Are we over-analysing our audiences?

In our efforts to differentiate our locals from our hyper locals, are we losing sight of the fundamental visitor ethos that everyone is welcome?

Much of what I learned about market segmentation in my early tourism days, some 23 years ago was taught to me by an engaging young man at the London Tourist Board who over time followed a number of roles up to and including becoming the Chief Executive of a well known tourism trade body. The premise of dividing audiences up into specific groups of course has merit; group organisers for seniors prefer not to be on site at the same time as school groups for example, and so it makes sense where possible for this to be managed through timings and different entrances.

However marketing segmentation can (and I believe to a degree, has) gone too far.

Far from the basic local, regional, national and international segments, of yester-decade, we have now become far more febrile; and therein lies an issue as far as I can see.

More segments means more data, and more data means more analysis and more analysis means more targeting, and more targeting means more results, and more results means more income and…and …and….

Please stop. Take a breath. It doesn’t need to be this complicated.

Clearly it is vital to reach new audiences to, in part, replace those that are currently absent, but also to generally showcase the huge diversity of product available, against the backdrop of the very famous attractions that tend to draw the bulk of the visitor market within destinations.

However, I would argue that we are in a very good position currently to completely overhaul our approach to the common situation that has existed for years:

The more famous attractions receive the bulk of the visits, leaving little time or space to visit the abundance of other 'hidden gems'.

There is a want and a need for the lesser known 'hidden gems' to be visited as it will improve visitor flow and add more to the local visitor economy.

My approach to this existing position is as follows:

These two statements are not mutually exclusive, and they can happily co-exist. We just need to re-position them accordingly.

I recently posted about turning the attractions triangle upside down so that the most famous reasons to visit a destination are no longer the primary focus from a destination marketing perspective.?

I want to explore this a little further here, and attempt to join up all the thinking above:

Visitor marketing strategies tend to be written and developed behind closed doors – a group of senior team members will work on a variety of financial and operational plans to bring together the most desired outcomes; usually in this order:?

Financial -it needs to be profitable

Operational – the balance between staff requirements and visitor numbers

Time- how long will it take to engage with the audiences and how long will they spend on their visit.

The fourth aspect of the visitor marketing strategy is of course the visitor themselves, and for this, I would suggest a review and simplification of the engagement process.

The reason I say this is because the audience segmentation, with all the data available tends to take place before the engagement does. In other words we ask who we are looking to target before finding out whether or not the product is right for them.

Clearly it makes no sense to try to encourage a disinterested audience, when there is an engaged one out there, but how can we really tell which is which in forward planning when we are relying on historical data and a changed visitor landscape?

Adding to the woes of over complicated visitor data, is over complicated messaging.

I had the opportunity to work with an amazing historic attraction that was struggling to engage with a new audience. They, like many other world famous attractions have one especially famous attribute that tends to drive the visitor numbers to a particular space, leaving many other aspects less visited. I asked what was so special about this one aspect, and got back a standard answer based on curatorial expertise and conventional wisdom. I asked again what was actually special about the space, but this time without resorting to the same wording because it wasn’t resonating with me. In the end we more or less got to the point that neither of us were expecting: -‘it’s really pretty’ which is actually absolutely fair enough, and miles away from the curatorial expertise that served in marketing material and website descriptions.?

My approach as a consumer is exactly the same as the one that I impart on clients. What I really want to know is just this: how much will it cost, how many people will be there as well, and how long can I spend there. In other words, what I really want to know is ‘what’s in it for me’.

We can segment to our hearts’ content, but I hope that at least in the short term more businesses and destinations can adopt an approach of ‘everybody’s welcome and this is what’s in it for you’, in plain and simple terms.

We can share everything that’s amazing, and lesser known, safe in the knowledge that everything that is famous and better known will remain exactly that. Let’s uncover our gems for all to see, un-convolute our copy, and above all let’s make sure that everyone is welcome.