What people like is more important than their postcode... Segmenting your existing and future customers is a proven idea. It should help you understand them and group them together to make marketing easier and more effective.  If you know what someone likes, then you’ve got a much better chance of knowing if you can turn them into a customer.  Unfortunately, you can’t tell what they like from any of the following: Age or gender Marital Status or life-stage Income Location ABC1, DINK’s, Silver Market, or other income and life-stage based classification Knowing this information doesn’t help us understand whether they will buy a specific type of holiday.  It tells us who and where they are but not what they might actually want or do. Think of a man, married, with children, wealthy, around 60, British - Prince Charles?  Also Ozzy Osborne.  And Richard Branson.  You can see why it doesn’t work well - different people have different values and if you don’t find out what those are, you don’t know what they like. To help tourism businesses and communities, we joined forces with VisitBritain to try and understand what the UK market likes.  Together, we created a segmentation tool called ArkLeisure which is based on people’s core values when it comes to buying holidays and leisure.  We identified eight different groups of people (segments) who value different things when it comes to holidays and we can now tell businesses and communities useful information about their existing and potential visitors.  For example: Holiday and leisure activity preferences Attitudes to ‘staycations’ Attitudes to sustainability Media preferences Internet and social media use Who likes cultural versus activity tourism %age of the population, age, and demographics for each segment Types of attractions which appeal to each segment Marketing messages which work for each segment This is the information which helps destinations develop their offerings in line with what visitors actually like doing.  For more information, visit the Arkenford website or get in touch.

Tourism event focuses on understanding customers Earlier this month the Hidden Britain team attended the annual World Travel Market event held at London’s Excel.  Amongst the huge variety of imaginative exhibition stands (check out our photos), languages, cultures and business meetings was a programme of useful seminars. Irrespective of the topic, the theme of ‘understanding your audience’ and then acting accordingly underpinned every one.  Here are some of the key practical ideas we picked up: When building your web content, create a user journey which shares with your audience the aspects of what you have to offer that match their wants and needs.  Eg; if you promote cycling tours across the English countryside, take them on a virtual cycle journey.  Avoid including anything else, irrespective of how clever it might seem. More and more visitors are using mobile applications to assess venues, destinations and activities so if possible, get your message onto this platform if your audience are avid mobile web users. If you use email, personalise the content by using what you know about the audience.  If they signed up from a special offer, make reference to it or if they have stayed with you before, acknowledge it.  Anything which helps make them feel that you are talking to THEM is beneficial. Design your emails and social media presence, content and tone of voice based on what you know about your audiences’ desires.  Your communications should be about them, not you! If you exhibit at events or conferences don’t turn up with a standardised offering.  Even if it’s only a minor change, adapt your materials, stand etc to each event.  If this isn’t practical then at the very least, adapt what you talk about and how you deliver that message to directly address the audience at the event. Did you go to WTM?  What ideas would you add?

Destination spotlight - Kent country breaks Understanding the needs and wants of different target customer groups was key to the recent development of four country breaks in ‘Natural East Kent’. Two key phases of research activity were delivered as part of the project: An assessment of what ‘assets’ each area had to offer visitors based on the special qualities of the landscape; linking local products and activities with local produce, arts & crafts, events, the natural environment and built heritage An identification and understanding of key target audience groups that would be interested in what the regions had to offer Working with community groups in each area, Visit Kent built a profile of the kinds of people who already visit as well as new groups who might be attracted by the activities and other assets uncovered in point 1. This work showed that there was a real opportunity to develop a programme of activity which targeted family activity days, couples’ romantic breaks, outdoor activity breaks and gourmet programmes. As a result, a member of the Lower Stour Valley group, The Grove Ferry pub, has taken the initiative and is establishing links with the Stodmarsh National Nature Reserve to leverage the number of existing visitors and attract more to the area. The team is now setting up a visitor information point within the pub complex which is opposite the main entrance to the Reserve. The Reserve attracts 80,000 visitors per year, the pub 65,000 and, not by coincidence, Grove Ferry River Trips attracted 2,000 customers in their first six months by appealing to this outdoor-oriented audience.  The local community group and businesses will also be able to use this space to display information that is specific to the Lower Stour Valley, encouraging visitors to spend time and money locally. The country breaks are now featured on the Visit Kent website

Hints & Tips - practical audience segmentation Countless books and articles have been written on the best ways to segment and target an audience but here are a few of the most practical tips we have learned working with successful communities and rural, tourism businesses: Don’t re-invent the wheel, find out who else has done research.  Ask your Town/District/County Council for any visitor research they have done in your area that could provide useful information on who visits and why Look to RELEVANT tools already available like ArkLeisure – relevance to your audience is key Use what you already know - get a group of people together who meet and serve visitors to brainstorm who they think target markets are; based on your collective experience Avoid wishful thinking... base your plans on what you know about your audiences’ likes, not what you’d like them to be! If you have a college or university locally that teaches tourism or marketing you may be able to get good quality research done for you about who you should be targeting as part of a student project If you missed our free Christmas hints and tips, you can still download them from our website. There are plenty more great hints, tips and advice on developing all aspects of a tourism project or idea at the Hidden Britain website. Click here to find out more