Online Toolbox session at 2013 E-Tourism Africa Summit by Damian Cook, CEO of E-Tourism Frontiers

1. An Online Toolbox

2. Take it Seriously
• Online has ceased to be an interesting
extra activity for a business
• It needs to be a central strategic tool for
your business on two fronts:
• Marketing
• Management
• These two need to work together

3. Know what you are
selling
• How do your define your product?
• What is the experience you offer?
• What choice do you offer?
• What makes you unique?
• What is your value?

4. CROWDED AND
NOISY

5. In a market controlled by
search and social media it is
too crowded and noisy to
make bland generic statements

6. I’m THE BEST!!!!!
No YOU’RE NOT

7. I’m EVERYTHING!!!!!
No YOU’RE NOT

8. KnowYourself
• By identifying these points of difference you
will start to develop key messages about
your business and these are going to be
used again and again in the content you
use, the search terms you leverage and the
social media you engage in.

9. Key Messages
• These definitions will help you:
• Structure your content
• Create messages to communicate
• Identify terms your potential customers
will be searching for online
• Identify conversation about similar content
in social media groups that you can join and
engage with

10. REMOTE
wilderness
luxury
FAMILY FRIENDLY
spa
RELAXING
healthROMANTIC
ADVENTURE
extreme
active
all inclusive

11. Know who you are
selling to...
• Can you describe and profile your typical
client- or the one you’d like to have?
• Are you selling to more than one type of
client?
• Are you using a single marketing technique to
sell to all types of clients?

12. Profiling
• Where do they live?
• What is their family like?
• Where do they work?
• How do they have fun?
• What media do they consume?
• What are they likely to be searching for or
talking about and how do they express it?

13. Bringing them together

14. Reverse Engineering

15. Start with your
conversion points and
work backwards to
your client

16. 3 Means of Conversion

17. (A) BOOKING

18. (B) ENQUIRY

19. (C) FAN/FOLLOW

20. WEBSITES THAT
WORK

21. Tourism Websites have 6 seconds to
capture their customers or risk them
getting bored and going elsewhere
-Travelmole 2011

22. A Site that Works
• Gives the user what they want
• Doesn’t send them to a dead end
• Never frustrates the user
• Converts to sales
• Remembers it users
• Captures and uses data

23. Ideal Website Priorities

24. Does my site need an
upgrade?

25. HasYour Website
Grown substantially in
size over the past year?

26. Is at least 25% of the
content related to
current specific events,
offers or new products?

27. Can your content be
shared, sent published
elsewhere on other
websites, media, social
networks?

28. Does each page of your
site have a specific
objective or purpose-
and does it drive the
user towards a decision,
action or sale?

29. Is the content on your
site not just ‘one size fits
all’ for all your users?
Do you have different
content for different
people?

30. Is all of the content
appealing, easy to use
and up to date?

31. Do you know how many
people are using the site
(not just visiting- but
using)?

32. A Social Media Toolbox

33. Choose your Tools

34. Try and Test

35. Face Book & Tourism

36. WouldYou MarketYour
Destination to a
Country with a
population of over One
Billion?

37. Well, that’s Facebook

38. A Fan Page is now an
essential business
resource

40. HOW PEOPLE USE
FACEBOOK

41. WHO SEESYOUR
STUFF

42. YOU HAVE TO
ENCOURAGE
ENGAGEMENT

47. POSTING

49. FIVE GOLDEN RULES

50. (1)
Short and to the Point

51. (2)
Show your Knowledge

52. (3)
Engage

53. (4)
Be Human

54. (5)
Be Current

55. Posting
• Keep it short: Posts with less than 250
characters (less than 3 lines) receive 60%
more engagement
• Be visual: Photos and video receive up to
180% more engagement
• Post often (4-5 times per week)... But not
too often..

56. It’s a beautiful day at Acme Hotel
8:06am
Having a great breakfast at Acme Hotel-
we have cereal
8:44am
A guest just said they love Acme Hotel!
Woot! Woot!
10:46am
What shall we have for lunch at Acme
Hotel?
12:25pm
Look at this picture of a Kitten- bet it
wishes it was at Acme Hotel
3:00pm
Here’s the sunset from the Acme Hotel
5:30pm
It’s dark outside at Acme Hotel
8:30pm

57. Have conversations-
don’t give lectures

59. Don’t Like your own
posts...

61. Ask Questions to get
answers...

65. ENGAGEMENT
BUILDING
• Experience driven posts
• Live Content
• Calls to action
• Contact Forms
• Video Channel

66. Boost Engagement by
promoting posts and
advertising...

67. But target your
Content direct to the
Right Audience...

68. Reporting Results

69. CLAIMYOUR PLACE

72. Incentivize Checkins...

73. FaceBook
• Be sure to include a clear FB link from your
website and a Like Button
• FB address on all promo material, business
cards and email signatures
• Make your customers fans
• Encourage them to be a fan in follow up
mails

74. Twitter for Tourism

75. Isn’t Twitter just
nonsense??

76. What is it?
• It’s Microblogging
• An online chat room
• A mixture of banter, socialising and practical
advice
• Users answer the question “What’s
happening?”

77. In 140 characters or
less...

78. Now a community of
500+ million people

79. With Global
Reach

80. And huge influence...

81. In Realtime...

82. World’s fastest growing
search engine...

83. How It Works
• Set up an account with your @name
• Compose 140 character sentences
(including links via URL shorteners)
• Post them
• Other users can follow you- and you can
choose who you want to follow

84. Tweet Terms
• To follow somebody is to subscribe to their
messages
• A tweet is an individual message
• A DM or direct message is a private message
on Twitter
• RT or retweet is to repost a valuable message
from somebody else on Twitter and give them
credit
• Trending topics are the most-discussed terms
on Twitter at any given moment

85. Tweet Terms
• @username is a public message to or about
an individual on Twitter
• A hashtag–the # symbol followed by a term
and included in tweets–is a way of
categorizing all the posts on a topic
• Shortened URLs.To fit links into the short
messages,Twitter shrinks some URLs down
automatically- but URL shortening sites can
be used: bit.ly goo.gl

86. A Media Tool
• Twitter is unlikely to win you a first time
customer
• More than anything it is a media channel
• Keep past customers loyal
• Use it as a Press Release Tool
• Often used a ‘wire service’
• Great for B2B networking

87. #traveltuesday

88. MAKE FRIENDS AND
INFLUENCE PEOPLE

89. Get Tweeting
• It’s easy to do and very addictive
• Excellent realtime promotional tool
• Get direct realtime feedback
• Get new ideas, products and meet new
people

90. Too Many to Follow?
• Use HootSuite or Tweetdeck
• Tweet from multiple accounts
• Schedule your tweets
• Keep a tally of questions answered, customer
problems resolved and positive exchanges
held
• Embed twitter widgets in your website
• Track your tweet statistics
• …and much more… for free!

92. VIDEO

93. HD MAKES A
DIFFERENCE

94. VIDEO:
PUBLICATION

113. Be Cross Channel...

114. Making Remote
Presentations

115. www.slideshare.net

116. • Linked in is a Business Networking
Community online
• 120 Million Users
• Excellent B2B tool for meeting, networking
and sourcing information and advice from
other professionals
• Fantastic SEO value for your name, website
and links (blogs)
• Create and Manage your profile

117. Groups, Discussions,
Questions

118. Social Media
Management
• Who is going to manage it all?
• Try and have everyone contribute
• Create a basic social media policy- sticking
to key messages, who says what etc
• Bring in some young people- students,
interns etc

120. Make the Change
• Begin to shift business online- increasing
allocations to online bookings
• Begin a progressive marketing shift with
25% of budgets, human resource and time
• As you grow- appoint a social media and
marketing manager

121. THANKYOU