Tourism Marketing: How To Find Qualified Audiences

View of sunset and plane wing from plane window.

You dove into the data and you read the industry reports. You talked to existing customers and got their feedback. It’s clear that you’ve done the research into determining who to market your travel destination services to. This now begs the question: how do you target these individuals digitally?

 

Digital marketing platforms, such as Google and Facebook, make it easy to target ads to your ideal audiences. This guide is designed to explain the targeting options available and how to acquire qualified customers through strategic targeting.

 

Google Audience Targeting

As of 2019, Google controls about 75% of search share on the internet. For those using Google Ads, paid ads convert 50% better than organic search results. It’s safe to say that Google Ads is a powerful platform for targeting ads and reaching the right people at the right time. 

 

Google has spent many years improving and adding features to Ads, and its targeting options are no exception. Allowing for more options than just demographics, Google Ads can also help hone on interests and behaviors of potential customers.

 

Search Network

  • Affinity Audiences: What the user’s interests and habits are. This option focuses on patterns and behaviors of the user, such as noticing when someone travels a lot for work. Tourism-specific options include:
    • Business Travelers
    • Travel Buffs

 

  • In-Market Audiences: What users are actively researching or planning. Adding this audience option allows for your ads to potentially be shown to those seeking related services. Possible audiences for tourism agencies to focus on that fall under in-market include:
    • Air Travel
    • Bus & Rail Travel
    • Car Rental
    • Cruises
    • Hotel & Accommodations (include or exclude vacation rentals)
    • Trips by Destination (this option allows for you to break down by country, region, and major city)

 

  • Remarketing: How the user has interacted with your business. This option focuses on retargeting those who have already visited your website or have had some contact with your brand.

 

Display and Video Network

In addition to the audience options available on the Search Network, display and video ads also have the following option:

  • Custom Intent Audiences: Similar to in-market audiences, custom intent allows for you to compile a list of keywords related to your industry, brand, and services. These keywords can include ones you are not bidding on, as well as your paid keywords. 

 

Linked Sources

If your website is set up on Google Analytics, this can be another valuable source for remarketing audiences. When selecting the remarketing option in Ads, you can choose to select the audience from your Ads source or your Analytics source, therefore pulling from a pool of organic or paid traffic users.

 

Facebook Audience Targeting

With 2.5 billion monthly active users worldwide, Facebook is an almost unlimited source of potential customers. Similar to Google Ads, Facebook Ads allow you to target users based on demographics, such as age, location, and gender. However, it offers its own unique targeting options that provide you the opportunity to reach qualified prospects from another angle.

 

Custom Audiences

I consider this to be one of their best features for targeting. Facebook allows you to upload your customer lists directly and target based on personal information, like email addresses and phone numbers. With custom audiences built in Facebook, you can retarget existing customers, exclude existing subscribers when running campaigns for new subscribers, and expand your reach by including a custom audience.

 

Lookalike Audiences

An option only available thanks to Facebook’s matching algorithm, a lookalike audience is built off a custom audience and finds users that are most similar to it. Simple to set up, Facebook will give you the option to adjust the “broadness” of the audience from a range of 1% to 10%. The lower the percentage, the more strict the lookalike audience will be identifying similar users. The higher, the broader and wider the audience will be.

Detailed Targeting

Facebook Ads have the advantage to better target users based on personal information since Facebook provides users a platform to follow, create and share personal content. Detailed targeting can include a user’s job title, company, what pages they follow, life events, behavior, and more. Here you can create an audience based on the personas you uncovered in your research.

 

Suggestions for targeting travelers using this option can include:

  • Followers of Facebook pages of competitors
  • Those who recently returned from traveling
  • Followers of travel-related Facebook pages

 

 

And there you have it! Now you can take the next step of reaching a more qualified audience by using any of these targeting options available through Google Ads and Facebook Ads.

Tourism Marketing: Getting Started with Data

Kayakers on an alpine lake surrounded by rocky mountains.

When vetting a new digital marketing scope, it’s common practice for us to always start by conducting research. It’s one thing to sit down and identify what the goals and objectives are of a campaign. It’s another to identify and develop personas of existing consumers in order to target a likely-to-convert audience. When faced with a scope specific to the tourism industry, we want to focus on understanding those who are currently paying to travel and visit specific destinations. This understanding of existing consumers can help expand into uncovering new markets of opportunity based on similar behavior and demographics.

 

So how can one uncover and support these markets with data? You analyze data sources you have access to, draw insights from existing audiences and develop strategies geared towards reaching these personas. 

 

Don’t Sleep on Descriptive Statistics

 

First things first – let’s look at the basics of data analysis. If you’ve ever taken a statistics course, there’s a good chance that you are familiar with what descriptive statistics are. If it’s been a hot minute, then here’s a quick rundown on what exactly descriptive statistics are.

 

As the name implies, a descriptive statistic is a single term that quantitatively describes, or summarizes, a piece of data. The plural form of descriptive statistics refers to the process of analyzing those statistics to learn about a  sample of data. The most common descriptive statistics derived from raw data include: mean, median, mode, count and standard deviation. 

 

When it comes to analyzing data, using descriptive statistics can really help paint a quick picture of the sample data. For example, say we have a data set on the demographics of those who have worked with a US tourism agency in the past five years. By getting descriptive statistics of certain fields, such as age or gender, we can see quickly what characteristics stand out and whether they appear to be a population more susceptible to using tourism agency services.

 

Where to Find Data Sources

Next, how do we find the right data sources? If you have access to your agency’s database, then great! You’re ready to dive into the data through a program of your choice.

 

If you don’t have access to internal data, then this next step may be a bit of a challenge. Depending on the industry, this can be either a very easy or a very difficult thing to accomplish. Data privacy is a concern that everyone is invested in and isn’t always available to the public, which can make it hard to find raw information on the industry. 

 

Thankfully, a lot of industries already do the work for you and often release reports that are available for the public to peruse. Statista is a great source for data across a number of industries, including tourism in the United States. These reports can get you started on the right path of identifying audiences in the industry.

 

Other sources for public data sets include: 

  • Census data. This can be a great place to start if you’re researching opportunities within the United States population.
  • US Government data. Covering a wide range of industries, this website contains a ton of data to analyze.

 

 

Use Your Digital Sources: Paid Search + Social Media

If you are using Google Analytics on your website, then you already have access to a valuable pool of data. Ranging from information on the audience of web visitors to specific actions taken on web pages, the amount of insights you can draw from this data source is incredible. If linked correctly, Analytics can help you dive further into your Google Ads campaign data. This allows you to understand where and how web visitors are being driven to your website.

 

The amount of data available in Analytics can quickly have you lose track of time going through each tab on the sidebar. To avoid getting overwhelmed, we prefer to connect this source with a data visualization tool, such as Google Data Studio or Tableau. These types of tools provide a better overview and allow for quick analysis.

 

Another valuable source of data falls under the realm of social media. If you have a Facebook or Instagram business account for your organization, then you have access to Insights. In the platform itself, you have the ability to browse data about your followers. From this source, you can see how your followers engage with your page, followers’ reactions to posts, where they are from, and more. As with Analytics data, you can take this data one step further and connect it with a data visualization tool. 

 

 

Data Visualization

Considering that our agency uses Google Suite programs, it’s no surprise that Google Data Studio is our data viz tool of choice. What’s great about Data Studio is its ability to seamlessly connect with a number of internal and external sources of data and blend sources painlessly. 

 

 

With this tool, you can build visually appealing and insightful reports that can answer questions about your existing audience quickly. Consider the following image. We can quickly see a snapshot of where our followers are, thus prompting us to consider expanding our efforts to these markets.  

 

 

Still not convinced? Try for yourself using one of our simple web traffic report templates.

Step 1. Go to this template report .

Step 2. Click on the Duplicate icon on the top right and on the pop up, select Copy Report.

Step 3. Select any graph and under the Data tab on the right side panel, click on the [Sample] Google Analytics data source, and click on the Create New Data Source at the bottom to connect to your Analytics data. 

 

Community Building Online: Five Places to Start

Students sitting in a circle on the lawn.

The final traction channel in the book Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares is community building. Many of the traction channels in this book seem to overlap and build on each other. But this is a channel that more often seems to stand alone. Community building is when you are purposefully fostering relationships and connections with your customers. This encourages them to bring others into your circle. An easy ma and pop, brick and mortar type example could include hosting an offline event, or opportunity for your customers to get together, bring their friends, and talk about how much they love your product, but what happens when you are an e-commerce or tech company that would like to take advantage of their community and help it flourish? Here are five online locations you can implement community building in a tangible and impactful way.

Reddit

Reddit is an enormous and ever-growing collection of forums where users can post about news and other content as well as comment on posts made by other people. The world of Reddit is huge and easy to get lost in. But, when used strategically, it can be a powerful community builder, especially through subreddits specific to your business.

In case you aren’t familiar with the platform, subreddits are the individual forums within the larger site. Subreddits are free to create and can play many purposes for businesses. For startups, creating a subreddit can help customers give feedback and connect with each other, helping the company grow and gain traction. For existing businesses, subreddits allow customers to connect with each other and members of your team, enter giveaways hosted by the business and simply chat about what they love (or hate) about the product or service. With over 330 million users, Reddit is sure to be a place where you can build a community for your business. 

Community on Reddit
Blog Comments

Similar to Reddit, popular blogs provide an online space for people to discuss specific topics that interest them. As mentioned in our blog post about SEO, writing quality blog articles can help your website show up higher in search engine results, ultimately leading to higher amounts of organic traffic, but this is not the only benefit of a good blog. Once a business establishes a blog that provides meaningful information to its readers and brings traffic to the website the blog can become a very powerful tool for community building. If users are finding value in your blog they are more likely to interact with you by leaving comments. These comments can then create conversations with different customers and with your team. Getting engagement can be difficult at first, but here are a few tips to hook your first few commenters: 

    • Ask questions in your article. Readers are much more likely to comment when there is a question for them to answer. 
    • Use social media to share your blog posts. Then encourage your followers to comment on the article instead of the social post. 
    • Talk about your readers or customers in your post. If something that is shared interests you and the community talk about it on your blog.
    • Respond to all comments when they first start to be made. This will provide value to those who are commenting and encourage future comments.
Pioneer Woman Blog
Wikipedia

While most millennials grew up being told that Wikipedia is not a reliable source for scholarly papers, it still proves to be a site that is read by many when searching the internet for an answer to a question. It might surprise you that Wikipedia actually doesn’t have any employees. Any knowledgeable person with access to the computer can create the content. This is the exact reason many teachers advise students to avoid using the site as a reference. The lack of proof that professional research has gone into a Wikipedia article is concerning to academia, but, for your business, this open-source information is a great opportunity to encourage community building. Having a Wikipedia page specific to your business can allow your current customers who are subject matter experts on your business to share information and encourage discussion of your product or service.

Trader Joes Wikipedia Page

Topic Specific Forums

Even though it’s hard to believe, forums still exist outside of Reddit! Creating a forum that allows your current and prospective customers to discuss, ask questions and give advice about your product, service or other topics pertaining to your business is a great way to create community. Hosting a forum allows you to directly interact with the people who post on it similar to how you could reply to a blog article, but it also allows for readers to communicate with each other on an even higher level. Another way to leverage forums is to comment and interact with customers in an existing one. Find a forum that has a topic that resonates with your brand and start a conversation with participants.

Amazon Community
Facebook Groups

Facebook is arguably the most popular online community and can easily be leveraged for your business, especially through the use of Facebook Groups. Here at Pintler Group, we love putting all aspects of Facebook to use for our digital clients, including the groups feature. Creating a group for your business is easy. It allows you to share posts, images and other pieces of content with the group’s members. You can decide if the group is private and invitation-only, or open to any interested parties. Consider your intended audience and create a group that creates value specific to these individuals. If you have multiple audiences you would like to reach, create multiple groups. This way you can cater even more directly to individual audiences.

It is also important to remember that these groups do not need to be all about your business. Try creating an open space where members can talk about various topics that relate to your business. Cast a wide net to catch anyone interested in the topic rather than only people familiar with your brand.  

Instant Pot Facebook Group

For more on community building and the other 18 traction channels, check out our podcast, Cutting Through The Noise and our YouTube channel.

Offline Events and Online Tracking

Offline events bring people together to learn more about or to support your business. They can be anything from large trade shows to local concerts or races that raise funds. Even small workshops with limited seats qualify. Businesses can host, sponsor or even simply attend offline events such as these to gain traction.

Businesses savvy in digital marketing often overlook offline events. But at Pintler Group we celebrate the good news that offline and online efforts don’t have to live in separate bubbles. In this article, we look at how digital efforts can take your offline events to the next level. 

 

Offline Event: Board Meeting

 

Offline Fundraising Event

Many restaurants offer sponsorship opportunities to local clubs and non-profits. Typically, the restaurant will offer to donate a certain percentage of sales on a specific day to the organization, but the kicker is that many times, the orders only count towards this percentage if the customer mentions the fundraiser or hands over some sort of flyer or coupon to indicate their involvement. Recently, Montana Council BSA hosted an event like this at all Buffalo Wild Wings locations around the state of Montana. Customers presented a flyer to have the funds donated.

To effectively track, the flyer lived on a specific landing page that email and ad campaigns lead to. The page’s analytics can provide insight into attendance and campaign effectiveness.

While the method of creating a specified landing page for a ticket, flyer or coupon that corresponds with an offline event isn’t foolproof, it can give businesses a better idea of who is attending the fundraising event. This information helps you know which events are the most popular. Additionally, it identifies the most powerful targets.

 

Offline Event: Concert

 

Facebook Offline Events

We’ve all been “suggested” an event near us on Facebook. The feature is one that is proving to be quite powerful in the digital marketing space. Facebook Events are great for both large and small scale events and allow for tons of interaction from potential customers or participants.  When a company creates a Facebook Event they are able to select the time and location, connect it to their business page, keep their followers updated on event information, promote the event and, most importantly for this article, they are able to encourage and track RSVPs to the event.

When someone indicates they are “interested” in or “attending” an event, Facebook shares that information with a person’s friends. Facebook will then remind all who indicated they were “interested” or “going” that the event is coming up. People that attend can also let their friends know when it starts. Not only do Facebook Events allow you to track RSVPs, but they also act as a great tool to promote your event by allowing participants to share with their friends in multiple ways. 

 

Offline Event: Fundraiser

 

Sourcing Online Details at Offline Events

Once the offline event begins, there are still ways you can leverage online, digital marketing efforts. One specifically powerful digital way to use offline events is to collect information such as email addresses during the ticketing process or even at the event itself. Event participants are opting in to experience your event. Collecting their email addresses can help you track the number of participants who attended the offline event, but also allow you to continue to target them with future digital campaigns. And highly specialized audiences are more likely than not to be qualified leads.

 

Want to learn more about using offline events as a traction channel? Watch this video.

 

Learn more about the 19 traction channels and other digital marketing topic by listening to our podcast, Cutting Through The Noise, which can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and anywhere else you listen to podcasts.

Geofencing: Attracting Customers at Trade Shows

Map on wall with pushpins.

As we discussed in a recent podcast, the marketing strategy geofencing, or delivering advertising messaging to people in certain locations using cities and zip codes, has many applications. It can be especially useful when trying to use digital to influence physical activities, such as a trade show or conference. How can we impact attendance at a booth or panel in a huge conference center? What are the ways to get the word out about awesome things you’re doing as a company? 

It’s crucial as marketers that we go to where prospective customers are rather than assuming they will come to us. When operating within the trade show traction channel you’ve already identified where those customers exist. You’re halfway to the finish line. You certainly can try and talk to everyone individually. Or you could use geofencing to make sure everyone in the conference center or hotel sees your messaging! We recently ran Facebook geofencing advertising campaigns for two clients with different goals, but similar results.

 

Geofencing on Facebook

Case Study #1: Trade Conference Awareness Advertising

One of our clients, a Montana chapter of a national organization, was preparing to attend a yearly conference. Given chapters from around the country would be attending they were interested in getting the word out about the great stuff they were doing. Think of it as a bragging campaign.

For the targeting, we geofenced the convention center where the conference would take place. We ran the ads starting the morning of the first day, turned them off for non-show hours and ended as the conference ended.

As for the creative, we gathered the most appealing imagery we had, knowing that even if someone didn’t engage with the Facebook ad the visual would leave a lasting impression. Our text was very direct, highlighting what sets this chapter apart from others.

The results were impressive. At a very small budget, we were able to reach over 11,000 people and drive 700 ad engagements over a three day period. As an added bonus it drove additional likes on the Facebook post.

Finally, an offshoot of the campaign came in the form of one of our core values: delight. The members of the chapter who attended saw their own ads. That brought the campaign to life for them and validated our work!

Case Study #2: Driving Traffic to a Booth at a Trade Conference

This example is where digital truly meets the physical. One of our clients was new to their industry and looking to have a big coming-out party at a conference. They spent a lot of time and energy building out a flashy booth and printing brochures to give away. Being the little fish in a very big pound, though, they needed to get foot traffic.

We took a multi-faceted approach to the campaign. First, we geofenced hotels affiliated with the conference and offering blocks of rooms. These ads started in the days leading up to the conference, knowing many arrived early. The creative specifically urged people to visit the booth.

Once the conference started the targeting switched to geofencing the convention center itself. Again, the call to action was to visit the booth. Additionally, simultaneous to this ad set we were also running Google Search ads in the city of the convention. The hope was that people who were exposed to signage or Facebook ads would want to Google what the company was all about.

The results: a stellar amount of foot traffic to their booth (which can, of course, be attributed to many factors) and triple the number of website visitors during the conference compared to the previous period.

Facebook Ads

Setting up a campaign

The nice thing about incorporating geofencing into your advertising strategy is that it’s easy to set up and can be launched with a small budget. In the planning stages these are the key pieces of information you need to focus on:

    • Location: Where are the people you are trying to reach?
    • Timing: When will they be there?
    • Interests: Are you targeting everyone in the area or only people in the area that resemble an identified persona?
    • Action: Is your action online or offline?
    • Tracking: Put in place ways to accurately define success or failure

Enjoy your first geofence!

 

Check out this video for step-by-step geofencing instructions.

For more information on trade shows and the other 18 podcasts check out our podcast, Cutting Through The Noise, which can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and anywhere else you listen to podcasts.

Stand Out By Leveraging Existing Platforms

Neon sign that says #tweettweet

The term “platform” returns a surprising number of definitions. In marketing, it can refer to social media, podcasting, video, web, and more. The traction channel “Existing Platforms” alludes to how startups can leverage traction by integrating with platforms that already have a massive following.

The short explanation of this channel is that startups should represent their business on these platforms to get their content in front of existing audiences and be able to identify their ideal audience with better precision. The following is already on the platform. Take advantage of that pool and explore integrations with platforms that make the most sense with your business. This article highlights the platforms your startup should consider leveraging marketing efforts on.

Social Media Platforms

The History of Social Media Platforms

As of 2019, it is estimated that 3.5 billion people are online. When you compare that number to the total world population of 7.7 billion, it has quite an impact. Breaking that figure down more, studies have estimated that two-thirds of internet users are on social media. For those of us who can remember the early 2000s, the world first saw social media make its presence known in the form of MySpace. What started small in the early 2000s but rapidly grew created an explosion of new opportunities in marketing. 

While MySpace paved the initial pathway of social media, it was the introduction of Facebook to the general population that sparked immense growth in this industry. Originally available only to college students, Facebook allowed users to connect via digital space and share content with one another in a new way. Today, Facebook is a must-have platform for businesses to advertise on. In 2019, there are a reported 6 million businesses that have their own Facebook business page. With 74% of Facebook users checking in daily, there are minimal cons to integrating with this platform.

 

Staying Ahead of the Competition

However, startups should consider the stage of a lifetime the existing platforms are in. To really gain traction, Businesses only marketing on Facebook will not succeed. The ones who identified and were first to adopt new platforms are the ones who see massive growth. Early adopters are those who are early users of new technologies, products/services, or platforms before the majority of the population catches on. 

With this in mind, keep updated on growing platforms. The earlier your business integrates, the more you can stand out. Just keep in mind who your audience is and whether the platform makes the most sense. A business whose target market is restricted to an older demographic might not want to consider TikTok, a short-form mobile video sharing platform popular with a more tech-depended demographic.

App Platforms

Additional existing platforms to consider are app-focused. App stores like Apple and Android allow businesses access to an impressive pool of potential users. If your business has an app, consider the free strategy: feature a free version of your app to increase the number of users, then monetize those free users with in-app purchases or paid upgrade to a premium version. It’s important to get your app to appear somewhere on the charts, so push for users to share ratings of their experience.

Web or App Extensions

Another example of integrating with existing platforms is through web or app extensions. With web browsers, such as Chrome or Firefox, users can improve their browsing experience by downloading extensions. Usually free, these extensions create a direct portal to a business. Plus, they provide some kind of value to the user as a means of personalizing their browsing experience.

Grammarly

Grammarly is a free browser extension that analyzes in real-time your text to correct grammatical mistakes, provide clear messaging, and improve the quality of messages. It’s a built-in spell checker useful for all messages that are created within a web browser. Grammarly gains a lot from this extension. It receives access to the web browser’s existing audience, provides a useful feature, and drives users to its services, which include premium services.

Slack

Slack, a cloud-based instant messaging platform popular with organizations, features a similar type of method with its app extensions. Allowing for seamless integration with services such as Zoom, Google Drive and Obie, Slack has created an opportunity for businesses to tap into its existing user pool in a simple and easy way. An app extension with Slack is perfect for services that seek to make collaboration between teams easier.

With so many platforms existing to take advantage of, what are you waiting for? Take the time to research trending social media or brainstorm how to convert your services to a value-added tool. Finding the right platform can be time-consuming. But once tapped in, you won’t regret the time invested to continue gaining traction.

Check out this video to learn more about existing platforms.

Want more traction channel tips? Follow our YouTube channel and listen to our Cutting Through The Noise podcast for more content on these topics!

The Cutting Through The Noise podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or anywhere else you listen to podcasts.

Affiliate Programs: What to Do and What to Avoid

Woman taking selfie.

Part traction channel, part revenue stream, part lead gen tool, affiliate programs can be extremely effective for everyone involved. When done correctly, that is. By definition, affiliate programs are arrangements in which a company pays a commission to affiliates for delivering conversions. Sales and leads are the primary conversions used, but some companies will pay for web traffic.

Amazon, of course, is one of the leaders in the affiliate space. Coined Amazon Associates, the e-commerce behemoth pays percentages and flat fees on sales generated from a company’s website or social media account. Say you review baby products on your blog. You can apply (and hopefully get accepted!) to the program, attach a tracking code to links to the product page you are reviewing and you’re set. In this example generating a sale of a car seat would net you 4.5% of the sale price. A bonus? Commissions don’t just apply to the product you are linking to. Any purchase from a customer you drive there counts!

Keeping with the baby theme, recommend your readers signup for the Amazon Baby Registry and you get $3 as soon as someone adds one item to the list.

 

Affiliate Marketing Revenue

Do Your Research

Just like anything on the web, some services are better than others. And when it comes to affiliate programs there are a lot of shady operations. Does it seem too good to be true? Well, it’s probably not. Look out for clumsily put together websites, a lack of terms and conditions and an unorganized fee and payout explanation. You should never pay to join. Anything that says “Get Rich Quick” should be avoided. And make sure the products you would be recommending are legit. The last thing you want is to get scammed out of commission AND your readers or followers scammed as well.

Bottom Line: Do your research, read reviews and talk to associates.

 

Staying True to Your Brand

It’s important to keep in mind that while you’re driving revenue and making a living that you are still a trusted source of information for your readers. So you certainly don’t want to be mentioning products you don’t recommend just because they have a high price tag. Further to that point, the best affiliates are transparent, noting on their site or in the article they are making a commission over referral purchases. The New York Times does a great job at that when they publish their books bestseller lists.

 

New York Times Bestseller List

 

Why Should I Engage in Affiliate Marketing as a Big Brand

Because it’s noisy out there and you can use all the help you can get! Similar to business development it’s a relationship that is a win for you and a win for the partner. You can almost consider an affiliate network your own paid street team. You just don’t have to pay them until there is money in your pocket.

In terms of who, let’s extend the street team analogy. Who better to market your product than your loyal customers? They are already educated on your brand or service and the promise of occasional discounts in addition to a commission could be a powerful motivator. You’ll, of course, need to vet them and make sure they have a platform worth your effort, but the impact of a team of influencers could be huge.

One place to start would be with your analytics. Who has purchased the most from your store or who opens the most amount of your emails? Is there someone who is always liking, sharing and commenting on social media? Isolating these super users and then vetting them prior to reaching out can save a lot of time.

Looking for some simple tips on setting up your affiliate marketing program? Check out this tutorial!

 

Want to learn more about affiliate marketing and the other 18 traction channels? Check out our YouTube channel and our podcast, Cutting Through The Noise.

 

 

 

Engineering as Marketing: A Match Made in Heaven

Woman sitting at desk with three monitors.

Engineering? In marketing? From first glance, the two terms don’t appear to invoke thoughts about being complementary to one another. For digital marketers, it’s a powerful combination and can be an incredible asset to any agency. “Engineering as Marketing” is building and using tools to reach more people and gain traction by providing value to users.

Creating tools that your target audience finds useful can do wonders for your business in the long-term. Ideally, making this tool free for your users is best for businesses looking to grow rapidly. 

HubSpot

A good engineering as marketing case study comes from the marketing automation software company HubSpot. They used the traction channel to improve the quality and quantity of its leads. In the early years of HubSpot, the founder Dharmesh Shah spent quite a bit of time manually scanning through websites to check on the quality of its inbound marketing. Tired of this process, Shah decided to create an application to automate it. Then he made it public as a way to gather emails. Since the app’s launch, Marketing Grader has been used by well over 4 million websites. Also, it can be credited for a large percentage of the leads HubSpot receives monthly. Talk about a win!

 

 

The key with the engineering as marketing traction channel is to really pinpoint what service will provide the audience value that you can build off your existing services. It serves as a first step to getting your customers to look into what your business can offer.

GeoFli 

Another example to consider is one that’s close to home. In fact, it’s an example taken from within our own agency.

Over the past five years, there has been a steadily growing interest in marketing strategies focused on targeting users based on location. As customer data continues to provide more value to marketers, knowing a user’s location has sparked some innovative and clever strategies in marketing. Such strategies fall under a variety of names: geofencing, geotargeting, geomarketing, location-based targeting, etc. This method of targeting users within a certain geographic radius is applicable across advertising platforms. For example, marketers can serve ads to regions with region-specific ad copy or adjust organic content based on a user’s location.

 

 

Taking note of this trend early on we realized there could be a marketing tool engineered to fit this need of marketers. Enter GeoFli, a software as a service (SaaS) product that complements the digital marketing work we do at Pintler Group. GeoFli is a website personalization tool built for marketers (by sympathetic developers!) looking to surface relevant content that lives on their web pages to specific geographic markets. This tool allows marketers to create geotargeted content on their website that adjusts to the viewer’s location.

Say you are a recruiter at a college. With GeoFli, a web visitor from Boston will see different content than a web visitor from California. GeoFli takes away the confusion of coding and web design. Additionally, it makes it easier for those looking to market their content more effectively to different markets. 

GeoFli is a complementary tool that we offer through our digital marketing services. However, we do offer visitors the ability to try GeoFli as a free trial in hopes to receive more qualified leads and reach an audience that truly benefits from its value.

 

Final Notes

Still unsure about how to develop your own engineering as marketing tool? Just remember these parting notes.

    • Look within your site and think about what tools or widgets would improve your experience.
    • Keep it simple and user-friendly.
    • Always keep your target audience in mind. Provide a tool that is useful to that audience.

 

Want to learn more about engineering as marketing? Check out our podcast and video on this topic and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel.

How To: Go Viral in Three Easy Steps

Three women talking.

When we say the word virus, what do you think of? Probably that sickness that kept you home from work for a few days last year so you didn’t pass it on to your co-workers. Just like a virus spreads and bounces from person to person, a viral marketing campaign is one that is spread from person to person where everyone impacted by the campaign brings at least one person to conversion for the business.  The conversion might be a sale, a website visit, an email list sign up, or whatever else is important to your business at this time. Wow, sounds like a great, easy way to market your business, hu? Well, that isn’t necessarily the case. Let’s dive into the 3 steps associated with this unique traction channel and figure out what it really takes to create a successful viral marketing campaign.

Step 1: Awareness of Your Business

In order for a virus to spread, someone has to be its first victim. This same thing has to happen in viral marketing (except, let’s call them customers instead of victims). In order for your viral marketing campaign to be successful, you need to have early adopters who aware of and interested in your business. 

Here are a few ways to increase awareness of your business:

    • Create great content. From blogging to creating podcasts or infographics, engaging content can help people recognize your brand as topic experts and ultimately who they choose to purchase from.
    • Establish partnerships. Working with other businesses (both local and digital) can help you reach a larger audience. Try to promote your products together, host connected giveaways or even just trade social media posts about each other. You can also partner with local non-profits or other organizations that align with the morals of your company. Giving back to your community is a great way to gain positive press.
    • Advertising your business. From Google search ads to billboards, there are many new and traditional ways to advertise your business and increase awareness of your business. Check out this video on offline advertising for some more tips and ideas.

Step 2: Customers Tell Their Friends 

You might have customers who love your product, but if they don’t share with their friends, family and acquaintances then it’s not viral marketing.  

Here are some tips for encouraging your customers to tell their friends:

    • Offer a referral program. Try offering your customers or clients a special deal if they refer a new customer or client to your business. This might just add the small push they need in order to make a recommendation.
    • Make it easy and fun to share social media posts and emails. With fun content that can be easily shared with a click of a button, your customers and clients will be quite likely to pass your name on to their friends.
    • Branded gear. Let your customers become walking billboards by offering clothing, stickers and other gear with your brand on it.

Ask for reviews or customer engagement in social media. Studies show that potential customers trust what other people similar to them so give your current customers an avenue to share their love for your product or service by collecting feedback, reviews and other types of engagement. For example, you know how many grocery stores and fast food services hand you your receipt and say, “fill out the survey on the back for a chance at $1,000?” Well, that is because they know the value of customer satisfaction, quality control, and reviews.

Step 3: New Customers Participate

Word of mouth can be extremely powerful, but it doesn’t always equal conversions. Once someone hears about your business from their friend they need to decide whether or not they will purchase anything. Here are a few ideas for encouraging new customer participation:

    • New customer discounts. Give your new customers an incentive to purchase right away by offering them a first purchase discount.
    • Have an easy to find website and social media pages. Additionally, make sure that information about your product or service is easy to find. While referrals from friends (step 2) help, people often do their own research once they get a referral.
    • Moral mission that people want to get behind. Many people like to purchase products and services that do good in their communities and the world. Therefore, if your business has a community-focused mission be sure to share that publically. It might just end up being the factor that creates a conversion for you.
    • Create a sense of urgency. Do you have a limited time product? Do you book up quickly? Don’t be afraid to let your customers and potential customers know this to create a sense of urgency. When people feel like there’s a time constraint on their potential purchase they are more likely to purchase than if there isn’t anything pushing them. 

Want to learn more about viral marketing? Check out this video and be sure to follow our YouTube channel.

Visit our blog and listen to our podcast for more information on the 19 Traction Channels.

Creating Compelling Content for Your Ads

Man scootering at high speed.

Just like unconventional PR and search engine marketing, social and display ads are one of the 19 traction channels recognized by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares in their book Traction. Basically, these are any advertisements you see on social media or around your computer screen as you surf the internet. Chances are, you have already seen multiple social and display ads today. Do you remember any of them? Better yet, did you click on any of them?  

As you are deciding to run social and display ads for your own business you want to make sure your ads have the ability to cut through the noise and be remembered (and clicked on) by your potential customers. There are many ways to create an effective ad, but sometimes it can be really challenging to know where to start, and once the ad is created, it can be difficult to know where to go from there. Here are some of the tricks we use to create effective digital advertisements that lead to effective landing pages.

Special Deal Creative

 
Ad Assets

An effective ad starts with a design that catches the viewer’s attention. Many attractive ads include three main pieces of information: the company’s logo, its value proposition, and a call to action. These three pieces of information help the viewer understand who the ad is from, why it is important to them, and what steps they should take next if they want to participate with the brand. Once you have your logo, value, and call to action figured out it is time to design what the ad will look like to the viewer. If you do not have design skills, we would recommend outsourcing this small project to a graphic designer. While this might be more expensive, in many cases, having an effective and attention-grabbing ad will be worth your spend. Regardless of whether you design the ad or pay a designer to do it, make sure it is the correct dimensions and easy to read right away.

Graphic Design 

Ad Assets Quick Tips: 

    • Include a logo, value proposition, and a call to action
    • Work with a designer to create an eye-grabbing ad
    • Keep it easy to read and nice to look at
    • Remember to use the correct dimensions when designing your ad
 
Landing Pages

Once you create an attractive ad that people want to click on you need somewhere to take them, and a landing page is one great option. The point of your landing page is to supply relevant and desired information to the viewer so they either visit another page of your site, sign up for your email list, make a purchase, or complete whatever your goal may be. In order for your landing page to complete your desired goal, you need to understand your audience and what they are looking for when they visit this page. Try to understand their current emotions, needs and frustrations and play to those within the landing page copy and design. An effective landing page is straight forward, attractive, easy to look at and mobile-friendly. Make sure your landing page supplies the offer or content that the ad that brought them there promised.

Mobile Friendly

Ad Landing Page Tips: 

    • Really understand your audience
    • Keep it straightforward, attractive, and easy to read
    • Make it mobile friendly
    • Supply relevant and desired information or offers
    • Use a low-barrier, relevant call to action

For more information on social and display ads and the other 18 traction channels, check out Pintler Group’s new podcast, Cutting Through The Noise, our YouTube channel and this video.