Summary

The website content discusses a targeted approach to digital marketing for businesses in dining, hospitality, bicycle businesses, or tourism, emphasizing the importance of storytelling, understanding the customer journey, and focusing on Generation X consumers.

Abstract

The author of the web content, with over 13 years of experience in digital marketing, emphasizes that a business must lead its digital content and ensure that hired marketing agencies deeply understand its mission, vision, unique value proposition, buyer persona, and customer journey. The content criticizes agencies that focus solely on vanity metrics like likes and follows without driving actual sales. The author advocates for a human-centered storytelling approach to digital marketing, especially for businesses in the hospitality, dining, and tourism sectors, citing the purchasing power of Generation X, who spend significant time on various devices and are inclined towards experiences and travel. The strategy aims to create a loyal customer base by engaging users emotionally and leading them to make purchases.

Opinions

Digital marketing agencies must align with a business's core values and strategic goals to be effective.
Tracking and providing conversion data is crucial for measuring marketing success over vanity metrics.
Storytelling in marketing should be authentic, engaging, and aimed at enticing like-minded customers.
A targeted approach to marketing ensures that content reaches the appropriate audience, which is particularly important for businesses in niche sectors like dining, hospitality, and bicycle businesses.
Generation X is a key demographic with significant buying power, especially in housing, clothing, dining, and entertainment.
The author's digital marketing strategy is tailored for businesses that appeal to outdoor enthusiasts, food lovers, and those who seek adventure and fun.
The content suggests that random likes and follows do not contribute to a business's bottom line, and thus, agencies should focus on driving actual sales.
Emotional engagement through marketing stories can lead to increased sales and repeat customers.
The author is part of Generation X and leverages their personal experience and built audience to benefit clients through targeted storytelling.

Taking Generation X on a Human-Powered Journey That Leads Directly to You

Photo by Jamie Lynn Morgan in Downtown Coeur d’Alene Idaho

After being in the marketing business, precisely the digital marketing space, for the last 13+ years, there are a few things that I have learned.

A business needs to be the leader of its digital content. If not the actual poster of the content. If a company is relying on someone who has no idea what the day to day operations of your business look like, they have no reason to buy into your company culture, and they are merely looking at likes and follows you have hired the wrong company.

Am I saying that an already busy business owner will have to figure out how to find the time also to manage all their social media and other marketing? No, that is not what I am saying; what I am saying is that if you choose to hire someone, you better make sure of a few things.

They know your Mission and Vision.
They understand your Unique Value Proposition.
They are fully aware of your Buyer Persona’s
They know how to track a Customer Journey
They can provide you with Conversion Data, not only stats on Likes, Follows, Visits, Impressions.

Why are you in business? To make sales correct? If you pay someone good money every month for nothing more than great photos and exciting prose, you miss out on the most important thing — people who are buying what you are selling.

Any digital marketing agency should provide you with data showing you how they took people on a journey from a social media post to an email sign up to a sale. (Or any variation of other journey’s someone might take.) That is why the business you hire must understand the five things I mentioned above. I have done these things for and with my clients for years.

Without knowing those things, how can they post content to your specific audience to keep people who already buy from you coming back and find others who are a good fit for your business? Because contrary to what people believe, not everyone is your customer, and random likes and follows do nothing for your bottom line.

I do things differently from many other digital marketing agencies out there, and starting in 2021, I am changing up everything!

I no longer tell you when to post, what to post, or how often to post.

I no longer manage your daily, weekly, or monthly digital marketing.

What I do is I tell human-powered stories to entice like-minded travelers to visit you, and as your small business, not everyone is my customer. So, what I do will not work for every small business. My program will work best for anyone in dining, hospitality, bicycle businesses, or the tourist industry. The reason is that I have spent years building my audience of people who rely on me to post about riding my bicycle to interesting places enjoying meals and having an adult beverage or two.

The stories I tell engage the end-user, who then wants to experience some of what I talk about in my stories, social media posts, and the content I create — bringing in customers to your business, adding to your sales, and creating potential repeat customers.

In the famous words of Maya Angelou, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

I work with hospitality, travel, and tourism businesses to fashion one or several targeted and specialized storytelling campaigns that will help you reach those that enjoy being outdoors, good food, adventures, and fun.

As a bonus, I am part of Gen X, and a large majority of my following are too. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Gen X outspends all other ages regarding housing, clothing, eating out, and entertainment. Plus, contrary to popular belief, Gen X spends more time per week on all devices than Millennials do: 21 hours on smartphones, 9 hours on PCs, and 4 hours on tablets.

Travel and tourism-related businesses should not ignore Generation X because they still have money to spend and time to travel. The generations surrounding us may be more significant in number, but we are the next world leaders.

You can create a loyal community of customers, and I love every opportunity to help a business do that. Reach out!

Cheers and Ride On!