The aim for any tourism business or destination is to stand out, be noticed and attract visitors. However, to be sustainable and competitive in the long-term means appealing to the type of people that will be truly excited by the experience and will share it with their social networks.  

You need to make sure that your brand message reaches potential visitors before they plan their trip. They need to be fully aware of all the things they could do, so they allocate enough time and money to experience all you have to offer.

This may sound obvious.  But to achieve it requires careful planning and real insight into not only what differentiates your own product offer, but which type of people will be most excited by it. Once you’ve identified which market segments to target, you need to know which marketing channels to use to reach them and what will convert their interest into booking a trip.

Destination and Place Branding

Creating a successful destination brand is more than designing a logo and tagline. Your brand creates a perception of your place and a visitor’s expectation of the experience you offer. Everyone involved in creating that visitor experience must be committed to delivering it. 

In 2023, we developed a destination-sustainable branding and communications methodology. This methodology was designed to help destinations move away from focusing on increasing visitor numbers annually and looking further ahead to attract suitable tourists and building and promoting the right product. All this has the ultimate goal of  supporting the long-term sustainability of the destination.

Building a sustainable branding and communications strategy requires insight into visitors’ perceptions. It involves listening to local people to find out what they are proud of and what they want to share. It needs collaborative working and the skills to deliver an exceptional experience.  

Acorn Tourism’s extensive knowledge of local and global destinations and our insights into the expectations of niche visitor markets, enables us to uncover your story and articulate it in a way that will differentiate you from other destinations. Through words, images, film and a graphic language we can help you to tell your brand story to the right audience.

Marketing Strategy

Whatever the size of your marketing budget or the scale of tourism offer, having a plan for who you want to reach and how to reach them will ensure you use your budget to best effect.  We work with micro businesses, SMEs, global corporations and national tourist boards to maximise the value of their marketing campaigns by having a clear strategy for promoting their brand story and achieving their marketing objectives.

Our expertise in tourism market intelligence, strategic planning, product development, destination branding, and marketing distribution channels provide a robust foundation to our marketing strategies. Our experience of delivering digital marketing campaigns which ensures we provide you with a marketing strategy that’s relevant and practical to implement.

Content Marketing Plan

We work closely with you to create a content marketing strategy that provides a blueprint for your digital marketing activities. Your content needs to engage your target niches at all stages of the visitor buying process from inspiration, research, planning and validating to booking. The travel cycle does not stop at booking, it must also generate positive peer feedback, customer reviews and ratings. 

Digital Marketing Campaign

A digital marketing campaign needs to be tailored to your available resources, both financial and human. We can help you to prioritise and deliver the most relevant elements of your strategy and campaign including: website development, researching your buyer persona, creating inspiring content, delivering search engine optimisation reviews, social media and paid-for digital marketing campaigns, influencer and blog posts, and setting up e-newsletters and competitions to build a database of consumer addresses. And very importantly, regularly monitoring visitors to your website and the impact of your social media marketing campaigns.

Creating Inspiring Content

At each stage, your content has to be visually appealing, engaging, inspiring and informative. If it isn’t all of these, the impact of your website and the overall Digital Marketing Strategy will be severely diminished. Very importantly, it is also the content that drives effective Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) which in the long-term is the most cost-effective way of ensuring that potential visitors can find your website. We work with a team of talented copywriters, video producers, photographers and creative directors and designers to produce content that will convey your brand messages and inspire your target audiences.

Influencer Marketing Campaign 

Influencer marketing is the fastest growing activity within the digital marketing space. Through our long-standing partnership with blogilicious.com we can help your destination or business run a successful influencer campaign. We can find the right influencer for your product, help to generate awareness amongst your target audience and increase sales. Find out more about how influencer marketing works and how you could use it to benefit your business in our blog here.

Monitoring Your Brand and Campaign

To improve awareness of your destination’s brand or find out if your marketing campaign has been effective, you need to know whether or not your destination branding is reaching the audience you want to attract and is conveying right message about your place. We test and benchmark the impact a brand has and assess the level of brand awareness.  Our research analysis combined with our in-depth knowledge of tourism niche markets and trends means we can provide insights and recommendations on how to more effectively focus new campaigns and marketing budgets.