Stories

You know what we hear a lot of in our line of work? “I don’t have time to manage my social media.”

To be honest with you, we get it. Our feedback from more than 300 different small businesses we coached over the past three years revealed business owners were spending more than two hours a week struggling with their social media. That’s 4.3 days of the year wondering “what do I post.”

No wonder small business owners say they don’t have time for social media!

We have good news – you don’t need to be sitting in front of the computer wondering what to post anymore.

We’ve made you a content calendar which has 52 weeks of content prompts, so you aren’t left wondering what to write again.

Still not convinced? Let us give you six reasons why you should be scheduling your content.

1. Good social media content makes you money

We’re not even biased when we say this, social media is a good cost to your business.

Marketing drives sales and sales brings the money through the door – and we’re yet to meet a business owner who couldn’t do with a few more high-paying customers.

For most businesses, the only cost of organic social media is time, which is likely your preferred currency of choice too.

2. Scheduling social media content saves you time

If you’ve been to one of our LIVE sessions you will have heard us use the grocery shopping analogy.

Just as if you did the grocery shopping once a week, you might spend 40 minutes gathering ingredients. But if you shop every day you’ll spend 20 minutes and twice as much to get the same result – dinner on the table.

Social media is exactly the same.

Pre-planning your content is the only way to speed up the curation and creation of content – sitting down to assign captions to your business images and videos.

If writing the captions is your sticking point, we wrote this blog post to help you DIY. Alternatively, let us help you on your way with our content calendar with 52 weeks of content prompts to save you the headache.

3. Your social media content becomes undoubtedly better

When you sit down to write content in advance, you’ll have the benefit of a birds-eye view of the week, fortnight or month ahead rather than working in 24-hour cycles.

This allows you to treat your social media as a marathon, not a sprint.

With a helicopter view, you’ll be able to see these key international dates in advance and prepare content ahead of time.

Take it from us. It’s too late to create Mother’s Day content the first Sunday of May – you need to be thinking of getting that perfect photo to share, months in advance.

4. You don’t have to be online to post

We’re surely not the only ones who don’t want to be online on a Saturday night sending our posts into the wild.

Automation is key and social media means you’re active when you don’t want to be – after hours, weekends, when you’re on holidays, when you’re out of range – you name it.

Scheduling gives you the opportunity to show up online 24/7 without you having to press ‘go’.

5. You get oversight of how it looks in your feed

For our Instagram lovers out there, you’ll be happy to know most scheduling tools provide a visual view of how your content will look in your feed.

Forget uploading two sunsets next to each other and ruining your aesthetic, with a little planning.

A visual-view will allow you to move content around in your feed, so your feed remains aesthetically pleasing.

Coordinate your feed according to colours, or like we do – one graphic design tile for every three squares to create a consistent feed of content.

6. Your social channels will lead with strategy

Last but not least, scheduling ahead of time will mean your social media is strategic – and isn’t what this is really about?

How can you possibly expect to be a strategic communicator when you don’t allocate enough time to do social media properly?

Strategic communication is not born out of rushed posts at 6pm at night while juggling the kids’ bath time and dinner.

It’s born out of dedicated time to think about connecting the right message, to the right audience at the right time.

You need to think like the Chief Marketing Officer of your company, not someone doing social media because someone said you had to.

As a starting point, define your target audience, write an online strategy, and create content pillars for your channels.

And of course, if you need a little help, there’s always our 52-week content planner, brimming with caption cures and content thought starters.

For more social media tips like this, you might like to subscribe to our eNewsletter for regular updates from our team.

Want to know one of the unexpected benefits of working with so many different events over the years? We get to have a bird’s eye view of how really good events run.

The flip side is we also get to see the most common marketing pitfalls not-so-good events seem to fall into.

The perplexing thing about these marketing mistakes (like these small business ones we wrote earlier), is they are usually totally avoidable and don’t cost money, just time.

Our belief is that being forewarned is forearmed. So, if you’re looking to take your event to the next level, we’d suggest you double-check you’re not falling into one of these simple event marketing traps.

Pitfall 1: Not getting your tickets online soon enough

Image by Tourism & Events Queensland

Did you know for some regional towns in Australia, the lead time for a customer to consider booking and planning their trip, is between six to nine months?

Put simply, if you’re not online at this time, you’re doing yourself out of a pre-promote campaign.

In our experience, the dates for the following event are usually set at least 12 months in advance. But the ticket sale functionality is not added to the event website until much later.

The solution:

• Choose a web-developer that you know and trust, but more importantly, actions things quickly. You should be working with someone you’re happy to call and request a new ticket page be built as soon as you have new event dates.
• Retain a skeleton events committee between event years to oversee tweaks to the website, like updating the ticket sales.
• If you don’t have the skills within your committee, appoint an advisory board so you have someone to recommend when your content should be online.

Pitfall 2: Hiding your checkout behind copious website pages

Image by Tourism & Events Queensland

Do you know the secret to a really good website sales funnel? Only a couple of clicks between thinking about the product, purchasing it and its postage.

Why then do so many events bury their checkout behind unnecessary website pages and make it so hard to buy tickets?

A good website points to the very thing you want people to do – buy from you.

As fun as treasure hunts are, they’re not so good when website design stands between you and getting patrons to your event.

The solution:

• Work with a web developer who understands consumer behaviour and the need to have your cash register front and centre (especially for Facebook ads).
• Count how many clicks it takes for a customer to purchase a ticket on your website. Better yet, time someone doing it.
• Once you know how long it takes for someone to buy tickets, measure it against your website’s bounce rate. If it’s taking too long, chances are you’re contributing to that data.

Pitfall 3: Not arranging a community manager to answer customer questions during the event

Image by Tourism & Events Queensland

We know firsthand how hard event organisers work. When it comes to the day of the festival they are busier than a termite in a sawmill answering everyone’s questions.

Therein lies the problem – who is answering the questions, comments and spot-fires which might be burning online?

The committee can’t be two places at once, so you need to resource accordingly.

The solution:

• Allocate someone in the event committee or your social media manager to sit in a media centre/war room to respond to any questions/queries online.
• Batch answers to commonly asked questions e.g. Lost Property for your community manager to share with people online.
• Task just one person with the responsibility of online comms during the festival to ensure messages aren’t being lost and the notification disappears.

Pitfall 4: Spending more time making sponsors happy than consumers

Image by Tourism & Events Queensland

We’ve seen too many times events focussing on getting the sponsors logos correctly placed, rather than connecting with their customer and building a community at their event.

Don’t get us wrong, sponsors are important.

But the thing about sponsors is, they won’t be so interested in sponsoring your event unless it’s got consumers at it. So don’t lose sight of your number one stakeholder, the customer.

The solution:

• Allocate one person to be the sponsorship relationship officer (more for bigger events, of course). The rest of the team can get on with marketing to the consumer.
• Ensure your marketing plans are created and executed with the customers’ needs first. Your sponsors logo placement is important, but it shouldn’t sit before delivering an incredible experience.

Pitfall 5: Losing your passwords between event years

Image by Tourism & Events Queensland

If you’d have asked us at university what we’d spend most of our careers doing, we wouldn’t have said untangling social media accounts where people have lost the passwords. No sir, but here we are.

Losing your social media passwords is the same as losing your car keys, only there are no locksmiths on the internet if you don’t have a username or a password. It’s a nightmare!

The solution:

• IT people: block your ears – write them down (somewhere safe).
• Given event committees change hands frequently, it pays to set these accounts up with a generic username that’s not attached to a person e.g. admin@yourevent rather than janesmith@gmail. When you add a person’s private email as the admin to your Facebook account and they move on, no amount of ‘forgot my password’ is going to trigger the password to come to you.

Pitfall 6: Letting social media lay dormant between event years

Image by Tourism & Events Queensland

If you’ve read Social Skills, you’ll know that organic social media is built on momentum. Just like a snowball gathering more snow, you need to keep your social media engagement rolling.

The most common trap we see is that most events only talk about themselves on social media six months out of the event.

That leaves a downturn of six months of the year where your channels are sitting completely dormant, with your engagement rate gathering dust.

Your job for the rest of the year is to build consideration; consideration to visit your destination and consideration for your style of event.

The solution:

• Build a content calendar for the entire year using content that’s less about you and more about where you host the event. Schedule your content so it goes live without the committee needing to work their regular hours (although note, you will still need someone to community manage the account)
• Share behind the scenes to create anticipation of the event
• Make sure you have someone employed to keep your social media channels running all year round. If you get stuck coming up with 52 weeks of event-related social media content,  check out our 365 Day Content Calendar designed to cure content-block.

If you enjoyed this post, you might like our blueprint series: how to market your event. It takes you through a step by step guide of how to market your event.

If we’ve missed a pitfall you think you’ve fallen victim to, drop us a line or comment below and we’ll send you our solution.

Believe it or not, the most powerful way to connect with your customers through your event marketing is completely free. It’s also probably sitting 10cm away from you right now – your mobile phone.

If you’ve read Social Skills, you’ll already know how powerful social media can be. Many events struggle with how they can stay relevant with their event marketing for 365 days of the year. Especially when their event is only 2-3 days of the year (and for many events, even less).

Truth be told, most event co-ordinators usually #nail their pre-promote event marketing. When the actual event comes around, they are generally so fatigued that event post-promotion is the last thing on their mind.

Rather than tell you what to do, read on and we’ll show you.

This is our guide to event marketing and how to use social media to market your event (both large and small).

Divide your marketing plan into three key stages

It doesn’t matter if you’re opening a small art gallery or organising the Olympics, every event has three core areas – pre-promote, during and post-event.

Each stage requires its own marketing plan to ensure your marketing materials elicit what you want the customer to do.

At a very basic marketing level your phases can be defined as follows:

Pre-promote: Your purpose is to sell tickets to this year’s event.

During event: Your core task is to create enough content and materials for next year’s event.

Post-event: Your job is to create raving super-fans from this year’s event, so they become your sales machine for next year’s event.

Pre-promote

Tip 1: Get clear on your audience

Before picking up any pen to marketing-plan paper, start by getting crystal clear on your audience.

The success of any marketing activity hangs in the ability of the creator to answer one simple question, “who is it for?”.

If you’ve read this post, we’ve made a step-by-step formula for defining your audience.

Tip 2: Write a marketing plan and allocate budget

With a target audience in sight, map out a plan of how you’d like to reach them. Include how much money you’re willing to spend to hit them with bullseye accuracy.

If you have no money, that’s fine, but you need to be realistic about your marketing options, likely organic social media and free creative tools like Canva.

We often sit down with regional events with no marketing budget to speak of, who still list Sunrise or the Today Show as part of their plans.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but if you don’t have the budget to even host the crew’s breakfast, how do you expect to get them there in the first place?

Pssst – if you’re serious about PR for your event, you’ll want to read our DIY PR Guide.

Tip 3: Get seriously organised

What we know about event committees is they wear three or four different hats, and running an event is usually not their core business.

Given you have the benefit of time in the pre-promote phase, get organised by drafting all your social media posts for the lead up to the event.

We use a scheduling tool called Later on all our client accounts. This tool allows us to draft, plan and visualise how all Facebook and Instagram content will look in the feed.

While you’re busy organising food trucks, tent city and portaloos, your content will be firing without you needing to trigger it. For six more reasons to schedule your social media, you’ll want to read this guide.

During the event

Tip 1: Invest in content creation

Unlike tour guides who get to perfect their experience with each and every tour, you only get one shot at running an event.

It’s imperative you use this year’s event to gather all the materials you need to set up the promotion of next years’ event.

If you want to show up four times per week on social media for the next 365 days, you know you need 208 different images to run your social media channels for the year. Use this as the basis for your shot list for the photographer.

In our opinion, a professional photographer and videographer are your best marketing investments. Use them to create social proof that your event is worth attending.

Remember when briefing a content creator, your photographer/videographer only has so many hours in a day and cannot be in two places at once.

If you’re running an event where there are multiple stages in operation at the same time, you’ll need two shooters if you want content of both.

Tip 2: Go Live

Events were made for live streaming. Good news – both Instagram and Facebook have free live technology built into them.

Both algorithms also favour live video so you’ll be seen by more people and the results speak for themselves.

According to Facebook Data, users comment 10 times more when their video is live, as opposed to uploaded after the fact.

More than just engagement with content, live videos at events have been proven to move the needle on attendance too.

In fact, 30% of people who watch a livestream of an event will attend the same event the following year (Source: EventBrite).

Tip 3: Combine IRL activity with what’s happening online

The best live events in our opinion, build a bridge between what’s happening online and what’s happening in real life (#IRL).

Take Coachella for instance. You don’t actually need to go to the event to feel part of the zeitgeist of it. You only need to hop onto Instagram to know what’s happening in the middle of the Colorado Desert.

It’s easy to create smaller Instagrammable social media moments for people at your event. It can be as grandiose as a flower wall or as simple as a corflute Instagram frame.

To ensure people share their content in the right place, plaster your hashtag and handle everywhere and hot tip, keep your hashtag evergreen. For example, use #MediaMortarLIVE rather than #MediaMortarLIVE2020 so you can reuse your signage time and time again (as well as the hashtag for future use).

Post Event

Tip 1: Create a highlight reel

Just as footballers get interviewed as they come off the field, not three days later, the best time to capitalise on the excitement of your event is straight away.

Contract your photographer and videographer to submit their content within a few days of the event (better yet, same-day delivery). This way you can share the highlights of the event with your followers.

Share social-style albums from the event, asking followers to tag themselves to extend the reach of your content as you go.

You might also like to share your social style images with the local paper for feature – and plant the seed for next year (for more free PR ideas like this, swing over here).

Tip 2: Report it

We love a good learning, because without them, how else do you improve?

Take time at the end of the event to report what worked and didn’t work, following this reporting structure.

Just remember to save it down somewhere for next year’s festival coordinators to find before they embark on this journey again. Please.

Tip 3: Ask for reviews

While you’re fresh in everyone’s mind, ask your attendees to leave a review for you on your preferred channel.

In my experience, most events are great at sending a Survey Monkey to attendees asking for feedback. But that’s for internal purposes and doesn’t help build trust for new customers on your consumer channels.

This distinction is important because reviews are external facing. They have the core purpose of attracting more people to your event (it’s also our single biggest marketing play).

While we’re not dismissing internal feedback for improvements, you don’t want to dismiss the fact that according to Qualtrics 93% of customers read reviews before purchasing anything and are about to form probably your biggest marketing channel for next year’s event.

The best tip for last

Our final tip for all events in running their marketing – be brave and bold.

In our experience, most people opt for the strategy that’s least likely to fail, rather than the one that’s most likely to work.

Give your wildest ideas a go. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

P.S. – if you liked this post, you might find our common marketing pitfalls blog helpful too.

In the words of our favourite marketing guru, Seth Godin, “everyone is not your target audience”.

And yet, this is without a doubt the most common misconception we encounter when onboarding a new client.

On behalf of marketers across the globe – can we please ask you to define your target audience, so your marketing messages reach someone who is actually listening?

We’re not talking about writing tomes of strategy or complex Gantt charts; we’re only asking you to answer one simple question: who is your content for?

It’s not a hard question, but it’s a loaded one. That’s why we’re here to walk you through our step-by-step guide to defining your target audience.

Step 1: Find what Seth calls your ‘true fans’

The biggest mistake we see brands make is trying to appeal to the masses.

At its core, marketing is about changing the minds of people.

It’s therefore incongruous to think you can change everyone’s mind. To do so would be too hard – and what we know for sure, is no one buys as a result of indifferent marketing.

Instead, try and change one person.

Start by thinking small, carving out an audience niche with the smallest viable market in mind. That is, what is the smallest market you need to convince to make your marketing efforts worthwhile?

The idea is that when you build true fans, they do the marketing for you. And just like mice, true fans breed more true fans.

We subscribe in a big way to the theory that it’s no longer about the mass market but the micro one – and we have a target audience resource to help get you clear on yours.

To help you complete this step, finish this sentence: My product / service or event is for people who __________________.

Step 2: Know what you stand for, know what you don’t stand for

It’s ok not be a product, service or event that suits everyone. We’re not – and we’re not even slightly concerned by that.

According to Seth, telling a customer “we’re not for you” shows respect that you’re not going to waste their time, pander to them, or change their beliefs – and this distinction is important. Not only does it release your customer, it frees you up to do more work that matters.

If you’re not selling a product for everyone – start by narrowing down who you are not selling to.

We do a lot of work in rural communities, and this exercise is possibly even more important than the first step. Because driving 1500km in the name of an ‘adventure’ is not for everyone, and it would be wasting everyone’s time, energy and marketing spend to convert the Bali traveller to say, Barcaldine.

To help you complete this step, finish this sentence: My product / service or event is for people who do not __________________.

Or better yet, finish this one: People don’t choose my product/service or event because __________________.

Step 3: Define your USP

If you’ve read this post, you’ll know one of our biggest bug bears is that most businesses can’t define their USP.

Most default to this as their standard response “but we’re better than the competition”.

It’s important to call out that “better” is completely subjective. To some people, podcasts are better than TV, and to others, books are better than podcasts. This doesn’t actually make one better – it’s merely subjective.

In our industry, we might think we do better website copy than our competition, but the truth is for someone who wants a website wanting a very serious tone of voice, we’re not the better choice. You just have to read our work to know that.

To help define your USP, finish this sentence: Customers will tell their friends ___________________ about my product.

Step 4: Design your creative so it’s less about you and more about them

We hate to break it to you, but no customer actually cares about what you do. They only care about what it will do for them.

You may have heard the old marketing adage, Features vs Benefits?

It goes something like this – people don’t walk into Bunnings wanting a drill. They go in wanting to drill a hole. More than this, they want a hole to install a shelf to store their clutter.

See where we’re going here? You’re no longer in the business of selling drills, you’re actually selling storage solutions, peace of mind and the mind set that goes along with uncluttered spaces (*waves slyly at our girl Marie Kondo*).

To do this, you need to lead with what your customers are going to think, feel, gain out of your product or service.

And if you haven’t connected the dots, the only way you’re going to know what your customer is thinking, is by being crystal clear on who they are and what they need from you in the first place.

To help define what your customers motivations are, finish one (or all) of these sentences:

My customers are afraid of _____________________.

My customers are short on _____________________.

My customers are frustrated by ____________________.

Step 5: Report how it hit your customer between the eyeballs

If you read this post, you’ll know we’re serious about reporting – especially since Facebook Ads Manager allows you to target audiences with absolute specificity.

The biggest gap we see however with clients is that they report on numbers that weren’t directly correlated with the campaign.

For example, running an awareness campaign and reporting conversions is the same as ordering apples and wondering why they don’t taste like apple crumble. They both start the same but end up very different based on the process that happens in between.

If you want a true read on whether you successfully targeted your audience, you’ll want to make sure you’re reporting the correct metrics.

To help define whether you were successful, finish this sentence:

We successfully targeted ____________ customer through _____________ campaign using _____________ tactics.

Save this down, because if it worked, you’ll want to do it again.

When you’re hitting your customer with bullseye accuracy, you’ll find you save marketing dollars and leave more impact with your message every time, which really, is what this is all about.

Since we’ve been presenting our social media marketing workshops across Australia, we’ve been privy to the questions small businesses have about marketing.

Most questions you expect [What is a hashtag? How do I find time for all this? Why do I need to do social media?] but other questions come out of left field. Like, what do I report and how should I set social media KPIs for my team?

*cracks knuckles*

Welcome readers to the dark art of reporting.

Here are our seven super simple steps to help you prepare the ultimate social media marketing report.

1. Report what’s quantifiable and inside your control

Put simply, if you can count it, you can report it.

Metrics on social media like reach, engagement, number of posts should all be stalwarts in your measurement each month.

There’s no point reporting anything you can’t control. But there is value in reporting why declines in the above may be attributed to things outside your control like global pandemics, flood, drought etc.

But really, if it doesn’t include numbers, it’s outside the scope of a social media report.

2. Don’t report vanity metrics

We’ve made a lot of reports in our time and can guarantee the CEO of the company is usually only drawn to one thing: “how many followers did we get this month?”.

This is your permission to stop counting followers and educate your boss on the difference between followers and customers.

If you’ve read this post, you’ll know anyone with $5 and the right Google search words can buy followers. But if you’re looking for customers in the northern suburbs of Brisbane, thousands of followers in Lithuania won’t help.

Instead, report metrics that contribute to a sale (or conversion), like engagement. That is, did your customers action something when they saw your content, or did they scroll on by.

3. Report what your objective set out to do

If we had a dollar for every customer who sat in our office with their arms behind their head and said, “I want to see ROI”, we wouldn’t be making social calendars anymore.

The key to achieving ROI, is to articulate your objectives and set up your social media to achieve them.

The reason most social media activity doesn’t achieve ROI is not because social media failed, but rather, because the objective and activity were totally incongruous. Allow us to explain.

If your objective is to reach more people, don’t be upset it didn’t generate more signups to your eNewsletter – that wasn’t the objective. You set it up to fail.

If you want sign ups to your eNewsletter, you should set up a lead-generation campaign.

Similarly, we’re not surprised your traffic ads didn’t sell tickets to your event, if they landed on a page with no information or a point of sale for customers to buy them.

You need to make sure your objectives are realistic and measurable. No matter how much money you throw to the advertising gods, social media marketing can only ever get customers so far – and marketers can’t achieve the impossible.

4. A report is only as good as the person reading it

In our esteemed marketing opinion, many people like to collect a report but never actually read the data or insights inside.

In fact, a colleague friend of ours who worked for a large hotel chain used to embed statements like ‘Gary is a purple dinosaur’ just to test if anyone read her tome-of-a-report.

Want to know the horrifying thing? No one picked up her humour in her seven years with the company.

Anything can be reported, but the real skill is being able to read through the clutter contained within pretty graphs pumped out by social media platforms.

Report what you want to know and keep it simple – the data tells the story, so you don’t need to. If you’re looking for a template report, you’ll find what we send to our clients in our Social Skills Handbook.

5. Conversion isn’t the only measurement tool

Of course, we’d all like to have more money in the bank, but that’s not the only measurement to report.

Consider adding these into your report:

• Total number of posts
• Post reach
• How many comments the post received
• Was the post shared
• Number of shares or clicks the post got

The sum of all these parts will allow you to ask important questions about what content your followers like, don’t like and what you could be doing to improve. And really, what you do next with the report, is the bit that counts.

Remember the purpose of the report is to finetune your social media marketing activity so it can continually improve. If your followers aren’t connecting with the people photos, swap them for landscapes if they are proven to work – and to hell with what everyone else thinks.

When it comes to social media marketing, the only stakeholder you should be concerned about is the customer. The biggest barrier we see to social success is internal thinking, rather than external speaking.

6. KPIs can be whatever you like – so long as they’re achievable

There is no one size fits all KPI – but you want to make sure they are achievable.

If you’re not paying for social media advertising, accept that your staff are realistically only going to move the engagement needle by very small increments year-on-year.

Given the average Instagram engagement rate is only 4.7% (and brands are often much less), you want to be realistic about how many people you think will like, comment and share your content.

We often sit down to new client meetings where the KPIs proposed are more than six times the average engagement rate.

This is a beyond reasonable expectation, especially when the company isn’t prepared to provide six times the advertising dollars to get the attention of the consumer.

7. Benchmark yourself against competitors

If you thought your growth was slow – wait ’til you start benchmarking your competitors – and you’ll see you’re in a race set at a snail’s pace.

When we report monthly, we’ll not just focus on our own gains, but our competitor set too.

This allows us to see where our growth is consistent, and equally where it’s falling behind.

If it’s falling behind, we ask the important question – why? Sharp growth in your competitor’s follower numbers generally reveal one thing, your competitors are out spending you.

If that’s the case, it’s time to sit down and set an online strategy. Lucky for you, we’ve made just the thing.

If you want more information about social media marketing reporting, you’ll find a whole chapter in our Social Skills Handbook or you can book a training session with us.

We’ve been asked a lot this week about our top marketing tips during this time of crisis.

There’s no doubt about it, the corona crisis is unprecedented.

For tourism operators across the world, it’s devastating.

For tourism operators in Australia, excruciating.

And for our Queensland clients who’ve come off the back of seven years of drought, only to be hit with bushfires and floods back to back, it’s crippling.

But in the darkest tourism times, there is hope. Where there are challenges, there are opportunities.

And we believe for tourism operators in Queensland, the opportunities lay in content marketing.

Here’s our marketing tips for why:

Time is your new best friend

⁠What we know about tourism businesses now is that they are slow (understatement of 2020, or what?). What we know about content marketing, is it’s time-consuming.

You now have the opportunity to use this perfect storm to your advantage and knuckle down to write that marketing strategy (here’s a DIY one we prepared earlier) you’ve never had time to do before.

Your new marketing KPI is awareness (be real, you’re not converting anyone in self-isolation), which in content marketing terms, has a lot to do with showing up consistently.

We always say good content marketing is 99% momentum, and you finally have time to build yours.

Like anything with momentum, the first step is always the hardest. Here are our top five marketing tips to get started:

1. Think big, strategise and pivot

We get it – it’s easy to run gym classes online, package up food into take away containers and host webinars instead of conferences. But how the hell do you pack up an accommodation business with bricks and mortar in a time of crisis? Truth is, you can’t.

But what you can do is re-think how your customer experience looks. Consider how your customers book and if you can frontload booking deposits to ensure if this happens again, you have more money in the bank.

You might want to consider instead of the usual “pay two, stay three” style deals, are there offers you can put to market like “book and pay now, stay later” to bring cash back into the bank?

Can you offer accommodation to high-risk people who live-in high-risk areas, to wade out the corona-storm with you at a low-cost tariff? Therein pivoting your business into long-stay accommodation for now.

You can also look at your revenue streams – what we know is our tourism clients with a foot in the business market were the last to feel corona’s impact, while the leisure market was first hit.

Audit your business and ask is there another way you could bring in revenue to your business?

2. Schedule like you’re going to be inundated for the rest of the year, because truth is, you probably will be

Social media is one of the biggest time-drains on your day-to-day operations (spoken like true social media managers), so use your self-isolation time to get organised with future-content.

Map out your content using a social media scheduling tool so that when things pick up (which all tourism experts say it will and in a big way), you’ll be ready and waiting with Instagram and Facebook posts to serve your digital customers, while you’re busy serving IRL ones. ⁠

If you’re unsure what scheduling looks like, we have a manual planner available for download, but we personally schedule all of our Media Mortar and client content digitally via a platform called Later. We believe is the best scheduler in market, and you can trust us, we’ve tried THEM ALL.

Don’t let your scheduling timing put you off – you can always shuffle your posts around if things change. Scheduling isn’t set in cement.

3. Write those blog posts

You know those long-form stories that your SEO specialist is always talking about, but you never have time to complete? Self-isolation is just how every freelance writer actually works – now’s your time to give it a go.

If you’re wondering what to write about – start by collating a list of your frequently asked questions in your tourism business. Find out what people are worried about and package them into a blog post.

Your customer is the best focus group you’ll ever have. As an example, the question we’ve been getting throughout COVID-19 is ‘what should I be doing’ – and this post was born out of that.

Batch content over this period to distribute over the year. If you’re in need of some thought-starters, finish these sentences:

• X things you never knew about Y
• X best things to do in Y
• 48 hours in X- X reasons to visit in summer, autumn, winter, spring

4. ⁠Write that website re-development brief for later

We understand that contracting a web-developer to re-design your whole site is outside booouuuu-getttt (read in a French accent), but writing a brief and getting really clear on how you’d like it to look like won’t cost you a cent.

Spend your time trawling your site and determining what works, what doesn’t and what you’d like to change.

Research your competitors, play on their websites, take screen grabs of what you like about them and then build yourself a website brief.

When cashflow is back to normal levels or the government drops a round of digital grants to corona-affected tourism businesses, you’ll be all “here’s one I prepared earlier.”

Whether you decide to completely overhaul the website or just tweak little tiny bits, well, that’s up to you.

5. Tidy your email contact lists

Cleaning your database is about as fun as washing your car but it’s SO important for making sure your message is delivered into the right hands.

Use your newfound time to tidy yours up, divide it into groups (segments) so you can send more targeted newsletters moving forward.

Won’t your audience be caught by surprise when your next email opens with “Hi Hannah” rather than “Hi” with your new personalisation under way.

Jaws will hit the floor when their normal booking triggers an automated sales funnel, which sends an automatic confirmation, and then a week out of travel information about the destination, restaurants to book and things to see and do before they arrive.

We know times are tough, but time is your greatest gift now. How you choose to use it, is up to you.

If you’re not sure where to start, we’re happy to help whoever is in need of marketing tips – reach out to us hello@mediamortar.com.au

Millennials don’t need much of an introduction. The press they’ve been given in recent years unfortunately does most of the talking for them.

Narcissistic. Entitled. Bratty … these are just a few adjectives that are thrown around the media. Maybe you’ve seen or heard a few of these delightful monikers?

It’s fair to say the world hated millennials … that is until they became a $3.3 trillion industry and businesses globally started to sit up and pay attention.

If you run a business, whether you’re in the product or service industry, lifestyle, tourism, construction or something completely different – it’s no longer a question of if you should start marketing to millennials, but when.

What makes millennials such an important segment?

You only need to follow the numbers to realise millennials matter.

As at 2020, they’ll make up 50% of the workforce and by 2025 statisticians put the generation at 75% of the world’s workforce (Source: Inc).

And dear readers, this is the reason you need to make marketing to millennials a priority. They’re not just a target audience, they are soon to be your ONLY target audience.

Considering this generation will live longer (if current age projections are to go by) and they’ll work longer (at least, if the bar to accessing superannuation and pensions keeps moving higher), it makes sense this group will be a key purchaser for more years than any other generation that’s gone before them.

I put it to you, if your business is in the business of making money (whose isn’t, right?) you’re now officially in the business of marketing to millennials.

So, stop mocking their avocado toast and the fact they live at home for longer, here’s what you need to know.

What makes millennials so special?

Millennials might be the butt of media jokes for wanting to be ‘special’, but the truth is, they are.

This is a generation that’s more educated than any other, with university enrolments and graduates rising year on year in Australia – with just shy of a quarter having completed a Bachelor’s degree or higher (source: ABS).

They’re also driven (not lazy, thank you very much) with 87% taking on managerial positions in the past five years (source: Hubspot).

They’re used to getting things on demand – and when they don’t like the status quo, they disrupt it with technology and solutions that are far more effective than any that have gone before.

Now these are qualities we should be celebrating, don’t you think?

Millennials are diverse and their diversity makes them like catching smoke

When marketers talk about target markets, we’re told to get razor sharp – but this is tricky with millennials who share a 17-year age gap.

It’s not just nearly two decades of difference, it’s a deep chasm of technology evolution that distances their eldest constituents (born in 1980) and youngest (who joined us earth side in 1994).

As a generation, they have members who grew up with a mobile phone in their hand and others who learnt how to send messages when keyboards had text on nine keys.

For the oldest members of this generation, going to the movies with friends was something that needed the session times printed in the newspapers and for the youngest, the choice at the flick of a Netflix switch.

You’re starting to get the picture – no two millennials are the same. And before we start dismissing this group as a generation who lives at home with the parents, only to leave it when there’s a Pokémon to be caught, let me just remind you 25% of all millennials are parents themselves (Source: Adobo).

So, if millennials are the most important target market but are so damn hard to talk to, how do you go about marketing to millennials?

Over the past two years, we’ve made it our absolute passion to study this group and to learn from them.

What we’ve observed, which is confirmed by social scientists, is that millennials are all motivated by three things:

1. Freedom
2. Change
3. Choice

With these motivating factors top of mind, we’ve broken this down further and compiled our biggest learnings into seven steps we’d recommend integrating into your marketing plans if you want to successfully market to millennials.

Step 1: Stand for something

If this blog post was a meme (and if you’re marketing to millennials, it pays to think like one) it would read: ‘your vibe attracts your tribe’.

Millennials stand for something and they expect you to as well.

If you really want to connect with this generation, you need to think about your business differently. You’re no longer in the business of selling a product or service, you’re now in the business of selling your purpose.

This isn’t just nice fluffy stuff, your service to others will drive sales. In fact, according to Millennial Marketing, 50% of all millennials are more likely to make a purchase from a company if they think the purchase supports a cause.

What’s more, 37% of millennials are willing to buy more from a brand that actively supports a cause (Source: Medium).

If you’re looking for inspiration, check out local brand Outland Denim who wear their purpose (and their denim) on their sleeve.

Tip 2: Advertise differently

When it comes to marketing to millennials, a group who’ve been overrun with advertising their whole lives, it’s time to put down your AdWords and create social proof instead.

Don’t just take our word for it, according to Hubspot, 84% of millennials don’t trust traditional advertising. Now, that’s a majority, too great to ignore.

Creating social proof is relatively easy – you just need to get other people to do the talking for you. We wrote a whole post about mastering your online reputation which will get you started.

While most businesses we work with are fairly good at getting testimonials, most are terrible at doing anything with them once they’ve been written.

Millennials more than any other generation lean on testimonials for their decision-making. In fact, all disruptors like Uber, Airbnb and Airtasker all lead with two-way testimonials and reviews – they are that important to doing business in the modern world.

Tip 3: Get social & stay social

It might be obvious, but you wouldn’t believe how many people are still placing print ads to capture ‘young families’ attention.

If 25% of millennials have children, they are the definition of this audience segment and Nielsen Data shows this group spends more time on social media than any other demographic. So, if you’re making TVCs and print advertising, make sure you’re using social media to support them.

Invest in making your product and experience Insta-worthy from all angles and take your product to the social media market your customers like to shop at. [Eds note: we are not advocating you replace good product and service for flower walls because your business will soon be out of business if that’s your operational strategy too].

Social media is so important for millennials, in fact, 34% of them use it to influence their purchasing decisions (Source: B&T).

If you’ve read this post about six common marketing mistakes you’re probably making, chances are you will have avoided the cardinal sin of social media – posting and then walking away.

When it comes to marketing to millennials, 62% say they are more likely to be a customer if a brand interacts with them on social. So, with this generation, you quite literally have to talk-the-talk.

Tip 4: Communicate instantaneously

When you’re talking to a generation who is used to everything on demand, it makes sense when millennials want it, they want it now.

This is a group who doesn’t wait for a session time to see a movie – they watch it on demand. They don’t wait or walk for a cab … they get an Uber from their door and they don’t even date IRL … everything is done with a swipe left or right.

We get time poor business owners can’t be all places at once, so automate as much as you can to ensure millennials are getting their answers as quickly as possible.

On social media you can set up a Facebook chatbot with the flick of a setting-switch and Instagram can automate DM’s too based on keywords. You’ll find these step-by-step instructions in our social media handbook, over here.

Whether you’re automating responses or not, on social it’s important to dedicate one person to respond to queries so nothing is missed.

Tip 5: You do you

While I’d love to play a drinking game in meetings where we take a shot every time the word ‘authentic’ is bandied around, it is a buzz word in the industry for a reason.

When it comes to talking to this group transparency is key – millennials will know when they are being sold to.

Cut through the noise by being yourself. And if you don’t have anything to say – just remember that silence often has the loudest sound.

And remember, if you’ve made mistakes (and don’t pretend no business hasn’t), own them.

You’ll find that when you apologise for poor actions, decisions or practices of the past, you build up trust capital with your audience and they find you more human, credible and relatable.

If you’ve read this post, you’ll know that trust is the key deciding factor in whether or not a customer will convert to a transaction.

Be humble, true to yourself and most importantly, own your mistakes.

Tip 6: Appeal to FOMO

You only need to talk to a millennial home alone on a Saturday night to find out the fear of missing out is very real.

Tap into a millennial’s desire for being involved – making it so enviable to be a part of that they have no choice but to accept.

A simple way of doing this is to build anticipation for a new product launch or something being unveiled.

We work with lots of brands who are great at coming up with launch plans, but to date, no one’s ever asked us to come in for the sneak peek planning.

The pre-launch I would argue for this demographic is even more important than the real deal to build anticipation and hype and plant the seeds of FOMO-doubt.

Tip 7: Do more of what you’re currently doing

If you’ve stayed with us for this long, we’ve left the best point ‘til last – keep reading, keep learning and keep talking to millennials.

The best way to market to millennials is to spend more time with them.

Considering very few millennials sit in CMO roles (or chief decision maker positions), it’s important for brands to create internal millennial masterminds. Give them buy-in, ask them how they want to be spoken to, create campaigns collaboratively.

Anyone who has ever hired a millennial will know all about their ambition. What better way to give them opportunities to grow in the organisation than set them a challenge or a task so they can rise to the occasion?

If you want to ‘make an impact’ – create a millennial mastermind or taskforce and give them the sole goal of making one with a marketing campaign that targets millennials. Inception is a beautiful thing!

Give it a go and let us know below how it worked out for you in the comments below.

Have you ever found the perfect photo to share on social media, but as your fingers hover over the keyboard to write a Pulitzer-prize worthy Instagram caption, your mind goes blank? Yep, it even happens to us too.

You’ve got a case of Instagram caption-block. Aka the crippling stall of ideas and creativity that usually kicks in when you’re short on time and in a rush to send your post into the Instagram wild.

What if we told you we have a guaranteed cure that will have your posts live and on their merry way to engagement and conversion-heaven?

Enter our eight ways to cure your Instagram caption-block that will banish the words “what should I write” forever.

Cure 1: Use a quote

Lost for words in your Instagram captions? Why not use someone else’s?

We’re not talking about plagiarism but searching for inspiration from someone that’s appeared on television, radio, a movie screen or newspaper and let their words do the talking for you.

Make sure you know your audience (to find them, check out our how to find your target audience resource) before you start quoting anyone and everyone from the bright lights of Hollywood.

Speaking to a younger crowd? Chances are you’ll be looking for inspiration from someone with a blue certified star on their Instagram account rather than a John Wayne film.

Either way, we strongly suggest the quote comes from a stand-up citizen who hasn’t been on the wrong side of the law.

Quoting Rule 101: don’t forget to reference who said it.

Cure 2: Channel your inner comedian

We’re all funny in our own way, right?

Although psychologists, neuroscientists and philosophers are still trying to understand how humour differs for everyone, what we call ROFL-factor remains one of the most effective ways to gain cut through on social media.

Why? Because just like the adage “laughter is the best medicine” – humour allows your audience to become distracted from their day-to-day stress.

If your target audience is Millennials, Gen Y or Gen Z, you’ll want to put humour on the top of your caption-cure list. These generations are reportedly the most open and responsive to humour.

Strategically speaking it makes sense too – studies show the odds of your post being shared to friends or family is higher when you make them laugh.

If you’re lost for places to start, Google puns related to your images. You’ll be surprised how quickly the creative juices start flowing with a bit of pic-spiration.

Cure 3: If you can’t make an original joke, adapt one

Channel your inner five-year-old and remember the jokes you shared in the schoolyard, like why did the chicken cross the road? Knock knock, who’s there?

You don’t need to be the funniest person in the room to make people laugh with your Instagram captions. Simply use a bit of creative licence to adapt a joke to fit into the context of the image.

To give you an idea, we had fun horsing around with this picture for @experiencewesterndowns above.

Cure 4. Use popular sayings or rhymes

Remember the old colour rhymes or proverbs your teachers drilled into you growing up? Blue and green should never be seen, or red sky at night, a shepherd’s delight?

Clever wordplay is as simple as interchanging the words to suit the image.

Take this post above we made for @brisbaneairport where shepherd was replaced with passenger for an instant Instagram caption cure. It’s not rocket science, but is guaranteed to get you out of your caption rut and onto other things in your day.

Cure 5. Let national holidays do the heavy lifting

School holidays, Easter, Christmas, or even the fact that it’s the weekend, is one of the oldest tricks in the caption-creating book.

Diarise all the national holidays or international dates in your calendar – from Labour day to Talk like a Pirate Day (or, check out our calendar of international dates to save yourself the elbow grease) and use them as Instagram caption thought-starters.

Once you have the days diarised, make some notes on how you can best utilise these posts. Such as:

• A Willy Wonka quote for International Chocolate Day
• Emojis for International Beer, Champagne, Donut or Pizza Day
• Countdown to Christmas, Easter or School Holidays
• Research Pirate-speak for Talk like a Pirate Day

Just don’t forget to also diarise when you’ll need to take photos of the content too. It’s too late to get the team together in Santa hats on Christmas day.

Check out how we used a long weekend to promote this photo above for @brisbaneairport.

Cure 6: If words fail, use emojis

If engagement is the flame 🔥, consider emojis the moth 🦋.

Don’t think we’re promoting a lazy approach to solving your Instagram caption-itis – emojis can increase engagement.

Social Media Today reported posts with zero emojis received lower engagement than those with between one to three, and over 10 per posts receiving the highest.

Although emojis are well equipped to take centre stage for a post, it never hurts to add a few words as the backup dancers if you can – like the example above for @experiencewesterndowns.

Looking for engagement? Why not tempt your audience to get creative with an answer to a question, answering only using emojis too?

Cure 7: Tell people why you shared the post

Sometimes you need to let your guard down and get personal to cure your Instagram caption-block.

Is there a backstory to your post? If so, share it.

Harvard Business Review highlights sharing your story as a powerful way for your followers to feel more connected to your brand.

So, this is your permission to get personal about why you selected that photo and what it means to you.

Cure 8: Share a tip

Did you know Deloitte listed the need for continued learning as one of the top-rated trends for 2019?

Why not speak to the 80% of social media users who are looking for ways to continue learning by sharing a tip in your caption.

Work in the marketing industry like us – why not share your knowledge (for free), such as when it’s best to post on social media or other industry best practice?

You’ll find this knowledge exchange works both ways. Not only will your customer likely learn something new, but when you share value to customers, you’re proving yourself as a subject matter expert.

If you want your followers double-tapping on the post, make sure what you share is relevant to your audience.

Work in tourism and want more?

• Read our Instagram Tips for Tourism Businesses
• Download our 52-week Content Planner, which has content prompts and caption cures to power your social media channels for an entire year

Let us know your best Instagram caption hacks below!

As a content agency specialising in tourism marketing, we work with regional tourism boards, operators and events A LOT (seriously, check out our portfolio).

We truly believe it’s the roads less travelled that provide the most exciting stories to tell. So, it was a no-brainer for us to clear the schedule for the two-day Australian Regional Tourism Convention (ARTC) and learn from the best-in-regional-tourism-class.

For anyone working in this space – from local council, tourism organisations and professionals, to government bodies – ARTC is not to be missed. It’s the perfect forum to listen, learn and discuss the challenges and opportunities for regional areas.

This year’s conference kicked off with master of ceremonies Nigel Collin asking everyone in the room to finish this sentence: “I am the only person in the room who has…”

Sadly, due to Chatham House Rules, I can’t disclose any answers, but what I can share is the key learnings from the conference – perfect for anyone with an interest in tourism marketing.

1. Think inside the box instead of outside the box

“Knowing your constraints frees you to come up with solutions that are possible.”– Nigel Collin, Keynote Speaker.

How many times are we told to think outside the box? Nigel posed two important questions those in tourism marketing rarely have the courage to ask clients:

• Are those ‘outside-the-box’ solutions realistic?
• Should they be implemented?

He suggested that instead we start by looking inside the box.

Imagine the four sides of the box represent budget, resources, location, and infrastructure (these can be exchanged for anything that is a restriction to your business). Once you know what your limitations are, you can find realistic solutions.

For a tourism marketing agency, and many others in the room (based on the discussions over pastries and a cup of tea), this was a true Oprah “aha moment.”

This insight has given us a fresh way to work with clients to determine what the sides of the box look like for them. This will ensure we can deliver something that’s realistic. If you find us asking you to draw a box in our next meeting together, you’ll now know why.

2. Keep an empty chair at the table

“Look through the lens of the customers.” – Nigel Collin, Keynote Speaker.

It’s rumoured Richard Branson keeps an empty chair at the boardroom table, not because someone cancels last minute – but because the chair represents the customer. In Branson’s world, the customer is an equal stakeholder.

In our experience, plenty of brands say they are customer-first, but few actually are.

We’ve observed a correlation that often exists in regional communities – the smaller the destination, region or event, the higher the input of stakeholders. Scarily there’s not just no customer seat at their boardroom table, there’s no customer consideration.

For tourism marketing success, it’s imperative we look to the customer first and ask what are their wants or needs.

What’s the point in working so hard to get customers to your destination, region or event if they can’t find what they are looking for once they get there?

Which brings us to takeaway number three…

3. Staff need to deliver the marketing promise

“A marketer can do a great job getting the customer to the region, but it all comes down to their experience when there.” – John Hart, Australian Chamber – Tourism

John asked questions we’ve often wondered when marketing tourism products across the country. Marketing is great, but do your staff on ground have the skills to deliver our marketing promise?

Do they believe in the brand? Are they passionate about delivering quality service?

If not, you’ve got a big problem and it’s got nothing to do with your marketing.

It’s not rocket science; we all know an exceptional visitor experience = positive word-of-mouth.

Take the host city Devonport for example. I’m sure I’m not alone in putting Devonport on my travel list for 2020 based on my experience from Fundamental Espresso, who remembered my name and coffee order after one day, to Charlotte Jack – a dining experience you’d expect to have in Melbourne, London or New York.

Good food – tick
Good coffee – tick
Exceptional service – tick

4. Look in your own backyard

“Look in your own backyard for your hero product.” – Steve Rosa, Destination Southern Highlands

Ever thought a humble pie could bring an additional one million dollars in visitor economy to a region from one year to the next? Well that’s the reality for Destination Southern Highlands who turned themselves into the Southern Pielands.

While doing a deep-dive to find something to attract travellers during the off season and change their waning visitor perception, they noticed that they had over 60 pie operators in their region.

Voila, an instant USP and one that turned out to be a crust above the rest.

So often in our marketing travels, we ask destinations and businesses to list their unique selling proposition (USP) but they can’t, quelle surprise. This is such a great example how a USP can be invented through a little navel gazing of what’s right under your nose.

5. Accessible Tourism needs to be more than an afterthought

“Ensuring product is ‘accessible ready’ can no longer be an afterthought.” – Giovanna Lever, Sparrowly Group

Have you ever been allocated a disabled room at a hotel? If not, lucky you – they’re ugly, sterile and lack any design elements that would normally leave a lasting impression. Picture a hospital room – you’re close.

With the accessible tourism market making up 25 per cent of all tourism spend in Australia and 10.8 billion travellers annually (that’s more than the Chinese market to give you context), why are we not talking about how to make the product better?

When working on product development with our regional tourism clients, we’ll be following the lead of Accor Hotels who are championing accessibility by creating “smart rooms” – with all the same design elements you’ll find in any other room, only accessible.

6. We can’t keep saying we’re “time poor”

“Focus on high value output.” – Ali Uren, Kiikstart

We’re all guilty of it. We’ve all uttered the words: “I’m busy/I don’t have enough time/I’m time poor,” then next minute you’re so far down the rabbit hole of Instagram you forgot what you were looking at in the first place.

After listening to Ali, we put it to you – are you really time poor, or are you just not focussing on high value output?

Why not swap scrolling for dedicated continued learning. Don’t delete blogs (like these) or other industry articles that pop into your inbox – read them.

7. Flearn – it’s a word

“Flearn = failure + learning.” – Paul Matthews, Visit Victoria

Failure is ok if you learn from it, otherwise it’s just failure.

We all know that failure teaches us more than success ever will, so it’s important we’re prepared for it, given failing is a constant in the changing environment we live in.

If you’re able to learn from the failure and change the process or way of doing something to ensure the same mistake doesn’t happen again – you’ve mastered flearn.

*cue T-shirt printing #flearn*

8. Everyone faces the same challenges

This learning came from what happened outside the conference walls – everyone in tourism faces the same problems.

It was comforting to learn the regional tourism industry faces the similar challenges, whether you’re in Devonport or Dirranbandi, Longford or Longreach.

It was refreshing to meet other marketers who work in this space and are so open for collaboration rather than competition.

After one day exploring the Cradle Coast and two jam-packed days of learning more about regional tourism and meeting other regional tourism champions, I only have one regret. I departed without trying the local specially – scallop pie.

All the more reason to return to Devonport.