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Newsletter / Blog


2015-09-30
South Peninsula Tourism Marketing


We have new exciting ways to market your Guesthouse, Restaurant or other Tourism establishments in the Southern Peninsula!

In this newsletter/blog entry:

  • Ella Marais (our newborn baby)
  • New Travel / Tourism websites
  • Afrikaans website on Simon’s Town or Simonstown and surrounds
  • Peninsula Tradesmen Directory
  • SEO / Business Lessons shared

Ella Marais

The biggest news at Buddy Web Design is that Francois and Melanie is a baby daughter richer. Ella Marais was born on 7 September weighing a healthy 3 kg. Mother and baby are doing well.

That’s not the only new things happening at Buddy Web Design. It seems that spring has not only brought the whales and new energy in Cape Town but also new opportunities.

We have become involved with the following marketing services for businesses in the South Peninsula and Southern Suburbs:

www.peninsularoutes.co.za

We have been appointed as resellers for www.theworldroutes.com for the Cape Peninsula area with our initial focus being on the Southern Suburbs and Southern Peninsula. This is a website aimed at the traveller looking for information on places of special interest, routes to take, activities in the area he is visiting. The website is full of interesting stories on the region and comes with populated custom Google Maps for listings. This website is an ideal marketing platform for people targeting both local and international tourists and will compliment our current service offering. The area we operate in is after all a tourist hotspot. Individual businesses listing will have the ability to edit their own listing as well as have a dashboard to help them understand how well their website is performing. A booking engine is included for accommodation establishments and you can even sell products from your listing space.

www.simonstad.co.za

We first registered this domain a few years ago. (+- 5). Only now with Peninsula Routes and World Routes have the special purpose of this website come to light. The website is also an interesting and informative website about routes, restaurants, accommodation establishments and activities in Simons town and the rest of the Southern Peninsula and the Southern Suburbs of Constantia and Tokai with the main difference that this website is authored by us and is done so in Afrikaans. People underestimate the value of doing a website or part of a website in Afrikaans in South Africa. Our experience with the website www.krugerwildtuin.co.za has shown us that these Afrikaans websites also get found by people from Holland and Belgium. The figures may be less but it is much easier getting some market share by being different in doing a website in Afrikaans. There are special forums and organisations which actively promote Afrikaans websites. This website will mainly offer free listings with limited advertising opportunities. We will also earn some commission from holiday makers booking accommodation via the website.

www.peninsulainfo.co.za

As if the aforementioned is not enough we have also changed one of our previous websites into a Tradesmen Directory for the Southern Peninsula, again initially targeting the Southern Suburbs of Constantia and Tokai as well as the Southern Peninsula. We have found it extremely difficult in selling websites to your typical handy man, plumber, electrician or painter. These kinds of businesses have a difficult task in being unique in respect of the services which they offer and we also find that tradesmen strongest points are not website copywriting. (We still believe each business should have it’s own website and Google My Business listing, the latter being free.) Individual businesses with their own websites do generally outperform directories in search results, especially if the search includes a specific geographical area. But there are definite advantages to being listed on good directories, especially if it is affordable. And sometimes the directories outperform individual websites. The directory will offer general free listings with the option of getting more exposure by taking a paid advert.

SEO / Business lessons to be learned

  • Buying a link on a directory website can increase your rankings on search engines. Inbound links will remain a factor when search engines determine page rank.
  • Having outgoing links on your website is also a positive. The Internet will not function effectively without websites linking to each other.
  • By us being involved with these directories we which offer cheaper alternatives to having a website designed and hosted we will increase our rate of interaction with potential clients. The lesson here is that there is other ways to market your business services than by purely relying on search engines.
  • Tourism industries are extremely competitive. You have to consider what really will make you unique. You also have to consider listing with various directories as well as consider traditional print media and brochures.
  • All these websites will have a monthly newsletter to stay in touch with service providers and potential tourists / potential clients. Again there are other ways to stay in touch with potential clients.
  • As with this newsletter which is distributed to both existing clients, new clients and even my business associates a website can save you time in order for the public to know who you are and what you offer, the reasoning behind your service offering. Time is money and for us, by including new business associates in our monthly newsletter, we might be saving time by skipping a meeting or two. The writing of this newsletter forces one to publicly define who you are and what you do. It thus helps with developing your business plan.
  • Sales and marketing is a numbers game. We have created reasons to meet with many more business owners, people we would otherwise have no reason to meet with.
  • This newsletter which will be a blog entry creates fresh and relevant content for our own website; it keeps us in touch with potential clients. We get business from the internet via search engines (organic search results) because we practise what we preach and we get business from the newsletter. (Time is money and by tackling two tasks with one swipe is being effective with your money / time)

We will ourselves be making use of Google’s free resources and tools to analyze the performance of these websites. The higher the readership / traffic the more easily it is to sell an advertisement / the higher the asking price can be. That’s the way both newspapers, radio stations and television have always operated. It’s only the medium that has changed. The future is digital! Having said that we are also involved in our targeted tourism market to create a printed Travel Guide branded under Peninsula Routes as we want to ensure that the website(s) we will be marketing will get extra exposure. In our area of business we have local print booklets and magazines but none specifically targeting the tourism market. So in a way we are going retro, while still going forward into the digital age.

So spring has brought a few new things for Buddy Web Design. Can you believe Christmas 2015 is around the corner? We are blessed that ours will be filled with a newborn baby in the house. We expect a busy last two and a half months of the year. We are excited of being more involved in the tourism market. It is great to be blogging about Crayfish, Fishing, Pubs and Restaurants as opposed to be blogging about Web Design. May October 2015 bring sunshine and prosperity to one and all! God bless.