Northern Beaches Tourism Mentoring Program
Tourism Mentoring Program for Northern Beaches Council in Sydney
The Opportunity
We were approached by the team at Northern Beaches Council in November 2020, to develop a mentoring program to support operators based in their Sydney metro destination with new insights around how visitors have changed (particularly as they have traditionally had a high percentage of international visitors in the past) as well as building their capacity in developing experiences and best practice marketing for the postCOVID traveller.
Our proposed ‘Tourism Mentoring Program’ was strategically designed to not only educate but inspire and empower participants to take action to develop and market their businesses to drive demand for not only for their experiences, but to work more collaboratively as a metro destination to drive increased visitation and yield for their region.
We mentored 55 participants through this Program, with representation across all industry sectors.
Program Scope
We took participants on a deep dive to understand how to navigate the current economic climate surrounding COVID-19, and how to prepare their experience and marketing strategy to restart in a changed environment.
The Program not only covered all of the 'How To' basics of key digital marketing platforms, but showed participants how the relationship between their experience, their visitors, and strategic marketing tactics come together to achieve business objectives, and can drive real growth & sustainability, which is of particular importance in the current economic climate.
Program Methodology
Marketing and Enrolments
Northern Beaches Council promoted the Program via their industry communication channels and managed the applications/enrolments for the Program.
We published a pre-program survey to gather insights from the participants on key issues/challenges they faced in marketing their business, which helped us to refine our learning materials and concepts to ensure the operators could have all their questions answered.
Marketing Modules
The Program consisted of 4 Marketing Modules to be delivered over a 1 month period.
We worked closely with the team at Northern Beaches Council to refine the training topics covered in the Modules to ensure key skill gaps were addressed.
The four learning Modules covered in the Program were
- Tourism Landscape, Best Practice Tourism Marketing + Ideal Customers
- Creating Exceptional Experiences
- Social Media Strategy
- Reputation Management, Customer Advocacy + Location Based Marketing
Program Facilitation
- All of the modules were delivered via an interactive 1.5 hour live online webinar, which were facilitated fortnightly.
- All webinars were recorded, so those participants who couldn’t attend the workshop or webinars live could watch the replays.
Mentoring + Learning Materials
- Bespoke learning materials (workbooks, templates and Marketing toolkit) were created and supplied to support the key learnings in the webinars. Each Module consisted of a set of Tasks, which were practical actions that each business could implement straight away
- All learning materials (including recorded live webinar + replay of the live workshops) were made available to participants within 24 hours after each module.
- Local Northern Beaches tourism business case studies were used throughout the webinars, making the learning materials as relevant as possible for the participants
- A private Facebook Group was used to further engage participants and enable them to ask and receive support during the Program, and then a further 4 weeks after the final webinar.
Results
At the completion of the program, we collated feedback through a post-program survey, with an overview of some of their feedback below.
- "The course gave me a manual and checklist of practical ideas for improving digital marketing and in delivering a quality product.
- "In small business you need help to keep moving forward. Tips from experts helps give you insight and direction. The program was educational and delivered very well.
- "One of the things that was most helpful about the program was to have someone sharing statistics from the northern beaches, as well as giving examples of what other local businesses are doing that works or doesn't work and working together to improve Manly and its offerings.
- "Enjoyed the positive advice on how best to target customers during Covid times
- "I really liked that someone was talking to you and explaining it to you, rather than just slides where you have to read everything yourself. The giving of examples was also helpful.
- "The content was interesting, well structured and digestible. The presenters are excellent. The Facebook group is good but it would be even better to have a slide in the first presentation with all the participant businesses listed and the name of the person participating if we want to get in touch. Obviously this can be an opt in.
- "The response to my questions on blogs was extremely helpful. The presenters have a detailed knowledge of what to look at in trying to market a tour business online.
The best part... 100% respondents said they would recommend Program to others in their Region!