Destinations get religious about marketing

Barak Obama selling tourism Disney style

Use millennia-old methods to get massive and potent free marketing

Who are the most effective, and time-tested marketers? Religions and (ahem) politicians.
And how do they do it? They EVANGELISE.

So, how does evangelist marketing work? It’s simple and practical process, but has to be methodically operated to work.

Firstly you have to be utterly confident in and comfortable with, your destination offer. Nothing, simply nothing can be left to chance. You need to go through everything, every destination supplier (restaurants, tourism attractions, bars, cafes, theatres – everywhere that a tourist may use – the wider you draw the net the more the benefits farmers, schools, banks – they are all part of your community) and make sure that not only are you singing from the same hymn sheet but also believe in it. This is very much easier for a community destination because it is, after all, a community.

See the bit about VISION

Same hymn sheet? Well, that’s the benefit of a community – everybody knows everybody else, well. If you don’t you need to create a joint vision – so that you all know where you want to go and how you want to get there – and you agree with the route and the destination!

Happy in what you’re doing, how you’re doing it and where you’re going and how much good it can do for all of your community and how proud of it you all are? Ready to evangelise your message?

Probably it’s a good thing now to define what a message in this context means…What it doesn’t mean is an evocation ie telling people outside of your community what to do like "come and stay with us" etc.

What it does mean is to explain to people outside your community what you’ve already done and where you mean to go. You notice the word explain rather than the word tell? Simply because your message will be much more powerfully received if it is asked for rather than if it’s delivered.

Why would you deliver your message? Of course because you want tourists (visitors) but you also want tourists that take ownership of your ethos. That way they will take more care on their visit to deliver what you need, won’t they?

So now what you are doing is actually to extend your community to people who probably don’t actually live in your destination. To use that hackneyed word, you are creating more stakeholders. In other words you are getting more help from people who are committed to your objectives.

Just for a moment, visualize these new people… they are committed to what you do and how you do it (that’s the present tense) and moreover they are committed to where you want to go. They will pass this message on with no help from anybody, in their day-to-day lives, moreover these conversations will lead to more external stakeholders.

They all believe in what you are doing – probably quite deeply. And if you do something out of character, they will tell you and you will be very grateful because that means that they are taking an interest and you will make use of the information they’ve given you.

You all are now evangelizing. It’s as simple as that. The power of your community vision has engaged outside evangelists and your message will be spread by word of mouth.

It’s a small flame, but you can now kindle it and fan it into as big a fire as you want, if you do the right things.

In the olden days, you’d be like St Paul, travelling all over the known world to inspire groups of people to understand and support your message.

And it’s not so different now we’ve got telephone, TV and the internet. After all you have a MESSAGE and it already has changed people’s lives – it will go on doing so if you propagate it.

To do this in a really modern context – just look at the activity of our current world’s best marketer – Barak Obama.

His team uses the social media it uses the telephone, it uses the mail and it uses public (and private) meetings to spread the message. The whole activity is multiplied and made more powerful by the evangelists (people who take ownership of his vision) who, in turn gently explain the message to others.

Of course Barak Obama’s vision is bigger than yours but it is certainly no more important. His vision embraces a country and the world – yours embraces a community and the world.

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Valere Tjolle
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