Only in Scotland How do experiences drive VisitScotland’s marketing … Slide 1 • A holiday is all about special moments – moments with family and friends, moments to enjoy new experiences and visit new places or perhaps to return to familiar places but try or learn something new • Today’s travellers are looking for more – the experience economy is growing. It ’ s not just about “I did this” … but unique experiences that are personally fulfilling • Many destinations have comparable experiences and products, so Scotland needs to stand out more in order to remain competitive … so that’s why we have Only in Scotland • Only in Scotland is the next chapter of the VISIT element of Scotland Is Now Slide 2 • VisitScotland’s purpose – at the heart of our organisation strategic framework • Sustainable growth has traditionally been interpreted more in the economic sense via our marketing, where our focus has been on regional and seasonal spread • But in light of climate change, we as VisitScotland and as an industry, need to broaden our thinking and approach more, to consider all aspects of sustainable growth - environmental, economic and social • For ‘ over tourism ’ we are taking a more bottom up approach – matching product/place with visitor markets and audiences, having total buy in from communities/destinations Slide 3 We have shaped our Only in Scotland campaign around these 5 emotional drivers: • From all the research we have undertaken on visitors, these are the motivators for their holiday – what they want to get from their experience • These drivers shape our thinking on the content we create making sure we don’t just promote things to see and do, but how a holiday/break in Scotland will deliver their needs on a more emotional level Slide 4 Welcome to Only in Scotland where we have put the unique experiences at the heart of our activity and storytelling to promote the experiences you can enjoy Only in Scotland Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XYpAxg_M-I Slide 5 So, what are the things we need to take into account, when designing our strategic approach and our activity plans
Slide 6 • So not only are consumers looking for experiences that will fulfil their emotional drivers and unique experiences, they also want information and content tailored to them • One of the main step changes in our understanding of consumer behaviour is the move towards post-demographics – a way to study personal data in social networking platforms and in particular user profiling - identifying user interests, based on their interactions • In our digital world, we don’t just segment by age or social status classifications, the advent of personalisation and digital platforms means that we can also tailor and personalise content by interests and behaviours • AT VS we are investing in new digital capability – a new Content Management System for vs.com and a new marketing automation platform that will give us the capability to provide more contextually relevant content based o n someone’s interests and online behaviours – helping the visitor to cut through the vast amounts of travel information • Our digital media buying also now targets via interest and behaviour allowing us to serve very targeted adverts • Slide one touches on the experience economy and there are more insights on trends at VisitScotland.org – Art of Now (enrichment/personal growth), New Society Norms (seeking something meaningful in life) Slide 7 • Over the course of planning a holiday someone might do 100s, or even 1000s of different things online and offline that contribute to their end decision. However, for us from a data perspective, this journey is almost entirely opaque . We really don’t know what people are doing. But every now and then they pop up when they open our emails, visit our site or engage on social media and for a brief moment we have eyes on them – in a nice way! • What this also means is we need to understand the channels and media that influences them and then be discoverable and visible where they are looking and booking • Within VisitScotland, we talk about holiday soup – lots of ideas bubbling away that people have gathered from friends, TV programmes, social media etc.. Some of these might be very fixed e.g. I want to see the Northern Lights in Orkney, I want to meet the Harray Potter or visit a jewellery workshop. Others will be more conceptual – a touring holiday, a family getaway somewhere remote etc. • Our job is to create and distribute content based on what we know people might be searching for and that will provide more information on what a holiday to Scotland could offer – weaving as many unique Only in Scotland moments in as we can • Our media and national content activity focuses on the idea and concept forming stage of the journey. Our SEO strategy is focused on the concept forming stage of the journey
Slide 8 From left to right, there are in essence 5 different ways tourism providers can sell their products to the happy visitors at the bottom , which you’re probably all aware of . What, in essence, this slide outlines is: • Visitors use different channels • Many will book direct with businesses (therefore you need to be discoverable) • Growing numbers will use Online Travel Agents (Expedia/Booking.com etc) and book travel, accommodation and increasingly experiences • Some, particularly those from long haul markets, will use Fully Inclusive Tour Operators or Destination Management C ompany’ s like Abbey Tours, JAC Travel etc to book for them. Increasingly our focus here is working with and influencing the trade to get them to develop unique Scotland packages and helping businesses to work with the travel trade. • For VisitScotland, this means we need to know who the key intermediaries are in each market and partner with the key ones. Expedia is the most popular Online Travel Agents in North America Slide 9 • Planning for the whole journey as a nation – we all have a role to play • VS role at the top of funnel - stimulating demand for the destination – we use media channels that we know our target audiences are engaging with • VS social media – also inspiration/idea/concept forming stage of the journey – we measure success not just by number of followers (3m) but by the amount of non-followers we reach every month which means our engagement is good – every month we reach 4m potential visitors that don’t currently follow us (friends of friends) providing them with ideas for their holiday soup • VS.com is an important gateway where visitors come to help build their idea/concept of a holiday in Scotland but we know that they will also use many many other sites during their journey – we optimise the content based on what consumers are searching for and now 80% of our traffic and 90% of our referrals come from organic search – i.e. quality traffic that is converting • We also work with industry/destinations to increase capability through for instance Digital Tourism Scotland, and to increase online discoverability and bookability – it’s important that visitors can convert easily at all stages of the journey • Businesses need to optimise their content to increase direct bookings and work with Online Travel Agents that will help you achieve your objectives Slide 10 • Bringing Scotland’s products and experiences to life in an emotive and engaging way, reinforcing Scotland’s position as a welcoming, creative, innovative, inclusive and progressive nation • Trends, insights, drivers and market learnings puts storytelling at the very heart of our strategy
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