19 April 2010

By Catherine Proulx, Managing Director, Twist Marketing

Part One: Preparing for the trip
Vehicular analogies are often used in municipal marketing and branding, since the process is a journey. It's about pinpointing where you are and where you want to go, and the best vehicle to get you to your desired destination.

Holding to that analogy, if your community now is your starting point, your economic development goals represent your destination, and your brand is your vehicle, then target markets should be the route you choose to take on your journey.

Sadly, too many municipalities just aim their vehicles forward and drive, hoping for the best. Inevitably, they are unpleasantly surprised when they hit road blocks, get lousy gas mileage, and find the path they've chosen is a long and arduous one. They do this by refusing to define their target markets, taking an “everyone's welcome” or “open for business” approach that relies more heavily on luck than it does on choosing a specific route.

“Everyone's welcome” feels good, because it feels like your community is keeping its options open, rather than eliminating potential interest and investment by narrowing the market segments it pursues. It's like throwing the map out the car window in favour of taking whichever road you come across first and seems most appealing – which is problematic when you don't know where any given road might wind up. What it's doing is limiting the potential success of any marketing effort, because let's face it, not all roads lead to Rome.

Tourism is a prime example: there's an overabundance of municipalities today wanting to attract all tourists, regardless of their interests, and end up driving their brand vehicles around in circles. There's a sensation of movement, sure, but really they're just wasting time and gas.

At its most, basic level, what is a tourist? Anyone who visits your community who does not reside there – it's really that simple.

Marketing to all tourists, then, would be marketing to the whole world, trying to drive down every road in the region that is tourism. Trying to speak to the rugged outdoorsman looking for authentic, back-country survival camps has merit, but not if you're doing it in the same language and with the same message as you speak to the pampered socialite who wants only five-star resort vacations with cosmopolitan amenities such as operas, spas and world-class dining. Those two tourists represent totally different avenues in attracting tourist dollars. So which one keeps your brand vehicle on track? And which one promises road blocks along the way (for example, maybe you don't have spas and operas, and your culinary offerings lean toward delicious, but down-home-style, diners)? Should the socialite arrive and find none of the amenities she seeks, your community may become the victim of a marketing car crash when she leaves, angry and disappointed, and shares her experience with any and all who will listen, including her “uncouth” brother-in-law who just bought a new tent and sleeping bag

This holds true when marketing to industry and commerce, too.

Most municipalities are “open for business”, but how much meaning will that have to a forestry company when your city's in the middle of a desert? Or, if your forest is your prime tourist draw, do you really want to bring in a company intent on cutting said forest down? That's a heck of detour, and one neither investors nor your residents will likely be willing to take.

The signposts are there – if you choose to heed them.

The Twist: On today's congested information highways, knowing where you want to go is not enough – the key to significant success is determining how to get there, via your target markets.

Next week....Part 2

For more marketing articles, please visit www.twistmarketing.com/resources