nz tourism social media campaign finds success

In December, we told you about a marketing drive from Tourism New Zealand (TNZ) to get personal video messages from visitors to New Zealand recorded for them and then posted to social media sites to be played by the tourists’ friends and family back home.

It’s been a successful campaign – the 100,000th viewing on YouTube of the videos was recorded recently. TNZ says more than 1300 videos have been made and uploaded by travellers since its travelling recording studio began touring the country in December.

The campaign, which ends this month, was also chosen by Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper as one of “10 most ingenious travel offers” that the travel industry has devised to get bookings.

Tourism New Zealand chief executive George Hickton is happy. He says the initiative has proven its worth as a cost-effective way to capture the value of personal recommendations.

The videos can be seen here.

high-impact, low-budget ideas for marketing in a downturn

Ten high value tips here on effective, low cost marketing: ‘Use all of the buffalo’, ‘Play to your strengths’, ‘Leverage expertise’ and seven other gems.

Tips one to five are here.

Tips six to ten are here.

(Courtesy of U.S marketing communications expert Jonathan Kranz)

e-business kit for tourist operators

From the Aussies, but full of good all-round information, here’s an e-business kit for tourist operators with everything from the basics of setting up a website; search engine optimisation; an initial assessment of your current online marketing status; how to attract people through online marketing; understanding online customer reviews; online booking systems; plus  much more.

Tons of information; much of it good for all types of e-businesses, in fact.

giving away stuff online can boost sales

Can free content boost your sales? Yes, it can, argues Mashable, pointing to Monty Python’s 23,000% (!) sales increase of its DVDs.

And here’s a piece about some bands creating innovative incentives for people to buy product from the bands’ websites.

video killed the radio star

The growth of online video is huge and New Zealand is starting to see its own online video stars appear. Their success gives good pointers to the way online video should work in a social media setting.

Find out more here about how people have made their mark on YouTube and see if there any tips you can use to boost your social media presence.

65 bite-sized web-marketing tips

Here’s 65 web marketing tips (thanks Futurebuzz) to think about, but before you read ‘em … read this piece about the critical importance of patience online!

online video marketing ideas

Just continuing the video marketing thing again: here’s an amusingly good post highlighting different types of marketing videos. (Yes, they are from big corporate campaigns but they’re good to watch and full of usable marketing patterns and ideas.)

And here are six methods for using video in your marketing.

Here’s some projections for growth in United States online video advertising and some projections for shrinkage in TV advertising.

online marketers favour video in 2009

Video will be one of the most prominent online marketing tools this year, says a new survey.

The United States survey did come from PermissionTV, an online video company! (… and they did, for some reason, leave email off their survey), but we agree that video is becoming more and more prevalent as a marketing tool online, and we like the fact that you do not have to use expensive production values to make an effective online video.

Find out more about the survey here and find out about trends in online video marketing here.

how to effectively market online using video

Here’s a knowledgeable article about how to effectively use video on your website to market your products and services.

NZ tourism’s online marketing push

A marketing drive from Tourism New Zealand (TNZ) will see personal messages from visitors to New Zealand recorded for them and then posted to social media sites to be played by the tourists’ friends and family back home.

It’s a plan to capture global attention for the country using social media strategies.

TNZ has a fully-equipped mobile recording studio inside a van to enable tourists to “rave” on camera about their New Zealand experience, add their own photos and video footage  and then post the messages online to influential social media sites such as Facebook.

TNZ plans to capture around 3000 video diary clips over the next four months in a tour around New Zealand.

The clips will be published immediately into unpaid media channels, including a YouTube ‘Have Your Say’ channel which is then fed on to Tourism New Zealand’s consumer website – www.newzealand.com. Visitors will also be able to post video directly onto their Facebook profile pages. The clips will also be used in future advertising campaigns.

“If every clip is viewed by 10 friends and family back home, and if 3000 clips are filmed that’s 30,000 messages about New Zealand sent to our key markets  a very cost-effective form of marketing,” says TNZ boss George Hickton.

I reckon that if the messages can be kept authentic, the videos do not reek of corporate marketing or shine too much with ad-man polish and the advertising use of the messages does not overwhelm the ‘real’ nature of the messages, this plan could get good results.

It’s something we’ll follow with interest as a real-life case study. There’s more information about the initiative here.