants’.
Over the years, I’ve been privileged to work with or learn from some of the great minds in tourism marketing. In particular, I’ve learned a great deal from my former business partner Bronwyn White over the years. She’s introduced me to some great gurus including Neil Patel, thus making our business more resilient as I take on this element.
Thanks to this I read this fabulous piece where he outlines his 34 principles of marketing. If you’ve read my blog on strategy earlier, you’ll know I’m a big fan of the idea of having principles and adding to or adapting them over time. So I thought that I would share it with you. You can read it by clicking on the image below
Source: NeilPatel.com
7 Key tourism marketing principles for the time-poor
However, I think it is worth noting that Neil didn’t start out with 34 – he wrote down 20. And he’s a full-time marketer. For those who need to work in the business as well as on it (which is most people in tourism) I picked out the tourism marketing principles that really stood out to me. I’ll also come back to another – trends – in a future post. (But if you are an MTR Premium Member be sure to check out our latest thinking on trends here.)
- Follow the evidence – it will help you overcome the loudest voices in the room
- Never be complacent – things change what worked yesterday won’t work tomorrow (automatically) – so test and learn
- Balance short and long-term goals. The longer-term your time frame the more likely to succeed in the long term. Neil’s timeframe isn’t quite as long as my #cathedralthinking of 50 or 100 years, but if you can have a 5-year plan you’ll prosper over competitors.
- Keep it simple – not too many social channels, but don’t depend on one. Things change too fast. At the conference for Great Ocean Road Regional Tourism Ltd last week I heard no less another guru Jesse Desjardins note that organic reach on Facebook is close to dead.
- Understand your brand, guard it and be true to it. Never sacrifice it for short-term gain. It will help you form the stories, language, etc. If you are a MyTravelResearch.com Premium member you can draw on tools (and more coming) to help you over the next 5 years – see more at Critical Success Factors of a Great Tourism Brand.
- Understand your customer – what are their passions and pain points. Again our Premium Members can draw on our persona libraries and niche reports like luxury, adventure, culture, and heritage to help. If you aren’t a member, you can download our customer persona template for free here.
- Get your ego out of the way – this is particularly hard when things are going well. Always ask how you can do better – especially when times are good
Which principles do you live by?
I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences. If you have time to read the full 34 tell me which really stood out for you as having the best relevance to tourism marketing. Blogs work better when they are a conversation, not a broadcast!
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