This presentation is an update of November 2012's presentation for the BC Tourism Association in Kimberly BC. We cover the main online marketing areas that Heritage operators should be considering, as well as looking at some of the hottest up to the minute trends and opportunities. This is being presented in Nanaimo on February 1, 2012 and Quesnel on February 3, 2012.

1. February 2012

2.  Group – From Introductory to Tech-Savvy.
(Might be difficult to nail the exact “depth” so just hit me up afterwards if
you need explanation or expansion on any particular topic!).
 Rob’s Background.

3.  Cut through the noise.
 Empower and inform.
 Share practical ideas on where to start.
 Leave with a high level plan.

4.  Marketers now have a hard time faking it.
 True merit wins.
 The web is accessible – you can find out how to
do anything.
 “Measurability” and transparency create great
opportunities for those brave enough to be
wrong!

5.  Know who you’re trying to reach.
 Find out how to get in front of them in
relevant settings.
 Get good at “conversion” of web visitors.

6.  The act of getting someone to the next level
of engagement:
◦ Purchase.
◦ Reservation.
◦ Phone call.
◦ Get directions to your business.
◦ Sign up...
 Critical to measure conversion elements through
Google Analytics (free).
Cont...

7.  Every page on your site should be optimized to be
as persuasive as possible in getting your visitor to
take the next logical step.
◦ Prioritize your visitors.
◦ Consider the context – how did they get there/whey are
they there?
◦ Remove any obstacles.
◦ Build the necessary trust and credibility.
◦ Invite the next step with a relevant call to action.
 Small companies can beat large ones in this arena.

8. Trust and Credibility
Call to Action
Visitor Priorities
VERY Focused!

9. Prioritization of 5
different offers while
streamlining the
selection process.
1
2 3
Trust and Credibility-
building throughout.
4 5
Removal of
obstacles
Call to Action

10.  The A/B Test Email
Example:
◦ Easier than ever.
◦ Dramatically powerful.
 Ads
 Landing Pages
 Calls to Action
 Email
 You name it!

11. A
B
C
D
E
F

12.  Knowing your visitors means knowing their next logical step
on your site/page – always invite them to take that step.

13.  Nobody will book with you or visit your location until you’ve
built credibility and trust with them.
 Look & feel, testimonials, photos, reviews are great
“credibility indicators.”
 Aside from simply getting a customer, folks will actually pay
a premium for a place/service they trust more.

14.  VISITORS: Visits, Unique Visitors, Pageview,
Pages/Visit, Avg. Time On Site, Bounce
Rate, % New Visits, Region...

15.  Example of a Proactive step: look at Bounce Rate
and identify ways to reduce it. What’s wrong?

16.  TRAFFIC SOURCES: Search (right down to
Keyword), Referral, Direct.
 Which keywords are driving traffic (and
which important ones aren’t)?
 What’s driving referrals?

18.  CONTENT: Time on Page, Bounce
Rate, Exit %
 Do any page have an Exit % which can be
reduced?

20.  IN PAGE: Relative % Clickthrough by Link.
 Are your top invitations to action being
clicked on?
 Which choices are most popular?
 What can you kill?

22.  Two types of currency on the web : Cash or
Content.
 The fuel that drives:
◦ Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
◦ Social Media.
◦ Conversion.
◦ Advertising (i.e. Adwords Quality Score).

23.  What works for Heritage?
◦ Events.
◦ History.
◦ The Region.
◦ Visitors.
◦ Other attractions or organizations.
◦ Etc, etc, etc...

24.  Shouting/Broadcasting
instead of conversing.
 Engaging without
measuring.
 Focusing on platforms
or activities without first
considering overall
goals.

25.  Social Media = Networking3
 Principles are the same, but...
◦ Geography-Independent.
◦ Time Efficient.
◦ Can be highly leveraged (exposure to
connections’ connections).

26.  Social media is a way to communicate what you
have to say (so you better have something to say).
 Social Media works best when you use it as a
platform to make your audience look good!
 Pictures and Video (ideally tagged ones) reach your
audiences extended circles.
 Tracking is critical - i.e. Facebook reports & link
tracking tools like Bit.ly

28.  People doing or
saying
something they
are proud of will
send people to
see it.
 If tagged, this
can happen
automatically!

29.  Typical user
has well over
150 friends.
 Having 10 photos from an event tagged on
your Facebook page can mean 1500+
impressions to the Friends of your tagged
subjects.

31.  Facebook Page for your organization?
 Co-operative pages or multi-organization
destination strategies? (i.e. multi-site
contest?).
 Contests involving uploading and/or
tagging photos? (i.e. upload a photo to your
Page to be entered – winner is photo with
most likes – KISS).

32.  SEO can be likened to a 3 legged stool (we know
what happens if one of the legs is missing).
These legs are:
1. Site structure and coding.
2. Great, relevant content.
3. Links from related sites.
 While some of the details have changed, this is
a formula that’s always held true.
Cont...

33.  Many see SEO as an awkward, artificial process.
 To succeed in having a site that appeals to both
users and search engines you need to get
beyond that. We advocate that you:
1. Use research to find the actual terms (keywords)
people are using to search for your type of product or
service.
2. Incorporate these keywords into your site copy.
3. Optimize the relevant pages on your site for the
relevant keywords.
 Not so hard, but few people do it well!

34.  At a minimum, get basic Search Engine Optimization in place
to get more visitors.
 Page Titles, Page Descriptions, sufficient text, SEO-friendly
copy.
 Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide - Google
Page Title
Page
Description

35.  Searchers know way less about your business than you do
and may use different language than you do to search for
your type of business.
 Find what language they use and incorporate it on your site.
 https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
(see next page...)

39.  Free opportunity to have one
on every poster, flyer or
brochure displayed in a public
location (i.e. The Airport or
Ferry) .
 Keep in mind, however,
it’s a MOBILE experience.

40.  Most online advertising is based on a Pay Per Click (PPC)
model.
 This model means that you ONLY pay if someone clicks
on your ad and comes to your site.
 This also means that advertisers favour higher
performing ads. If you do a better job than your
competitors at creating compelling ads, you’ll get better
placement at lower cost.
 Google/Bing are easy to set up but have many hazards
for the casual user (quite challenging for competitive
areas).
 Facebook/Linkedin ads are both ridiculously easy to set
up!

41. Sponsored Links/Ads
for a rather
“broad” search.
“whale watching Victoria
BC” will be an expensive
keyword to bid on as it’s
so competitive.
Note that “premium” top
positions are a result of
those ads achieving great
performance.
Also note that it’s not just
the bid but Bid X Quality
score that determines
your placement.

42. A “narrower” search brings a
results page with zero ads on it.
Lack of competition means a
relevant ad (targeting at “whale
watching sooke bc”) would be
very cost effective.
The challenge is that this term
will have low search volume
To get traffic you must create a
“portfolio” of keywords.
As you learn to convert this less
expensive traffic, you’ll learn to
tackle more competitive
keywords.

43. The Google Keyword Tool lets you
conduct research on keyword search
volumes by month.
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
• Volume of search is shown by region
for the keyword you selected as well
as similar terms.
• Consider all “match types” (Google
“Adwords match types” for more info).
• Bear in mind that figures may not be
accurate for low volume keywords.
• You can download the results and
see seasonal patterns.

44. • Theme-targeted
text and banner
ads set to display
only to visitors in
specific
geographic
regions.
• Can be very low
cost.
Theme/keyword
Remarketing
•Remarketing driven text ad
Display Ad
opportunities! (Swimming Pools)
• Geo-targeting…

45. Can target by:
• Radius around a point.
• Defined Geographic Region.

46.  Picking very specific targets
(geographic, demographic or keyword targets)
is the way that small companies can beat larger
organizations with bigger budgets.
 Can make a meaningful, repetitive impression
on select targets (get 10 people 100% of the
way there instead of getting 100 people 10% of
the way there).
 Think in terms of a “portfolio” of niches.

47.  Still a tiny fraction of the ad click volume of
Google.
 Relatively crude reporting tools.
 Fantastic demographic targeting.
 Great opportunities for targeted engagement.

48.  Think in terms of niches versus blanket
advertising.
 Click-through rate (percentage of folks
viewing the ad who click on it) is low, but this
means you get tons of dirt cheap ad
impressions.

54.  What’s the value of reaching your own portfolio of relevant
niches for a few dollars a day vs paying $500+ on a one-
time, untargeted print ad?

55.  Google Analytics shows which keywords are
currently bringing people to your site and which
ones are bringing “qualified” traffic.
 This data give you direction on a broad group of
keywords to experiment with in PPC advertising.
 Your PPC results (which you can get quickly and
cheaply) give you a good idea of which terms you
should invest your resources in for SEO.
Cont...

56.  Your email article:
◦ Can be used as a blog post.
◦ Your blog post gets optimized for SEO (both for itself and to give
“juice” to another related page.
◦ Your blog post provides something to Tweet about or post in
Facebook on.
◦ Your Tweets boost the SEO for your post page and related page.
◦ Each Tweeted link is tracked. Watching which links/posts are most
popular tells you what content readers will be interested in for
your email.
Done in isolation, the above activities have some value. Done
together, over time, they are dramatically powerful and allow you
to meaningfully improve each month.

57.  Google Algorithm Changes.
◦ Fresh, relevant content more important than ever
(plus fresh links to it).
◦ Review sites.
◦ Links from other Google properties.
◦ Links from Social Media, including Google +.

58.  Last year just claiming your Google
Places Page was a big help – this
year you want to optimize it!
 Results in increased exposure in
Google Maps, better/more
placement in Google Search (for
local businesses) and a great
source of links for your site.

59. Get seen by potential visitors:
 Register and claim your listing on ALL review sites
(Canpages, FourSquare, Canada 411, etc, etc,).
 Print out most important URLs on cards for happy visitors.

60. Get seen by Google:
 Google is factoring in more 3rd party data than ever. Notice below how:
◦ Google results are pulled from Urban Spoon.com.
◦ The restaurant with the most and best reviews is at the top of the page!
 There are dozens of review and listing sites for almost every business
vertical. You should claim and optimize your listings on as many as
possible!

61.  Another great way that small companies can beat large
companies.
 Still tons of value in traditional PR.
 A practice we call “online PR” or “niche PR” has emerged which is
very accessible to businesses of any size.
 Much like picking the right level to compete at in other
areas, you simply:
◦ Do research to develop a list of relevant bloggers/writers of a size you’re
comfortable approaching.
◦ Contact them respectfully, commenting specifically on something they’ve
written and explain why your launch/opening/etc is relevant and worth
mention to their readers.
◦ Keep going! Over time you’ll build a great “house list” and grow to be
comfortable approaching larger sites, blogs and publications.

62.  Google Analytics Source Tracking was updated last year.
 Through a simple process you can create custom “hooks” for
your posted links that let you know exactly which “campaign” a
visitor came from (i.e. Email newsletter, Tweet, Facebook Wall
post).
 There’s a bit of a learning curve, but it’s well worth diving into.

63.  The majority of 25-34 and 18-24
year olds now own smartphones
(64% and 53% respectively).
 79% of smartphone consumers use
their phones to help with
shopping, from comparing
prices, to finding more product
info, to locating a retailer.
 70% use their smartphones while in
a store.
 77% have contacted a business via
mobile, with 61% calling and 59%
visiting the local business.

64.  Most importantly, while this shift is
happening before our eyes, few
companies are acting on it, creating
great opportunities for first-
movers!
 Important to keep in mind that:
◦ Mobile searchers are typically looking to
find or contact your business (so make
these things VERY clear on your mobile
site.
◦ Mobile searchers take action on their
searches at a dramatically higher rate then
desktop searchers.

65.  Traditional sites simply
don’t translate to Mobile.

66.  Call.
 Get Directions.
 Book.
 Other?

67.  “List view” or custom
display within one
click of home page
(might actually be on
home page).
 Ideally, have actions
for each location
presented right on
their listing.

68.  Tablets? Not clear yet how long term usage patterns will
unfold. That said, even companies not currently
concerned with Mobile (i.e. Traditional tech/software) will
have to pay attention to how/where they are being used.
 Overall, a best practice is to embrace “light” sites that
will display quickly regardless of connection type (3G,
4G, WiFi, Public WiFi).
 PPC Advertising already presents a HUGE advertising
opportunity for some industries as you can target Mobile
explicitly (and yet few people are).
 Ad opportunities? e.g.18% of searches related to “car
batteries” in Canada are from Mobile. 30% for “tow truck”

69.  Find a couple areas to experiment in.
 Learn enough about them to make sure you’re making a
meaningful effort.
 Keep costs and effort as low as possible until you’ve
established there’s potential in the areas you’re
targeting.
 Test and grow your efforts while building your own set of
best practices.
 Try new things.
 Measure everything!

70.  Give me a call if you have any questions or are interested in
any of the areas we talked about!
Justin
• SEO
Rob Our Team • Link Building.
• Creation of web strategies
to match business goals.
Coffee.
•
Cam
Rian Nevin • Conversion Analysis.
• Development • Content • PPC Advertising.
(Mobile and Strategies.
WordPress). • Data Stuff.
• Online PR
• Technical
SEO Expert. • Social Media.
Mentor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnSJBpB_OKQ