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 3.3 Brand Association
Northern Regional Brands and Activity Brands which match your capacity and capability to deliver top notch experiences may be the key to your internet presence and marketing tactics. Many activities, themes, outdoor travel experiences are specific to Northern Ontario.
Both types of brands provide opportunities to get potential guests to your Web site through keyword association and inbound hyperlinks from Meta Indexes.
What Brands are Important to your Business?
What are the perceptions, thoughts and understandings of your business brand? In the general public, among your regional tourism businesses – what are you known for, what makes you distinct?
What are the Brands that appeal to visitors to your region? Consider provincial/national parks, trails, wildlife, attractions, activities.
Making the Most of Regional Brands:
It is important to keep up to date with the marketing strategy for your region, Northern Ontario, the province of Ontario, and Canada. Each of these, serve tourism-related businesses in Northern Ontario by promoting and marketing what they believe to be the most important themes and providing opportunities to showcase your listings with the appropriate Canadian Tourism Commission, Ontario Tourism, Northern Ontario, and Regional Web sites, pages, and listings. Check to ensure you are listed with Canadian Tourism Commission, OTMPC-Outdoors (free listings), Regional Tourism Web sites, Chambers of Commerce sites, Northern Ontario Meta Indexes.
 Here is What Ontario says your regional brand highlights are.
The following questions will help you understand your brand and its relationship to the best brands of your region:
- How do your services support and add value to the brand identity of your region?
- How does the regional brand identity lend value to your business?
- How does your region negatively affect your brand identity?
- What is being done to build the brand in your region?
- Do you use words and images on your web site that take advantage of the regional brands?
- Do you have signature images on your web site that reinforce the relationship between your business and the regional brands.
- Are there logos associated with your region that you might consider getting permission to use on your web site?
- Do you provide keyword targetted web pages which match the valuable regional brands.
Building your Reputation with Activity Brands
Meta indexes provide very targetted readership. Get your services listed with Meta Indexes for your key activities, and/or join marketing alliance Web sites for your key activities. Find the appropriate Meta indexes and get listed. Think Internationally, Nationally, Provincially, and Regionally to find Meta Activity Indexes that can provide the web traffic you want.
- Determine how targeted the list is and if it fits your organization.
- Ask others if it is worthwhile and make a business case decision for listing.
- Inquire about associated E-mail blasts, Newsletters, E-Zines which can highlight your business.
See: Weekend Getaways
- Inquire about the keyword marketing strategy of the Meta Index. Does it provide you with access to a market that you cannot get on your own?
- Some Meta indexes are free, others are fee based and include opportunities for enhanced listings. Consider having your link stand out with banner ads or buttons, higher level presence.
- Based on the cost structure, determine what your hoped for Rate of Return or breakeven number of click thrus/sales is.
- Ask for reciprocal links from others on the list.
- Track return on investment for listing with Meta Indexes. Determine traffic volume and est. cost per click over cost per view as a way of comparing the value for listing.
- Request statistics from the Meta Index if available, or set up a tracking mechanism by using designated landing URLs on your web site.
In addition, keyword focused pages which raise the profile of your Web site for specific activities can also be set up to give you an extremely high profile when coupled with regional brand search terms. In fact, most activity focused keywords do not produce a meaningful return for individual web sites unless associated with a regional brand.
Usenet NewsGroups
Discussion Forums exist on the web for a wide variety of topics. First known on the web as Usenet Newsgroups, these discussion groups are a great way to meet people with interests that dovetail with you niche product offerings. Lurk to learn what people are raving about. Join in discussions of things that you are interested in. Usenet groups have kept the no marketing approach and this is the one non-commercial domain of the internet that prevails. When you comment here, you will be trash-talked if you attempt to get commercial and sell your product or service. However, convention in usenet groups is to allow hyperlinks in the signature line of your posts. Regarding content, use a soft sell approach and refrain from lobbying for your product or service. Beginners should definately spend time lurking to make sure they understand the culture of the Group before posting. Engage in conversation that interests you. Once people get to know your position and interests are similar to theirs, they will follow your signature line URL to your web site. These links will also contribute in a small way to the relevance of your site to the topic of the Usenet Group you post in.
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