Package Up with Tourism Nova Scotia
[Music] [Music] so good morning everyone and thank you for joining us for the package up with parson nova scotia webinar this is part of the tourism nova scotia webinar series today is thursday april 22nd and i'm so happy that you're joining us today my name is nick fry and i'm the manager of business development with tourism nova scotia perth nova scotia is the provincial marketing organization for the province of nova scotia we market nova scotia as a vacation destination and we lead initiatives to help grow the tourism industry now this webinar series um was created to help with the challenges of cobia 19. it's had tremendous impacts on the travel industry in nova scotia we want to offer practical tips and advice as we move through the pandemic and welcome visitors when the time is right now we're scheduled for an hour today and and if we go over an hour that's okay we will send out a copy uh of the recording tomorrow in an email and if you have to leave at 11 that's fine and if you can say that's even better so really excited that we're uh doing this today if you have any questions throughout put it down in the q a at the bottom really encourage some dialogue we have a great group today new businesses established businesses so we're just really excited that you're here and the more questions that you ask the more our presenters are able to provide their insights anything we talk about today throughout the presentation whether it be a link or anything else we'll share that by email after that so don't have to worry about scribbling everything down we'll make sure we share it and as i mentioned um we will share a recording of the video there's anything you want to go back and review one thing about the q a um i prefer that the questions come through the q a at the bottom rather than the chat so just try to do that if you can so my first uh so we have two presenters today we have judy lynch tourism development advisor so judy of course is part of the experience development team many of you have probably dealt with judy and if not i can't wait for you to meet her today virtually judy is happy to help businesses and organizations create authentic tours and packages and experiences to motivate travel to and within nova scotia judy's the regional contact for the yarmouth and canadian shores cape breton bay of fundy and annapolis valley the maitland to weymouth areas specifically after junior presents uh we'll have michelle sears or michelle maybe first uh i think michelle's actually first uh and michelle sears um is a member of the tourism nova scotia marketing team michelle's role is to oversee the official trip planning website nova scotia.com many of you have probably either seen michelle present before or dealt with her specifically you know regarding your maybe nova scotia.com or your online presence uh michelle led the recent refreshmentsgosh.com so thank you
michelle michelle works directly with tourism operators to optimize their presence on nova scotia.com and help them connect with potential customers michelle's excellent to deal with on your web presence so if you have a question now's the time to ask her but she's always happy to answer a question after the fact as well so i would uh welcome michelle to share her screen we did practice this already so we'll be all ready to go i can't wait to see your presentation michelle there we go look at that it was seamless uh good morning everyone uh thank you for joining us so i'm gonna jump in we're gonna talk about web updates for nova scotia.com as well as other web internet updates and talk about some opportunities how we can work together and just for anybody that's new anybody that's been around for a while this is a great opportunity for us to kind of connect talk about what's new what we can update so we'll start off with nova scotia.com uh as naked mentioned we refreshed it last february so just before a lot of things change so we'll jump in and talk about some of the new areas of the website uh the opportunities for updating content throughout the website and then we'll move into those additional web updates and some takeaways so jumping in we springified nova scotia.com we're still working on it because spring is here uh for anybody who's may have a listing on the website whether it be an event uh package deal experience or a business listing this should look pretty familiar to you so i've taken the fortress lewisburg national historic sites listing as an example to show you what a listing page throughout the website looks like first thing you're going to notice is that big photo that was a huge improvement for us when the website was launched last year underneath it you can have up to 10 photos they go in that little photo carousel each one gets bigger to the right of that you'll see the title the website button or it could be the book now button if you're offering secure online booking then of course it's going to be your contact information so those links to again it'd be your website your social media your peer review rating websites of choice next to it highlights that was a bit of a new one last year for us and what it was originally built for was to pull out so any business could take advantage of this and this is for business listings could pull out those two or three main points that are of interest to a traveler that might be looking at your business as a place to come visit book with whatever it might be however this past year it actually helped us out a lot with uh covet 19 related updates so maybe you didn't open last year and we had a note there saying not you know remaining closed for 2020 reopening in 2021 which we can also update over in your actual open uh dates as well for the season so maybe you're taking part in a you've taken part in like clean it right through tie-ins maybe you're going to take part next week through the health and safety webinar that's going to be offered uh to figure out how it works with your business just things to kind of give that extra information to travelers to let them know how you are keeping their safety at the forefront uh below that your business description there is no character count if you were to visit the fortress of louisburg's listing you will see that it is a very lengthy well-written description of their business because it's talking about the experience the different purchasable experiences there as well and this is a really great way for not only our website but for your business as well as for search engine optimization to get people finding you on the internet landing on our page finding you finding your own website and last but not least underneath that is if you are updating or maybe partnering with somebody on experiences packages or perhaps events any of those listings while they're still active on the website will we can pull them in at the bottom of your listing so again it actually increases your visibility on the website because you're searchable in those areas as well as your listing so we do see a lot of opportunity there so showed you that so update those listings you may have already heard from us this year for updates for the travel guide but maybe your information has changed between now and then we've actually had that we have it to happen quite often where maybe somebody has decided to open a month earlier or a month later or we've had people decide that maybe they aren't going to open in 2021 if you have these updates at any time you can email them through to our colleague stephanie who oversees the business listings as well as partner portal uh stephanie.wadden at nova scotia.ca
so any so when we're talking updates so again updates for this year anytime you can email us these if you have great new photos we have a gmail account to send those through just because we need a larger photo one to two megabytes in size which also could plug in there's a smartphone photography webinar coming up on may 6th i'm thinking i'm going to sit down on that one as well just to learn a little bit more myself and those are great because we all have smartphones or the majority of us have smartphones so it's a great way to get those photos for your business listing and again those covet 19 specific updates for your listing so for those of you who might be a little bit newer we do have mandatory information that you do need to include in your business listing on nova scotia.com so minimum of one photo but we'd like to see up to 10. of course your contact information is pretty important those open and close dates and for accommodations we want to see high and low rates and for those that might be storefront those times that you're open throughout the week that written description we want at least one link to a peer review website it could be trip advisor it could be google business listings which we see a lot of people utilizing these days it could be expedia and even facebook now for business uh business listings on facebook they are actually you can actually have reviews and ratings showing up and if that if we can see that we will accept that as well uh important to note too for accommodations and campgrounds with those fixed roof accommodations they are now required to register with the tourist accommodations registry and they also must continue providing that monthly occupancy report uh to us in order to continue appearing on nova scotia.com and in the travel guide so for anybody who is new who is looking to apply for a listing uh stephanie is your go-to and if you're wondering about criteria or you want to check out our application forms i've added those links that are on our corporate site to this and of course as nick said you'll be getting these slides after the presentation so anybody who might be on the webinar today who maybe doesn't have a business but you have a vested interest you're here in nova scotia you're passionate about your area you know we have these seven travel regions throughout the province and within each one there are vibrant communities cities and towns and so we actually have cities and towns pages and we also of course will do communities as well and the one thing with these that i caution is that if you have a community you know look outside of it as well but we really when we're building these we need to look and make sure that there's enough information that's what travelers are going to be looking for are there tours are there restaurants places to stay great beaches golf courses anything like that that we can really build up and beef up that content i actually uh added now i'm from anaganish originally uh so i did do this for the northumberland shore uh we talk about the don't miss activities in anagonish they have a lot of great beaches you talk about the top places to stay and we actually did that through a traveler ranked pull through trip advisor which when people gave us their trip advisor through the website as well as a few other local recommendations and these pages also show a map of the area which you can tailor and in this case i think it's talking about outdoor activities so if you're interested that's something we can chat about another couple of opportunities though are the itineraries and stories section on the website that were actually a bit more new to us with the new website itineraries think of road trips you know it could be i think right now we go we we go from 48 hours to 10 days in length and it may not be hitting everything in a region or multiple regions but it's hitting specific things the stories however is more like a blog article so they can be very niche uh they can be i mean we put them up seasonally but they can be a little bit more tailored so an example i used here was this winter being a bit of a different winter we actually noticed an uptick in searches for places to stay with outdoor hot tubs or with hot tubs so to help with that search we actually pulled together a blog article nova scotia winter getaways with an outdoor hot tub and we actually had a few operators let us know that it actually helped with their their season so with that if you have these uh content suggestions does your town or community maybe you just see that there's some updates needed maybe there's some new businesses that in that area that we can reach out to um at any time if you've got ideas if you you know have a suggestion for content that we could write about or include contact us we'd love to hear from you and you know get that idea uh make it make it live on the website so i wanted to touch on this quickly i know judy's going to be talking to you a bit more about packaging here in a few minutes but if you're organizing a festival an event if you have travel packages or travel deals or maybe you're working with the team or would like to work with the team on that experience development partner portal is a face a public-facing portal website where you will have a log in and you can create these and they stay within your account if you're already using it awesome let's make sure that everything's up to date for this year and if things aren't running this year think about next year and getting them up on the website because people we know are already trip planning for next year if they don't feel safe traveling this year if you don't have a listing or have a listing or a login yet stephanie is your contact again to get yourself in there and start looking around and get some custom events packages or experiences up on the website so let's move into those additional updates and right off the bat let's update your website uh there we go oh sorry i thought it moved for a second um so this is pretty key um for us specifically if you've updated your listing on our website one of our major goals with nova scotia.com is we
want people coming in and going through the website finding that information we see them going down that sales funnel one of our goals though is to have people exiting nova scotia.com so exiting our website by clicking on a link clicking on a link on your listing means they're going to your website your booking engine it could be your social media and what happens when they get there and they start seeing 2019 or 2020 dates or maybe the information is not the same as what we have they may question the the validity of it and think okay is it up to date do i send an email or do i just go back and continue searching so if you're updating us please make sure your website is updated as well and vice versa if you've updated your website and you're like you know what i did change that shoot myself or stephanie off a message and we can make sure that it's updated on nova scotia.com uh i mentioned the peer review websites another one to make sure that you're updated um are your i've seen a lot with covid uh google business listings in particular has added a a temporarily closed option so if you're getting ready to open for the season on the day that you're opening make sure that's flipped and your dates and rates are updated because that's going to be really important for anybody that's starting to plan their trip planning this year uh tripadvisor same thing dates rates photos information anything you have expedia facebook whatever it might be speaking to facebook let's make sure that social media that you're using for your business is up to date i know a lot of us we tend to slow down in the winter but now that spring and summer are upon us let's get i mean today i was i'm here in windsor and i'm seeing tulips and daffodils like why not have some pictures of hey you know what spring is here we're open we are opening these are some of the things that are coming up here's some new information and one of the biggest plugs we do uh cynthia would be very proud of me on our team is if you're sharing photos those nice new photos of your property your tours your experience whatever it might be when you're sharing it at social media please hashtag it with our visit nova scotia because that will get it into our queue she will potentially see it we do have a lot of information coming in but if it's relevant to our audiences that's something that she can then share out you will be linked and that could potentially open you to new audiences of people finding out who you are and learning more about your business so few takeaways if you have a listing on nova scotia.com let's make sure it's updated for this coming season and if your update changes in two days send us off another email we'll continue to make those updates uh if you qualify for a listing and are interested in learning more let's chat if you see any opportunities in updating getting maybe your community on the website or updating the pages or you have ideas for those itineraries and stories again let's talk about those ideas and use visit nova scotia when you're sharing your photos on social media and it won't be the last time you hear it today please sign up for our intouch newsletter uh there's so much information that gets shared a lot of it very time sensitive and if you want to be in the know this is where you need to find it and with that i also actually wanted to do a shout out that last june we did a longer one-hour webinar on nova scotia.com so there's this is a bit more of a condensed version but if you're interested in learning a little bit more a lot of what we talked about last june is still relevant now uh so i've added a link here and yeah if you have any questions so if anybody if anybody has any questions um now's the time to ask them uh one question we got uh through was uh are there listings on nova scotia.com do
they cost anything they do not they are free all of our listings are free perfect and who can contribute to stories can people submit an article or are they written by tns staff uh yes we actually do have we've had a few more recently um yeah we are always open to guest bloggers perfect okay so uh looks like we oh um regarding updating websites i like to point out that many maybe most in the muse of the museums in the sydney region are now open on google maps why are they not updated regarding updating websites i'd like to point out that many many most of the museums in the city region show that they're now open on google maps why are they not updated so i'm not sure you so david are you are you saying that they show open and i guess my only and i won't answer for michelle but i mean everyone has to manage their own google listing um and um oh google maps so that yeah i mean that would be up to the uh the people running the museums to update that it is but we can also do it too you and i everybody on this webinar everybody in the public so if you see i do it all the time i'm kind of a stickler that way but i will if i see somebody's hours are incorrect and i mean everybody's hours keep changing these days um i will actually go to their like i'll go on google on my phone and sometimes they ask for a picture so if you see somebody's hours or change like sobeys for instance i can take a picture of it but i can actually adjust it and set a submit it and anybody can do this and google will email you back and say okay great thank you for your submission and with usually within 24 hours i've seen it in under an hour they will email back and say thank you we've approved it and it can take 24 to 48 hours to appear though on those listings so again when we're talking about you know updating our peer review sites uh our websites and whatnot this is something that people ought to be doing and again things change quickly but for the businesses that own these listings they should be doing it if not we the members of the public we can still do it too that's great so um so of course you're always encouraged to manage your own um site as well but it's great that google has an option there's a question that came through um do you need to attach a review section if you're interested in promoting a town or city is the criteria the same like a like a peer review site for a city or town well i mean i'm sitting on nova scotia.com we have different sections for like you know annapolis royal or you know oh like the pages are all a little bit different um oh no we build them specifically to the content we have so it might not be you know the top uh activities it could be the top attractions or the best gardens or the best places to eat so we really do work with uh that community to really finish up or i guess finesse what their highlights are and bring it out in a page perfect we had another question um about there's a website promoting acadian and francophone regions can we promote it on tns and i'm just gonna we're gonna we'll send that reply privately so we'll we'll answer that off offline uh let's see is there any other questions no questions now that's great so i mean uh of course michelle's info is right there very easy to get a hold of and always willing to help um this question is do you list isolation availability do you know what i don't know if we've had anybody we know that there's been a few offering yeah like the two-week isolation uh stays but i don't know if anybody's listed it and i would see no problem in doing that that could actually be something that in your coveted information actually no i i'm actually i'm lying there was at least one package last year where somebody put up that they were offering uh two week quarantine packages so yes we will put them up i guess i should preface that if you are already listed on our website as an accommodation then yes we will put it up well thank you michelle you are a wealth of knowledge um and you can again if something piques your interest for if something pops up now throughout the webinar or after now just just pop it in the q a or send michelle email that email address i would now like to welcome judy to share her screen and provide her presentation great thanks nick and thanks michelle that was a lot of great information and now that we've given you all sorts of tips and tools for updating nova scotia.com and your own website and peer review sites we'd like to talk to you a little bit about our visitors and creating new packages and experiences to encourage them to travel around nova scotia and bring people in from the maritime provinces as well when when that's allowed so who are our visitors so for today i'm recognizing that there are some most some recent travel restrictions today we're going to talk about looking at encouraging maritime travel um we're all hopeful that the atlantic bubble we will be able to come into play in a number of weeks or a month or so from now so that's what we'll chat a little bit about today and nova scotians are included in this so uh our research that we've done since colvid19 had uh arrived uh looked at how maritimers traveled so 50 or so travel as a coupler with children so we have a lot of people looking to weekend getaways looking to spend some time activities with their kids they do travel year round although it is it's clear that their highest visitation is in our summer months through september really interested in hiking and culinary activities seeing our beautiful coastlines at the bay of fundy around uh and the atlantic ocean and typically you're spending one maybe two nights trips don't tend to be as long but people are looking um looking for little keys here and there most researching online but it is a short travel book short booking window so people are looking and it's really important to have your listings up to date as michelle mentioned um but they might not book very far out but they are still looking and so if your information is able to be found that's going to help you be kind of top of mind when they're ready to book so just to reiterate a little bit of what we've already talked about today is that covet 19 did really drive people to that online presence to look for things to do and whether we wanted it to or not it increased our comfort with booking and searching and purchasing things online just out of necessity so that online information is critical and not just what you're offering but the safety protocols that you've put in place too and what you're doing to keep your staff and your visitors safe when they come to visit your your accommodation your attraction people don't want to assume that you're taking those steps so it's really important to include that in your messaging as well and all the while everything that you do the photos that you put up the descriptions lead with your strengths and how you differ from others in your area and others in nova scotia and within the maritimes as well so there's lots of different things that are attracting people to moving around nova scotia and exploring places maybe they've been before or some places they haven't been you know visiting friends and family finding a beautiful cabin uh along the ocean seeing your very informative and helpful museums and historic sites so really looking at ways that you your business can promote your strengths and help people take part in these things that are motivating travel throughout the province so might be opportunities for partnerships the itineraries that michelle mentioned there's lots of great ways to get people moving around so differentiate yourself it looks at ways that you can increase spending overnight stays get repeat visits a lot of times you know as michelle mentioned with the itineraries you know they've got lots of great ideas like we'd love to go visit this place in nova scotia but we're not sure what we can do there so itineraries are really helpful uh to help people see how they can fill up their days and encourage maybe a one night today to become a two-night stay because there's just too many wonderful things to do they need to stay longer packages and experiences which i'll chat about a little bit more about in the coming slides are also a good way that you can increase spending and get repeat visits as well and you really need to put that message out there people need to know what you're offering and align things from your website your social channels nova social.com it's great the more that you're out there giving increasing your footprint online you're easier to be found and the visitors they just can't help but see the wonderful things that you're offering and the exciting things to do when they're traveling around nova scotia so what is a purchasable package or an experience so a package is simply when you combine at least two tourism offering in one package at one price point so it provides value and benefit to the visitor it's very simple and easy they book it with one click or they book it with one call to you it's one stop shopping and you're really looking at things that you can put together that align with your business values your visitors value the level of quality of your business and that appeal to your target market so these packages you can really look at things in your area that you're like oh people that come to visit my uh come and stay at my b b they always want to go here next so maybe that's a great package opportunity that allows you to leverage uh the audience of your partner it allows you to have an additional package listing on nova scotia.com and
it's a great way to have visitors experience more in your area create a deeper connection and then they're just going to want to tell their friends because it was such a great experience so i'm going to give you a couple examples of packages that were created throughout the last fall and winter to help kind of to generate that traffic and encourage visitation maybe when things were a little bit slower so the tatting stone inn created a great package where you start your afternoon by visiting sea level brewing for a tasting and farm tour and then you're going to visit award-winning wineries or planters ridge or benjamin bridge you're going to finish at another award-winning distillery barreling tide you're going to get lots of secrets and tips from these insider visits with wonderful staff and once you've checked into your room you're going to go out on the town and we'll go to troy's mediterranean restaurant for a beautiful delicious dinner and coming back to the chatting stone inn for a wonderful cozy night in your room with this package transportation was included to and from the tatting stone along with the tours of each other partners and a three-course meal at troy so a great package that encouraged people to come to woeful experience lots of wonderful great flavors and have a nice lovely evening away with the peggy's cove picnic it's a great way to get out on the get out and view the coastal views with a picnic from the southwestern you get an appetizer an entree dessert and beverages it's grab and go so they put everything together in a wonderful picnic basket with a blanket to make it nice and comfortable they provide the dishes in the class napkins and uh when you're when you've enjoyed your beautiful lobster picnic you can go back for uh tea and coffee and some nova scotia suites so it's a lovely way to experience a little bit of the outdoors and a cozy picnic on the rocks at peggy's cove so as i mentioned packages are simply putting two elements together your experiences are when you it's a package as well but it creates this opportunity for a visitor to have a hands-on opportunity learning something by doing something with someone who lives here a bit more interactive an opportunity to have a deeper connection to our nova scotia places our people our farmers our fisher fishers our chefs guides musicians there's lots of great stories to tell here and wonderful talents and gifts that we have so experiences are a great way to do that again it's a cluster of activities or services at one price point for that ease of booking uh and it's a great way to add additional value and if you package it up for that target visitor you're able to describe all the value they get for it's a great way to increase your revenues there because people will pay a premium for the right experience that really gives them the opportunity to have something they can't get anywhere else so again a couple of examples uh hand pick a pamlia paired tasting so at chain yard urban cidery they have the first certified pomegranate in atlantic canada and the second in canada and so this gives you a chance to have a one-of-a-kind tasting get cider 101 tasting concepts like aroma flavor sweetness and structure will be explained to you with lots of great actual tastings as well and then with the unchained kitchen they're going to pair some wonderful flavors with those ciders so give you lots of tips to take home that you can share with your friends as well and it's a great just a great afternoon and another way to interact with a wonderful nova scotia business and unique product and amos pewter in mahome bay give another way to experience a wonderful place in the home where you have the opportunity to join the artisans at amos pewter uh to learn a little bit more about the time honor tradition of handcrafting pewter pieces i'm sure we all have one of these at least on our christmas trees so it's a great way to get behind the scenes to see what goes into creating those wonderful ornaments so you're gonna get live demonstrations you will get an opportunity to personalize your own beach treasure um you get to choose from a sand dollar ornament or a lobster call keepsake you'll get to sand it down and inscribe it on your own and have it ready to take home and then you also have a savory delicious and seafood-centric lunch at rebecca's restaurant as well so they've partnered with rebecca so you get a wonderful behind-the-scenes look at amos pewter and then you can't leave my home bay with without some lovely nova scotia seafood so what's in it for you so with a package or an experience it's a great way to attract new customers or to attract repeat business maybe they've been there before but they need a new offering to encourage them to come back and it's a great way to look at different things that you can pair together that maybe are attractive to somebody who wouldn't have wouldn't have looked at your business in the past it's a great way to increase the spend per visitor so by adding additional value and offerings in those packages you're able to add additional revenue you can help yourself stand out and if you create that package that really aligns or package your experience it really aligns with your target visitor they're gonna be so pleased and they're gonna they can't help but talk about it and share on social media and tell their family and friends that you know you can't you can't not go to amos pewter and have this wonderful experience packages and experiences also give you the opportunity to drive visitation when you want it or when you need it and so it's not necessarily about adding more products to when you're already busy on saturdays but add these great packages and experiences that will draw people in on tuesdays and thursdays when you need the additional traffic so when you're creating packages and experiences you know the idea is one thing but there's other things to consider as well so if you're working with partners it's great for someone to take the lead everyone is promoting it and everyone is encouraging people to book it but one person actually takes the booking and those details are important to have all laid out in a partnership agreement so everyone knows what everyone's role is and it's really clear right from the get-go so things are really seamless for the visitor it's important to look at your pricing so that you ensure that you and your partner are both making a profit off this packager experience that the visitor as i said has a seamless experience a clear path to purchase so it's so easy for them to be intrigued by the images and the description and then there's no issue when they go to book it uh so it's great to have that you know practice with some family and friends to ensure it's seamless because it's so vital to ensuring that booking comes through michelle already touched on a number of great ways to market these packages and experiences because it's great to create it but if nobody knows it's available then it's really hard to get those bookings and measuring success so you know obviously sales are great but and maybe that's the end goal but measuring success can also look at you know did having this package promotion out there increase traffic to my website or increase uh click-throughs from nova scotia.com to my website uh did i get more calls and inquiries you know what other things can you measure outside of just the sale to say no how did this help my business what did it do for my business i really encourage you to look at those things and consider what your goals are for the experience and how can how can it help your business outside of just the sale so looking at all those things it's really important to remember that packages and experience they don't have to be complicated they just need to be well planned priced for profit and promoted and there's lots of tips and tools that we have at towards the nova scotia that we'd love to help you do that we'd like love to help you brainstorm ideas looking at how things need to be priced and chatting with you about promotional opportunities so what other opportunities and resources are there so i'd love to tell you about our nova scotia experience toolkit so you've got all the ingredients and we've got the tips and tools to help you pull it together and execute it and put it out there for the visitor so as i mentioned starting with your business goals and how this experience differentiates your business from others in nova scotia and the maritimes it's really important to start out with why are you doing this what's what's it going to do for your business who is your visitor what motivates them to drive travel and what motivates them to book we've got planning tools to help you go a to zed you know what do i need to consider to ensure that this package your experience gets off without a hitch what are some industry best practices that you can learn from and as we've touched on marketing and sales insights as well so this experience toolkit is made up of five explainer videos um that kind of go through all the the nuts and bolts that you need and then they're accompanied by tip sheets and worksheets to give you a bit more detail and allow you to do some activities to really reinforce what you've learned now you're welcome to go through this tip sheet on your own it can be very very self-directed or i really encourage you to reach out to myself or other members of our experienced development team we'd love to help you with any part of this so other so we've been to nova scotia.com which is our consumer facing website for visitors then online on our corporate website tourismns.ca got lots of resources for you and your business so if covet 19 updates and resources that we've tried to put everything in one place to make it easier for you as has been mentioned there's i hope you've enjoyed today's webinar but there's also lots of recordings that have taken place uh that we'd love for you to check out on different topics for marketing uh to identifying your visitor there's different business development guides to help you uh if you're starting or expanding everything we do at tourism nova scotia is backed and informed by research and so we like love to share that with you so that's available for you to find and again if you can't find what you're looking for please reach out um opportunities to promote your business and uh we also have a photo and video library that we encourage you to request or apply for a login for lots of great photos and videos that are available for you uh for in your business to use to help promote your area and promote your business uh as i said they're free so we encourage you to to request a login uh if you're if you um are eligible and uh have access to that library so thank you very much and i i hope there's some questions that uh myself or if there's any actors from michelle that one of us can answer for you so one of the questions is um we are a new business and still learning what all the resources available is it possible to set up a one-on-one consultation session with your staff for assistance with business listings and packaging etc absolutely we'd be happy to do that i'll just flip back to the previous slide my email address is there so i encourage you to reach out and send me a note as nick mentioned earlier in the slide as part of the experience development team we each have regions of the province that we work in so if your business doesn't fall into one of my regions i'd be happy to connect you with one of my colleagues who specializes in your area so is there any questions for judy she did a great job covering everything but if you have any questions now's the time um i appreciate your time today judy did you find that um looks to me like a lot of the packages we were able to use a lot of the images we have on hand through barber stock so um and i know you mentioned that but barber stocks i would say is a really great resource for any business in the province that wants to promote their business to their region and utilizing that service absolutely i'd agree it's a it's a great place to go for images that can can add a little color to it to any website or social media ad uh yeah we had a question has any material translated to chinese i have to be honest i'm not sure michelle you look like you're ready to jump in there michelle and i are in the same room literally sitting across the table um so we that was actually one of the plans when we started on the new nova scotia.com to possibly have a micro site because we do that's one of our markets and uh we were actually advised that well the website wouldn't be viewed there so there is a uh what oh my gosh i wish peter or somebody was here um there's an ongoing chat in china that you can uh be part of uh is it whatsapp no it might be whatsapp um it's oh patricia is patricia on as an attendee i'm not sure if she we can't oh wechat thank you jeanette uh so there's wechat there is some printed i believe some printed stuff uh that our sales and media team have but as of right now we don't have anything on the website but hey that's not that's not to say that we can't or won't have something so if this is something that gets brought up to us again that would be beneficial um that's definitely something we chat about okay perfect we let's just see thank you so the the individual that had asked about um one-on-one consultation they said thanks so much they'll reach out appreciate all the information today um were the examples you showed for packages created through your coaching i.e the pomegra and the love of seafood yes we're very pleased to work with the businesses that were featured in those packages uh through our radiate program that ran until the end of march this year and i think nick's going to tell you a little bit more but it's open for applications again so we did work with those businesses to chat about what's included in the package how it can be described for the target audience looked at different images that we could select to to really feature the the different pieces of the package and then helped get that out there on social media as well as on their website at nova scotia.com
perfect thanks judy and and as judy mentioned i will be covering some of the new programs we have offered uh we also have a lot of uh tns staff on hand today so if anything to add when i'm talking about it we can do that as well um so let's just i'm just kind of going through here to see um if anyone else has any questions a lot of thanks for the info so that's always positive so that means people were finding um the information very applicable and relevant so that's great so last chance for judy and michelle um any questions okay so i am going to share my screen again so there we go all right so there we go thank you so much everybody um next week's webinar uh is um thursday april 29th uh 10 to 11 every thursday in april it's going to be delivered by joe train occupational health and safety director with the safety services of nova scotia really encourage you guys to check this out and it's going to talk about the health and safety during the spring ramp up webinar series but also you know what to think about and look for this summer um to make sure we're following all the health and safety protocols so that's going to be a great webinar i'm looking forward to that and another great one thursday may 6th capturing great photos with a smartphone so really going to look here at the opportunity to take that phone that's in your hand and just create some really strong images to help promote your business and to do whatever we can with the technology we have to offer um the best face for our business so 10 o'clock uh thursday may 6th that's going to be with dave culligan founder and ceo of 365 media inc so looking forward to that and like we spoke about earlier uh we have our three new programs that are all open now uh we have the digital marketing program radiate tourism program and the tourism digital assistance program so if you want to check out a little more about that our website uh tourism ns dot ca programs so um that's where all the information will be found here uh plus when we share this out all the information will be hyperlinked there so we have the digital content marketing program so this is an opportunity for you to create high quality videos and photos for use in your marketing and our marketing minimum partner investment is 7 500 with that 15 media buy fee so the total is around eighty six hundred dollars uh developed and execute tailored mark digital marketing campaigns as well so you can create high quality videos with photos or digital marketing campaigns the goal of course is to raise awareness of your community uh through that and that's the minimum investment of ten thousand and uh tourism nova scotia uh matches the partner muslims the uh deadline to apply is april 28th and uh we have links there and if you have any questions on these programs we can definitely connect you with the program managers for that we also have the radiate tourism program so this provides an opportunity to develop to develop and promote compelling travel packages to raise interest and awareness uh local and maritime travelers so we had talked about earlier in the presentation some examples of some of the packages that were created it's really great opportunity um for the businesses to you know modify what they offer and uh give them tourists something something different so participants in the program will be supported with development and marketing activities such as um research and insights with travelers from maritime provinces coaching on experience and package development positioning your package to appeal to the target market tips to create digital ads and support for digital marketing activities valued up to five thousand dollars and managed through tourism nova scotia another great program uh radiate tourism program is open until april 28th the link is uh on this page um and again if you have any questions uh let me know uh or send us an email we also have the tourism digital assistance program so we can receive up to five you can receive up to five thousand dollars in services from a qualified digital consultant to help improve your online presence now this program not only connects with the consultant and they don't just tell you what you need they actually do the work so this is such an excellent program i encourage all to apply uh eligible program activities include e-commerce so being able to sell your products online digital marketing strategies search engine optimization online booking social media strategy website creation content creation copywriting content creation social media posts uh this is a great program and it's open until uh may 5th and the link is at the bottom it's checking out the chat here to see if anyone has uh is asking me any questions um no questions for me so that's lovely i'm gonna continue on um again i would encourage you all to stay connected with tourism nova scotia our consumer website is nova scotia.com we went over that today you can send us an email at any time at tns business nova scotia.ca you can sign up for our in-touch newsletter where we send out twice a month um updates and that's where we'll talk about you know a few you know any new programs any launches this will all go through in touch you can follow us at tourism twitter on linkedin we are tourism nova scotia our corporate website is tourism ca we have a really excellent section with uh coronavirus resources and that is tourism ns dot ca slash coronavirus so thank you all so much i hope you have a wonderful day and hope to see you next week
2021-09-30 09:41
