4 Tips to Improve Cities’ E- Brand
How many times have we been looking for a city break and discarded some options immediately even though the promotion was appealing? Too many times, right? That’s why Marketers should take advantage of a framework focusing on IT-mediated social representations and on cities e-branding over web marketing, developed by De Rosa, Bocci and Dryjanka (2017).
The positive outcome of transformation of many industrial sites into museums between the 70’s and 80’s increased the cultural offer of certain cities. At the same time allowing the development of a new city brand identity and image, this identity being spread worldwide through digital marketing tools by marketers, not only that but they are being reviewed, discussed and rated on online forums and social networks.
The city brand identity is built by marketers via institutional websites and it is a good way to present the city to tourists. The city brand image is the relationship between visitors’ emotional experiences, perceived overall image, satisfaction and intention to recommend (Prayag, Hosany, Muskat and Del Chiappa, 2017).
Tip Nº1 — Create a Coherent Brand Element Mix:
For you to have a successful destination branding is important to achieve the representation of the identity of the city in a consistent way. Name, Logo, sign, design, symbol, and slogan, are extremely important elements on the composition of a coherent brand.
Those elements need to be consistent in order to strengthen brand awareness and the uniqueness of a city brand identity. Each destination has an unique culture and it’s own social representations. By selecting a consistent element mix, brands strategists are more likely to identify and differentiate cities and destinations through building a positive image of the destination in the consumer’s mind.
Tip Nº2 — Develop the best Institutional Tourist Website
Nowadays, tourist destinations convey emotions and sensations, just like the most widespread brands. For this reason, it is necessary to provide the city with an institutional tourist website, which has the capability to improve the brand identity and it will be a showcase for the world to display its beauties, monuments and lifestyle.
What are the points of greatest emphasis on which we must work to develop the best institutional tourist website?
USABILITY. First of all, usability is an important aspect because it is not only assuring the proper web site performance, but also guarantee that the users are able to use it in a quick and easy way. The communicative capacities of the institutional tourist websites are evaluated by means of Nielsen’s Usability Test in five different degrees.
For instance, Lisbon ranks the best performance in term of usability because its institutional websites has no backtracks, no errors and 100% of the task are completed successfully. On the other hand, Brussels and Helsinki show a poor performance related to all the usability criteria and if it will be not correct, this could have an impact in the number of tourist in the next years.
LEVEL OF UPDATING. As mentioned before, the institutional tourist website is a smart tool to show what the city can offer to the tourist in order to create a value proposition. For this reason, tourism marketers must upload frequently the web site in order to give the chance to probable visitors, to plan their experience based on the events on the website. Excluding Warsaw Institutional web site, the other European capitals are being updated frequently and regularly.
RELIABILITY. Regarding this variable, the main aspects to take into account to develop or improve the institutional tourist website are:
- in-house entities commissioned to develop the website,
- lack of consistency in defining the guidelines for the various sites (the keyword ‘visit’ for the web site domain is an important asset already used by London, Lisbon and Berlin).
For instance, Rome and Warsaw must improve their reliability using clearer sources.
REFERENCES TO CULTURE. The contents on the web page must evoke the highlights of the city. History is one interpretation to understand deeply the culture in a specific corner of the world. It is a way to differentiate the city offers and to define the value proposition, something unique. For instance, Berlin’s website underlines the impact of history and Lisbon’s website uses the legend about Ulysses founding the city to start the description of its history as well.
However, history is not the main aspect to focus on, green tourism is also a powerful tool to grab tourists devoted on environmental issue.
Tip Nº3 — Analyze data retrieved from discussions on social network
Be sure that your message is being heard and understood. The brand image is the customers’ perception about the brand, and it’s created with the personal experiences or through the change of information between people that have some in common, in this case, visitors or residents of the city.
Advertisement is an important key that customers use to motivate, or not, other customers about brands and experiences. Nowadays social media is the most interactive and easier way to show the best places and things to do in the city. The information runs quickly on Instagram, Facebook and TripAdvisor which are full of details about city experiences.
Marketers should be attentive to the movement of the forums about the city, to improve the goods experiences and learn with the bad ones.
In some cases, like Lisbon, the marketers mixed the idea of brand identity with the brand image, inviting influencers to show the city from their point of view, administrating for a week the official city Instagram profile. These attitudes are interesting because they create trust and credibility in the mind of the customers.
According to the paper the data shows that Berlin has the highest convergence between the places identified in city brand sites and the places mentioned by the customers.
Tip Nº4 — Combine City Brand Identity and Brand Image strategies:
The City Brand identity and brand image are one of the most important concepts for destination branding from two different points of view: Marketers who are working on creating the brand identity of the city and consumers/travelers who will perceive the brand image. Therefore, a successful destination marketing strategy should be definitely considered in order to be aligned with the appropriate brand identity and the truthful destination image on consumer’s mind.
As not all tourists are the same and have the same interests, cities institutional websites should create special sections on their website regarding the type of tourism that can be found, whether it is; cultural tourism, religious tourism, green and sustainable tourism or prestigious tourism. Even though most institutional website do a great job at highlighting the cultural, historical and artistic aspects, some important aspects such as international cooperation, healthcare and education are often neglected.
To wrap it up
Destination officials responsible for city e-branding should be analyzing collaborative websites such as TripAdvisor, in order to understand what the most visited places in their city are. As the landmarks could be different from what they belief and they could also be changing with time. Last but not least, monitoring the tourists feedback on TripAdvisor is a great way for further improvements and for understanding the tourists ever-changing needs.
Therefore, even if it is not the only way, building a city e-brand can boost the tourist flow.
This article was written based on the following paper:
This article was written with the contribution of: Andrea Sparapano, Domenico De Fano, Juliana Rizzotto and Larissa Herminio students at NOVA Information Management School.
