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Business Guidance

8. Marketing Your Product

Contents

Contents

8. Marketing Your Product

Marketing your product also requires careful consideration and decisions made in the early years of development will be critical to the future success and sustainability of your business. Increasingly digital marketing is an essential part of the marketing mix.

Online Marketing Toolkits

Tourism NI has developed a series of online marketing toolkits to assist with getting online, social media, search engine optimisation and Google Analytics. Find out more here.

Digital Platform

To compete effectively you will need a digital platform or website to act as a shop window to your product/product range. Having a website gives you the opportunity to brand your business online and gives you full control over the website content and style.

Developing a specification and deciding on the level of investment required will be one of the most difficult decisions you will face. Creating a website can be expensive, especially if you need to employ the assistance of a web designer.

The cost and need for a website should be considered in the planning and development stages of your business. If you are employing a web designer, you may like to think about what other projects the web developer has worked on and the following is a list of suggestions to help you get the best value service. You may wish to discuss some of these points before agreeing a final price with your web designer.

Website considerations

  1. A website with an attractive and professional finish
  2. A site that is simple to use and has strong images and calls to action e.g. Book now
  3. Ask for a Content Management System (CMS) so that you can update content after the designer has gone
  4. The site should have a responsive design and display properly across various devices including mobiles, tablets and desktop computers
  5. Discuss the integration and need for a booking engine and availability calendar
  6. Be sure of costs of hosting your website and using a domain name
  7. Keep your content fresh and engaging
  8. Full contact details, booking details and conditions
  9. Online booking system and payment system . 


Online Web Presence Guide

For information on making the most of your online web presence please see the sections below.

DiscoverNorthernIreland.com

This is the official consumer website for visitors to Northern Ireland with over 3+ million visits to the site each year. Tourism NI is investing significantly in its consumer facing digital marketing and recently launched a brand new digital marketing platform on discovernorthernireland.com.

Getting your tourism product listed should be a top priority Your first step is to get your business listed on discovernorthernireland.com. For more information on promoting your tourism business on discovernorthernireland.com please download and read our Contributor Agreement (for events please download the Events Contributor Agreement).

Once your property is certified by Tourism NI you will automatically be placed free of charge onto discovernorthernireland.com providing you with a gateway into the digital and online world.

Once your tourism business is included on Tourism NI’s consumer website discovernorthernireland.com it will be automatically included on Tourism Ireland’s international consumer website ireland.com within 48 hours. The ireland.com website delivers +23 million annual web visits from consumers all over the world.
 
To make the most of your unique listing on discovernorthernireland.com check out our guide to making the most of your online web presence. 

To make the most of your unique listing on discovernorthernireland.com:

  • Consider a star rating on your business. Consumers look for and value properties with an official star rating. For more information visit www.tourismni.com/grading
  • Have you considered the Visitor Experience Quality Grading Scheme. 
  • If you have a booking engine associated to your property, ensure you utilise the ‘book’ button facility on discovernortherireland.com
  • If you have a special offer, you can upload it. Just log in using your TIDI details which you will have received following certification. Any special offers will be displayed on your property entry. Offers also appear on numerous offer specific pages including offers by county, category and offers by theme. For any assistance required with offers, email  tidi@tourismni.com.
  • Provide us with good quality photographs of your property. You can send up to 9 high resolution (at least 800*600) JPEG images. 

Suggested tips for good photography:

  • Place yourself in the visitor’s shoes and try to capture the images in line with what they’ll see as they approach
  • Try to take photos on a bright, sunny day
  • Turn all the lights on inside the property, even if it is day time
  • The best place to take a picture of any room is from the corner looking out onto the room at slightly above head height
  • If you are capturing a dining table, set it. Likewise light fires, BBQ pits and ensure pictures of kitchens and bathrooms are clean, bright, airy and free of clutter
  • Send us landscape images rather than portrait orientated images
  • More information on photography can be found online at in our getting the most from your photography toolkit.

Developing a social media strategy 

Initial investment in your own website and social media platforms can be maximised by partnering with others on a raft of marketing opportunities. 
 

10 Tips to Develop or Improve Your Social Media Strategy

  1. Identify your goals   
  • Grow your followers
  • More website visitors 
  • Brand awareness 
  • More sign ups
  • Once you know your goal you can develop a strategy – SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound). 

2. Know your Audience

  • Post content your audience wants to know about and research, use analytics and insights to break down where they live, what content they want to see. Facebook insights will provide you with information on gender, age, location. This is great when you are writing content, using particular phrases from Northern Ireland may not resonate with your audience from ROI, need to identify where your audience is from.   
3. Post when your followers are active  

  • Use Facebook and Instagram insights to see when your followers are online to gage the best time to post.  
4. Know your platform  

  • Linkedin – B2B (more professional) 
  • Facebook – News / entertainment content 
  • Instagram – Good for brand awareness. Not good for site traffic 
  • Pinterest – Similar to Instagram, Pinterest highly visual  
5. Provide value or entertainment   

  • Value most of the time works best such as news articles and opinions. Paddy Power uses their platform solely for entertainment rather than selling, compared to Ladbrokes, which focuses on tips, yet Paddy Power has a vast number of followers.  
6. Schedule posts in advance   

  • Use Hootsuite for Instagram, FB and Twitter – good tool to use to schedule posts 
  • Set aside 2 hours a week to week to schedule posts. 
  • Be proactive so you have time to be reactive – if something else comes up newsworthy you can spend time on that as your other posts are scheduled and done for the week.  
7. Be active, but not too active  

  • Facebook 1-3 times a day 
  • Instagram 1-3 times a week 
  • Twitter (3+ times a day) or as much as you want – constant feeds and sharing  
8. Engage with your audience  

  • Respond to comments and reviews and rectify any bad comments or reviews.  
9. Consider sponsored advertising  

  • Organic is good, but if you have the budget, you may want to pay for advertising.  
  • Ads are a great way to reach your buyers that would otherwise never come into contact with your message.  
10. Constantly refine your content  

  • Measure your results and see what content works well and what doesn’t, try some photos, videos and use your status to ask people to engage. Repeat what works! 

 

Tourism NI Social Media Platforms

 
With a continuously growing consumer and corporate footprint on social media, Tourism NI have a significant online presence. Make sure you follow us to keep up to date what is happening.
 
Facts & Figures
  • Facebook page (@discovernorthernireland) has over 160,000 likes
  • Twitter @DiscoverNI has over 100,000 followers
  • Twitter @NITouristBoard has over 60,000 followers
  • Instagram (@discoverNI) has over 40,000 followers
  • Email database of over 100,000 users
  • Rapidly growing presence on LinkedIn

Creating Video Content

Videos can be an easy to digest and engaging way of interacting with visitors and potential visitors. Video is versatile so it makes it easy to share across multiple platforms expanding your potential audience.
 
On mobile alone, YouTube reaches more 18-49 year-olds than any broadcast or Cable TV network. YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and third most visited site after Google and Facebook.
 
A webinar with useful tips on creating video content available here

Marketing campaigns

The Destination Marketing team delivers a compelling all-Ireland marketing and communications programme, designed to change perceptions of Northern Ireland through increased positive messages in the domestic and international markets. A range of advertising campaigns are delivered throughout the year in Tourism NI’s key markets of Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
 
During 2021, Tourism Northern Ireland will deliver am all-Ireland marketing campaign featuring tv, radio, outdoor, press and PR as part of its recovery planning process. This phase will continue to feature local tourism businesses right across Northern Ireland.
 
For more information contact marketingcampaigns@tourismni.com

Other marketing opportunities

 
Our NI PR team arrange Tourism NI’s public relations activity in the NI market. You can get involved in these activities by giving us information about your tourism product. Opportunities include weekly events listings, competition prizes and press releases.
 
For more information contact TNIComms@tourismni.com
 
Tourism NI’s Media Visits team also host significant numbers of national and international press throughout the year (the latter in partnership with Tourism Ireland.) There are opportunities to provide services as part of these familiarisation trips through accommodation, tours, activities and meals.
 
For more information contact mv@tourismni.com
 
The Republic of Ireland Unit (ROI) is primarily responsible for all PR and Sales & Marketing activity undertaken in the ROI market. Our ROI PR team arrange Tourism NI’s public relations activity in the ROI market. You can get involved in these activities by giving us information about your tourism product. Opportunities include weekly events listings, competition prizes and press releases.
 
Contact the team if you have an offer, story or event you would like included in a press release or provide services for a familiarisation trip. Opportunities also exist to participate in one of our many ROI sales platforms, industry engagement with tour operators or the group market.
 
For more information contact infodublin@tourismni.com