Preparing for Success in Wildlife Tourism Marketing
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This document discusses preparing for success in wildlife and nature tourism marketing. It talks about the challenges of structures, processes and organizational approaches, and how to solve these challenges to create a platform for success. It provides context about a conservation NGO and ecotourism operator in Cambodia that generates funds from tours to support community and conservation projects. The tours help build sustainable local economies by developing infrastructure and skills while incentivizing conservation. Through their work, they have measured success in species stabilization and reduced deforestation. The document then discusses leveraging digital opportunities by knowing your brand messaging, audiences, stories and processes for sharing information both internally and externally through connections and networks.
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Preparing for Success in Wildlife Tourism Marketing
- 1. PREPARING FOR SUCCESS IN WILDLIFE AND NATURE TOURISM MARKETING
- 3. Preparing the ground The Challenges – structures, processes and organisational Approaches to solve these and create a platform for success What I am going to talk about…
- 5. We are both a conservation NGO, and a non-profit ecotourism operator running specialised birding and wildlife tours to Cambodia’s most vulnerable habitats, to view some of the world’s most critically endangered species. The funds generated from ecotourism go back into community and conservation projects and ecotourism development – essentially creating a ‘local environmentally sustainable economy’. SVC build infrastructure, develop skills, provide employment from ecotourism and with the Conservation Contribution - tied to sightings of key species incentivise away from illegal land use and hunting, which goes into community development. Along with our conservation partners WCS Cambodia, we have been able to clearly measure success in the areas we work – species stabilisation, growth and reduced deforestation.
- 9. • What I walked into An organization driven by passionA responsible wildlife tourism initiative driven by passion
- 13. WHO YOU ARE - what are YOUR STORIES, YOUR MESSAGES, YOUR PILLARS, YOUR VISION - WHO are you talking to, WHAT are you saying to your different audiences – which of your stories will most inspire that audience, best feed their needs - Does EVERYBODY in your organisation actually know any of the above??? HOW will you use everyone in your organisation and network to help? - HOW are you getting those stories? In and out… what’s the process? - WHO are your Friends? - WHO is in your network? - HOW do you CONNECT with them? - WHAT are your processes to do so? BUT…. DO YOU KNOW?
- 14. Brand
- 17. Soft Adventure Who are our audiences? Responsible and Ecotourist Sustainability Wildlife and Nature Travellers Birders
- 23. Bookings Operations Finance Guide TeamCommunity
- 26. Weekly meetings Clear communication lines Information sharing
- 33. Thank you….
Hinweis der Redaktion
- Hi… My name is Alison, and I work in Cambodia on a long term contract as a Marketing and Sales TA/Consultant for an amazing RWT organisation called Sam Veasna Centre – I was brought in with a mandate/mission to double the org by 2020. In the next 20 minutes I’m hoping for two things Not to bore you to tears That we all learn something… When I was discussing with the Wild Asia guys about what I should talk about we came up with the idea of bringing together two important areas – Responsible Wildlife Tourism and Marketing Responsible Tourism… I mulled about this apparently simple task. I looked hard at my own experience of moving from 25 years of commercial big brand marketing – watching and being part of the digital transformation of business and marketing into working with a Cambodian conservation organisation – who are Ground Operator running Responsible Wildlife Tourism. Realisation that what was my biggest challenge was not actually ‘doing the marketing’ but the transformation of the whole organisation – structures, processes, skills, internal comms, reporting and information sharing required for us to even begin to succeed. Needed to create a solid foundation/platform for that 100% growth. And so here we are – Preparing for success in Wildlife and Nature Tourism
- What means is that I am not going to tell you how to market wildlife tourism Not going to give you a blueprint of which platforms, tools, software, how many posts, how often etc There are thousands of great sources out there on the t’interweb talking about that…
- Now I just want to lay out some quick caveats I work with a wildlife tourism ground operator in Cambodia – though this is not exactly a case study, this draws on what I’ve experienced over the last 9 months so it’s through a particular lens, but also through the filter of over 20 years in marketing and business growth/change it’s still WIP (as you’ll see) – we are still working on making these changes, and perhaps if I had these 9 months again with the knowledge I have now I would have approached some things differently, but this is the plan we are now working to and slowly achieving success – change takes time, particularly in Cambodia. A bit of context…
- An amazing and unique organisation – and believe me, I’ve googled a lot to try and find someone doing the same thing so I could learn from them. SVC are a Cambodian wildlife conservation organisation. We deliver very successful wildlife and habitat conservation through community based wildlife ecotourism – tours and safaris all around Cambodia. We are an NGO and a non-profit.
- We work with 8 communities around Cambodia – focused on areas of highest vulnerability in terms of habitat and critically endangered species of which there are sadly many – so often in protected areas such as wildlife sanctuaries and protected forests – real wild Cambodia, remote and very poor traditional and indigenous communities. 2 things that seem to make us unique: Whilst there are many single location based NGOs/Non Profit operators combining conservation activities and responsible tourism, I can’t seem to find any that work across multiple locations and communities and work to a very unique model of conservation through CBET which was developed in partnership with Wildlife Conservation Society which goes beyond just providing ‘alternative and sustainable livlihoods’, but through this Conservation Contribution actually enacts behavioural and attidudinal change.
- We are successful, self funding and globally known in a very small niche (but valuable) market of birding. But the to quote the mantra – the better we do, the better we do… The organisation needs to grow, develop new products. open new markets,
- Never done any real ‘marketing’ – a very basic website, a facebook page which had been going for 3 years and had 1000 followers and average engagement of about 70/week Set of brochures – about 10 different ones Solid trade relationships with Bird Tour Operators
- I walked into A responsible wildlife tourism initiative driven by passion, set up through conservation, developed by passionate nature lovers and conservationists, brilliantly trained guides, solid field operations… but as I quickly found out, utterly un prepared to succeed – connect, new audiences, drive sales etc in today’s digital environment
- Today’s digital environment… It is a multi layered many headed entity, and it’s hungry… and the food that sustains it is content I’m probably not telling you anything new here!
- It’s an ecosystem… and as we know there are many many different types of ecosystems every part of your ecosystem feeds on different types of food, and it’s all connected Think of this ecosystem as a vast collection of different potential audiences across different platforms – and they all need to be fed content… What food do you have in your stores? How and where can you get the food? What food does each element best thrive on and respond to? Which ones do you need to feed – what are your key species as it were?
- OK – so that’s a bit conceptual! But so let’s pull it back… Working in Responsible Wildlife Tourism we actually have AMAZING CONTENT!!!!! We potentially have loads and loads of it – STUNNING IMAGES INCREDIBLE STORIES Stories that EMOTIONALLY CONNECT Stories that INSPIRE We are not selling semi conductors! Stories from the field – birds and wildlife, sightings, environments, habitats Stories from our clients – experiences, images, emotions Stories from the communities – growth and success and human development Conservation stories – nest protection, species monitoring, rescue and rehabilitation Education stories – training guides, youth and communities Stories of efforts to sustainability, challenges and success Beautiful images of incredible things
- But you need to know…
- One of the first things I realised is that whilst everyone was committed to what we were doing – that we probably all had different ways of thinking about it , communicating it. Actually if I’m honest, some of the team in the office had probably just switched off a bit… Brand workshop Everyone – WCS, Guides, Bookings Who we are What we do Why we do it and our beliefs Who are our audiences, who’s in our network, our potential Pillars Made sure everyone understood that – Brand manual and branding
- We know our key pillars…
- Helped us to work out who our new markets could be Our Product Development Plan Where we could extend and where we definitely couldn’t How we could communicate with them generally and specifically Both our trade and consumer sales and marketing – approaching new inbound and local operators This is very simplified – there are very very niche breakdowns within this which we can activate Dragonfly and Butterfly Photography Tours Education
- We know our USPS and key messages
- We’ve used this to start to create new marketing materials…
- Used that knowledge to work out the kind of content that speaks to different aspects of who we are… and our audiences
- We know who we are We know our key messages and pillars By knowing who we are, we understand better who our audiences and targets are and how to talk to them in relation to our key messages and pillars We ALL know better how to talk about SVC… Great But how do we feed the beasts??? Where and how are we getting the food? The clients who call us or email us? The audiences we want to talk to and engage
- Traditional business environment Marketing sits in a bubble doing marketing things, hopefully they are feeding leads to Sales who hopefully close deals – they don’t really talk that much and largely think each other are idiots. Operations get on with operating – don’t really need to talk to Marketing… Why would they do that? Sales only communicate to ops/production to inform what’s coming up Then there’s the dark art of finance… well, we really only talk to them if we have to right?
- No marketing No sales – booking team, grown organically – saw their role as totally functional – taking bookings, booking the groups into calendar, allotting guide and booking into the communities Operations: Guide management and training, field operations, conservation activity alongside WCS, field surveys, species monitoring, community engagement, infrastructure development Finance…
- But actually, it’s more like this, successful organisations today are eco systems. All need to connect with marketing And all need to connect with each other – CREATING A NETWORKED ORGANISATION Bookings are ‘first contact’… they are more than functional, they need to be able to sell, in order to sell they need to understand – live, what is going on in the field, sightings, activities, conditions, seasons, species, up to the minute, who SVC are??? What we actually do??? What is the experience?? Guides are the deep knowledge and the key face and voice, our greatest resource, they are the on the ground, as it happens, they are the experience the client gets – that is why people talk about us globally, keep coming back. They get the stories as they are happening… if they know what to do with them, what they should and could be recording, and what they do with that And today, marketing needs to be at the hub of all this… What are the booking trends/finance reports – do we need to do any targeted activity to push certain products in certain markets? What are the most exciting things that have happened in the last week that we can report on – recently for us it’s been the start of Migration Season for example… What are the things coming up that we can create stories around…
- So, this is the sexy stuff…
- Weekly meetings AND team meetings AND reporting lines: Guide training manager (all the guides report in to him) reports on all sites, key sightings, species: this enables the bookings (becoming sales!) team to be able communicate directly with potential clients and not book trips to a location where we know there are no species at the moment best trips and client experiences that Marketing can then reach out to for quotes, images, stories Any negative feedback we need to deal with Also reports on upcoming training and field activities that may be of interest – so can be briefed on what needs to be captured for content development and stories Bookings Status of season ahead in bookings and revenue terms Trends or changes that we need to act on – tactical marketing exercises Open discussion on how to deal with challenging scenarios – difficulty in confirming particular groups, how we can solve those problems Bookings from our key trade operators – where do we need to reach out more directly or support with better information or content Operations and Director Big picture – WCS/MOE, key community consultation to be done, development ideas Infrastructure development progress and planning Marketing!!!!!! Reports on key activities coming up – and where/how need input from the team Delivers success stories and progress Share’s ideas based on everything that has been heard in the meeting Organises briefing sessions and work to be done to develop content ideas Everyone Requests help, plans collaborative work, discusses deadlines and schedules
- We worked out through out brand work-shopping, that our guide team were not only one of our best sources of up to the minute fresh content, but very much the voice of the organisation… All our guides are able to post on our social media – and they had been, but it was random, disconnected, storyless, How do you change that? What did we need to do … We came up with a two layered approach between the authentic Cambodian voice of SVC – the Guides, and Marketing team MARKETING SITS AT THE HUB DEVELOPING THE LONGER FORM, MORE STRATEGIC CONTENT, SEEDING and BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS ACROSS NETWORKS
- Through observation, offer, incentives… we established who on our guide team could be our best advocates….
- Initial social media training Concepts Stories – what makes a story How to record it Client engagement How to post… MONTHLY REVIEWS CONSTANT DEVELOPMENT CLEAR REPORTING LINE FOR POTENTIAL MAJOR ACTIVITY
- WE CREATED PROCESSES With potential to gain so much amazing content from clients, customers, teams and partners – you need a way to manage it… this has been a huge huge headache personally coming into an organisation where there has never been any form of organised marketing, and where the idea of ‘content’ was totally alien. Content collation process – and we are in the process now of setting up a proper online content library on Box.com which will allow guides to upload straight from either the field on their mobiles to a holding folder to enable sorting before moving into the library How do we get content in from the field in an organised fashion Protocols for naming images and videos Process for connecting with clients post trip
- We’ve worked hard on TRANSFORMING teams Turning bookings into Sales Training them in selling experience not price - using our key messages, our core values, our mission, model and vision How to overcome customer objections with a new definition of VALUE beyond DOLLARS Empowered them to solve problems and seek solutions
- ESTABLISHING AND NURTURING YOUR NETWORK You Clients Customers Partners Suppliers Organisations – like Wild Asia, Asian Ecotourism Network, Local and interest based forums networks Share content and content share in return – creating virtuous circles of support and communication Know that those you do business with and connect to, are likely connected again to audiences that you want to talk to
- This is by no means exhaustive… though I am exhausted. There are of course many details, processes within processes, things we are still working on and fine tuning… I welcome questions on any of these that people might want to delve into.