Spirit of Scotland: VisitScotland’s New Marketing Strategy
VisitScotland representatives have been letting industry know about the new the marketing approach for 2016. In brief:
- Their new theme – The Spirit of Scotland – represents a change in in approach for their marketing campaign. It also represents the new spirit of ‘working together’.
- VisitScotland see themselves as guardians of the Scottish brand, rather than the owners of it.
- Customer behaviour has changed and VisitScotland are changing accordingly.
- VisitScotland are adopting a mixture of traditional marketing methods and working with partners, associations and businesses to generate content, recognising that user generated content is huge. It is a great opportunity to harness all the fantastic content being generated by individual businesses.
- VisitScotland is asking for content from partners and businesses, recognising that user generated content is huge. It is a great opportunity to harness all the great content being generated by individual businesses.
- VisitScotland is asking for content from partners and businesses, recognising that user generated content is huge. It is a great opportunity to harness all the great content being generated by individual businesses.
- VisitScotland is looking at markets where the best conversion rates can be predicted in order to maximise budget: Scotland, England, some areas of North America, France and Germany.
- VisitScotland will have a date driven approach to Google searches to ensure Google ‘loves them’.
- Extensive consumer surveys into how to engage with customers has been carried out.
- Changes to the VisitScotland website to be launched in January 2016 include:
- It will be fully mobile optimised
- There will be better navigation
- There will be new mapping
- Enhanced listings
- Itineraries – suggestions of what to do
- Trip planning and scrapbook elements
- Greater prominence of events
- A community platform – a forum including local ambassadors who can help the visitor experience
- VisitScotland has partnered with Trust You, which aggregates all review sites drawn from User Generated Content, offering a live score based on verified reviews. The score will be shown alongside TripAdvisor reviews. Allows benchmarking, monitors social media, offers weekly analytics, offers the ability to gather reviews without being a part of other review sites, scores change in real time. Open to QA’d and non QA’d businesses.
- VisitScotland will be mobilising Visitor Information Centres, in order to increase reach to the places where visitors are.
- The new strategy launches in the UK in March, aligning with STA Tourism Week.
VisitScotland will be issuing a toolkit to help self-caterers enhance their listings in due course, and we will get this out to Members as soon as we have it.