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Place Marketing Strategy | A Detailed Guide on How to Plan & Implement it

Place marketing strategy focuses on attracting and retaining business to a specific location. Companies must understand the value of their physical locations. They can use them to attract new customers.

Place marketing is often used to promote tourism destinations. It is a marketing approach that focuses on creating and managing valuable places. These places can be geographical locations, such as stores or shopping malls. It can also be virtual locations, such as websites or social media pages. It can also encourage businesses and other organisations.

Some of the most significant drawing factors for a place include local events. Events are great opportunities to market your business to people who may not have otherwise visited. The key here is to make sure you’re advertising in advance so that people know when these events will occur.

What is the Place Marketing Strategy?

The Place Marketing Strategy is a marketing approach that focuses on creating and managing valuable places. A sound strategy has been thoughtfully planned out and implemented. A good place marketing strategy should include:

  • A clear brand identity for a place is essential because it helps consumers identify what experience they want from visiting a particular area. Without brand identity, visitors might assume that any establishment/location could provide the same service.

Who uses the Place Marketing Strategy?

Tourism boards and businesses often use the Place Marketing Strategy to promote their destinations or products. However, any organisation that wants to create a valuable place can use this strategy. Some examples include:

• Businesses that want to attract more customers to their store.

• Organizations that want to increase foot traffic at their event venues.

• Non-profit groups that want to raise awareness of their cause.

Examples of Place Marketing Strategies

There are many different ways to use the Place Marketing Strategy. Some of the most common examples include:

  • Creating a website or social media page for a destination or business
  • Developing marketing materials (such as brochures, posters, or videos) about a destination or product
  • Hosting events or activities at a physical location
  • Creating a loyalty or rewards program for customers
  • Developing partnerships with other businesses or organisations
  • Providing customer service that exceeds expectations

Benefits of a Place Marketing Strategy

There are many benefits to using a Place Marketing Strategy. Some of the most notable benefits include:

  • Increased exposure to a destination or product
  • Improved customer loyalty and satisfaction
  • More opportunities for marketing and promotional activities
  • Increased sales and revenue
  • Attracting new customers
  • Generating online and offline buzz about a destination or product
  • Building brand awareness and equity

An event as a place marketing tool

Portmeirion, one of the loveliest places in North Wales, used this tactic effectively. Festival Number 6 was a music festival held on the grounds of Portmeirion. This event helped generate publicity for the location. Target customers discovered Portmeirion due to the festival.

Location as a place marketing tool

Weather, climate, and location influence visitors’ decisions when considering where to travel. Weather plays a vital role in determining whether someone will visit a particular place. For example, you know how devastating hurricanes can be if you live in Florida during hurricane season. You also understand why people would choose to stay away from a stormy place like Florida. The same goes for weather in New York City. Visitors don’t want to go to New York City during wintertime. They prefer to go somewhere else instead. Location is another factor that influences tourists’ decisions. People consider distance, cost, accessibility, safety, entertainment, etc. If a particular location meets all these criteria, they’ll likely make plans to visit there.

Leveraging Customer Satisfaction

Current customers can be a vital part of an effective marketing strategy. Word-of-mouth is one of the best forms of advertising. Many experts consider word-of-mouth to be more potent than any other form of advertising. A satisfied customer is more likely to recommend your company to others than a dissatisfied customer. However, the dissatisfied ones tend to be more vocal than the satisfied ones. Therefore, it’s essential to find ways to encourage happy customers to share their experiences with others. One way to do so is through a rewards program.

A Rewards Program

Influencer marketing is one of the most successful reward programs in recent years. Influencers are individuals who have large followers on social media platforms. They can reach millions of followers at once. Reward them for sharing information about your business. 

Positioning

You don’t have to invent everything. Understanding how other places have positioned themselves in their marketing to a target audience gives you a clear idea of what your approach can be. Perfect positioning factors in public relations. Tourism often has a love/hate relationship with the locals. An excellent public relations campaign gets their support. 

Positioning requires a clear understanding of target customers and why it appeals to them. 

Market coverage

Marketing involves reaching a wide range of potential customers. To achieve this goal, you need to think outside the box. What makes your product or service unique? How does it benefit your target market? Why should your target market care about your product or service? It’s not enough to say, “We offer X.” You must explain why your product or service is better than anything else available. This is where your competitive analysis comes into play.

Objectives

Any promotional strategy needs objectives. Without clear goals and critical elements involved in your approach to marketing strategy, you may exhaust your marketing budget. A clear direction is to benefit marketing teams. 

Marketing helps you decide which channels to communicate your products and services. It would help if you tailored distribution strategies to the need of potential buyers as they line up with your objectives. The 4ps of marketing can guide your pricing model, among other marketing initiatives. 

 A coherent marketing campaign includes all four Ps of marketing. The entire process starts with defining your objective. Then, you choose the appropriate channel(s) to use. Once that’s done, you create content that will attract the attention of your target audience. Finally, you promote this content.

Content marketing efforts

City marketing and country marketing are two different things. City marketing usually focuses on attracting people to live in a particular city. Country marketing focuses on attracting tourists to visit a specific region. Both types of marketing campaigns require a lot of planning. They also involve a lot of work. Content marketing is one type of marketing that falls under city marketing. It helps businesses build brand awareness by creating high-quality content that attracts visitors to their website.

There are many benefits to using content marketing. Some of these include :

  • Attract new customers
  • Build trust with existing customers
  • Increase search engine rankings
  • Increase traffic to websites
  • Create more leads
  • Generate sales

Content marketing is an effective way to engage with your target customer base. It allows you to provide information that answers questions and solves problems for people interested in learning more about your business. When done correctly, content marketing creates opportunities for you to connect with your audience.

You can start small if you want, but it’s best to start big. If you have a limited budget, then focus on the most critical aspects of your campaign. 

Consumer demand

What appeals to audiences varies. Marketing activities for any tourist location would differ from those for a local business. There are certain commonalities, though. For example, both groups share similar interests. They like to travel and enjoy spending time at places that make them feel good. However, there are differences between the two. Some advertising tactics for local businesses would not appeal to tourists because they don’t know or care about the local community.

You could target tourism advertising toward locals. You can create unique content that promotes your destination. You can share social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.

The key to successful content marketing is consistency. Your content should be consistent across all forms of communication. That means that every piece of content should look and sound the same. Also, it should convey the same message. Consistency makes your content easy to understand. It also increases the chances of users sharing it.

Buyer personas

All components of marketing rely on a clearly defined buyer persona. They also determine the right channel of distribution based on the activities of potential customers. 

A central location may appeal within a crowded market if that is the characteristic that core audiences are looking for. More remote locations may pose a larger barrier to entry for travellers. However, to the right persona, this is one of the features they seek.

Find where the place you are marketing falls. Tailor the advertising medium to whichever way is suitable. 

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