This year I am doubling down on the power of experiences and communications that are shareable by design in my own businesses and the attention grabbing solutions we build for our clients at COFFEE Business Stimulus. Watch this space (or better yet subscribe) to see a collection of our and other’s outputs that capitalize on the Socialgenic ethos (stimulating peer to peer sharing by design).

Unique Business Card Design – Now With Gluten!

For the first post of the year I am happy to share this unique business card design from Pasta Boy Peter, a friend and fellow entrepreneur. While the per unit price may be high, the likelihood that the concept/image will reach far further than the business owner ever could to “press the flesh” is inarguable. When I saw these cards I knew I had to immediately post it here and to get it onto Reddit to do its thing. Nice work by https://www.pastaboypeter.com/ check him out! I know first hand is a great educator and entertainer.

As a marketer in the age of programmatic hyper targeted campaigns I am going out of my way to share the efforts that break the mold and bring exponential returns to the creators that are brave enough to try something new.

Innovative campaigns, they aren’t just for award shows any more! The world is your stage, give people something to shout about! Contact me if you want the recipe for creative ideas that break through. Twitter: @trevorJurgens

Hulk smash! Why is there no good Brand Positioning Chart image on web!?!

While it is a great time to be an entrepreneur with almost every visual asset you need can be found quickly through a Google Search, a great example of a brand positioning chart is not one of them. As I was searching for one to use with my COFFEE Business Stimulus clients I found it to be as elusive as a cagey super villain. So I decided engage the help of a few super friends to do my part to make the internet a better place and upload one here.

Tied closely to another mythical marketing tool – Origin Story – Positioning is the most essential part of any brand strategy. Are you clear where you fit in and how you can soar above your competition? Your origin story is the unique set of circumstances and choices that lead to your super powers (a combination of skills and attributes) that few others have.

Complete the free COFFEE ThinkSheet and get clear on where you stand and find your most powerful position. 

If you would like a higher resolution version please reach out in the comments.

I had a lot of fun this week hosting a Tourism Edge webinar for a group of businesses in the Kananaskis region of Alberta, Canada. In the session we addressed how feedback from your past guests is a wealth of information for tourism businesses. We also discussed how being vigilant about responding to reviews is important to attracting more guests. “Raised in reviews” and well versed in their nuances, many potential visitors evaluate businesses on how well operators respond to (negative) reviews, as much as the review itself.

While important, constantly scanning for comments and reviews related to your business is untenable. You have a business to run. Fortunately there are some affordable tools you may choose to invest in that can make the task much easier.

Rated from cheapest (free) to most expensive here are 4 tools that can help you keep you head above water while keeping your eyes on your online reputation.

Google Email Alert System (FREE)
You can sign up for Google Alerts quickly and relatively easily. Identify your brand/business name, common mis-spellings and other topics related to your business. Google will continually scan for instances when these terms appear together and you will be sent an alert straight to your inbox when they do.

As I have learned from experience, if you have a common business name or are interested in a common keyword make sure that you focus the search or you risk being overwhelmed with irrelevant alerts.

Google lets you use boolean logic rules to focus your search. It’s as fun to use as it is to say! 🙂

For example if you are a whale watching business in California consider including the state or nearby city as a keywords in combination with your brand, product or service. I.e. “Whale Watching + California + San + Francisco”

Reputology ($29 US/Month – Free trial)
Reputology helps you monitor and manage online reviews with alerts, dashboards, and analytics. A nice feature is the summary reports that help you make decisions based on consumer feedback.

ReviewPush ($39 US/Month – Free trial)
ReviewPush offers multi-site monitoring, keeping an eye on new reviews on Yelp, Google, YellowPages, and more. They send you an email when new reviews are posted and you can respond to that review directly via email.

Review Trackers ($49 US/Month – Free trial)
Review Trackers allows for multi-site monitoring in one spot, and attractively for tourism and hospitality businesses covers industry-specific review sites like TripAdvisor and OpenTable.

Give one of the tools a whirl and see if the time savings justifies the cost. I’d love to hear which system you preferred and how things went.Did you uncover reviews you did not know existed? Did you address a problem and gain a fan?

Want to get more guests with less work? Get realistic help for the tourism bootstrapper. Read more and drop me a line.

As I continue the journey of bringing my tourism business marketing expertise online, I am preparing to host my first free tourism marketing webinars Feb 1, 2017 (Procrastinator’s New Year).

Gear wise, in the tradition of the 4 Hour Work Week I am focused on being mobile so I am getting small transportable equipment as I build up my mini-webinar studio. First on the list was a webcam.

Logitech C920 or C930e

Looking at the options it was tough choice between the Logitech C920 and the C930e. Both are considered better than most other webcams on the market. To get the 90 degree field of view so I can show my students on screen examples over my shoulder (and not be smooshed into the frame) I went for the C930e. I will post an update with my impressions.

I’m an affiliate now

After working extensively in Affiliate Marketing in 2005 this is the first time I am an affiliate myself. I decided to see how the Amazon Associate system works. Monetizing online content is another experiment I am running for myself, my friends and students. If you are in the market for a webcam or anything on Amazon please use the links below.

Consider sharing your expertise and passion with the world in 2017!

Discovering my love of coaching was my biggest breakthrough in 2016 and I am going after it in 2017. I am ready to solve problems and inspire students across the globe as an online content provider. If you are on a similar path lets connect and share secrets! For any of you that have already taken the plunge I’d love to hear about your hurdles and successes!

And, for those of you who have not taken the plunge drop me a line for some tips. Subscribe to Socialgenics as I will be sharing regular insights. And, consider getting a Logitech c920 or Logitech c930 for yourself!

Looking for the best tourism business specific marketing advice?
Join the private Tourism School Facebook Group here.

Happy new year to everyone and especially those of you marketing tourism businesses!

Having worked with over 100 tourism businesses I know two things to be true, you all work incredibly hard, and since time and money is limited, you need the Social Media marketing tactics that deliver big bang for little buck. For that reason I focus my advice into actionable and high potency hacks. Feeling revved up to hit your marketing goals this year? Start here!

Two Tasty Tips for Online/Social Ad Targeting

I had a lot of delicious treats over the holidays and hope you did too. I did not however have any Oreo cookies and it shows. They are on my mind so this post packs a two part punch on social ad targeting tips for travel businesses. Thanks to Claude Faerden from kananaskisoutfitters.com for the inspiration! Check him out when you are in Canmore, Alberta, Canada!

1. Promote your experience to only the people travelling near your location.Targeted Facebook ads are the most flexible and accessible advertising opportunities for tourism businesses. Best of all for tourism businesses, with advanced (but still simple) targeting you can promote your experience to the people that match your exact desired demographic AND are currently visiting your destination. If your product or service can be bought with limited lead time, there is a clear benefit to targeting your ads to people that are logging-in near your place of businesses. Facebook’s”Travelling-In” location targeting effectively lets you remove all local Facebook users from your ad audience. Leaving you with only visitors/recent arrivals! This technique is extremely effective for hotels, restaurants, rental and tour businesses.

   Read how to create the perfect Facebook audience for your travel business.

   

2. Put your  posts in front of past customers AND people JUST LIKE THEM on Facebook!
   Who better to put your paid ads and promoted content in front of than people that have done business with your before? No one… except maybe new people that are the same age, live in the same place and have the same interests as your past customers. If you have a mailing list of at least 1,000 people (even if you don’t use it) can can easily create a custom audience for you paid social content and extend it to thousands of new potential visitors just like theme. This is the number one tactic I recommend to anyone looking to experiment with targeted Facebook advertising. The cleaner and more current your email list the better. Consider excluding emails you know don’t represent your target customer.

   Read how to create a Facebook audience based off your past customers.

There is more free help where this came from.

Salivating at the thought of these tasty tactical treats? Take advantage of free practical tourism marketing advice. Drop me a line for a 15 minute coaching call. The more people I help the better I get, so reach out we’ll both learn something!

Shy? Don’t like free help? Follow me on Twitter.