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Tourism marketing is a segment of online marketing that more than any other segment has to be multilingual especially during covid-19. Poly Digital Marketing offers multilingual tourism marketing services to promote different tourist attractions, tours and activities, destinations and accommodations all around the world.

Tourism marketing campaign for the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania

Poly Digital Marketing is proud to announce that we’ve expanded our footprint into East Africa during the covid-19 pandemic. While other digital marketing agencies were slowing down, we opened an office in Dar Es Salam to help international companies to market themselves in Swahili in East Africa, as well as help African companies to enter international markets.

In the middle of March 2020, Covid-19 hit the tourism industry all around the world. International flights were canceled and most of the countries in the world went into lockdown quarantine. Tour operators lost their bookings, national parks closed down, and the entire tourism industry suffered a major blow.

The Poly Digital Marketing team was in Tanzania at the time, and got approached by Safari tour operator Great Migration Camps and the Tanzanian Tourism board to help with destination marketing for the Serengeti National Park. But how do you market a national park when no-one is able to visit?

Poly Digital Marketing came up with an ingenious destination marketing strategy (if we say so ourselves!) to create an inspiring, high quality wildlife video series to promote the park, and ensure it would be top of tourists’ travel lists as soon as their lockdowns were lifted.

 

We worked closely with the local government and tourist authorities, and made use of a crowd funding campaign to raise funds for the filming and production costs. We wanted people stuck at home to experience the beauty and the excitement of the Serengeti, so they’d be eager to come and experience the real thing!

Poly Digital, of course, also handled all the market research, SEO planning and marketing strategy, website design and development, and put together the marketing content and social media creative plans. Our favorite videographer, Brendan John Allen (a big name in the movie world) directed, shot, edited, and produced the show.

Tourism Marketing to save tourism in the Serengeti National Park and Tanzania

In just one week we managed to attract over 1,000 YouTube subscribers and raise significant sponsorship through the website www.serengetishowlive.com to offset the show’s production costs. These came in at $180,000 for 30 episodes of 40 minutes each. The production team and Tanzanian government officials are very happy with the results. Please read Serengeti Show Live testimonials here.

But it doesnt mean that your small tourism will not be able to afford our services. We offer 30-60 sec promo videos for your tourism marketing. Any business can afford it and gain immidiate return on investment.

How our multilingual tourism marketing services can help you

Are you an operator struggling to sell your standard tours in Tanzania or elsewhere? Then our dazzling multilingual video marketing content can help save your business too!

Tanzania is open for tourism and waiting for international visitors to come as soon as possible

Borders around the world will be opening soon, and you need to start investing in a winning marketing strategy now to make sure they choose your destination. Poly Digital Marketing has exceptionally talented videographers located in Canada, the USA, Tanzania, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Russia, Turkey, UAE, Indonesia, and India.

We’re ready to create stunning video content for your destination marketing campaign that will get tourists back to you as soon as possible. Contact Poly Digital Marketing today, and let’s make it happen!

 

Multilingual destination marketing has become critical for businesses in the tourism industry. The impact of the coronavirus, local and nationwide lockdowns and travel restrictions around the world have dramatically shifted tourism trends, with no sign of things to reverting back to ‘normal’ for some time. Every hospitality establishment urgently needs to explore new target markets, so they can start getting bookings now when they need them most.

Where will the first international tourists come from?

With their borders still shut, travelers from both the USA and the UK will probably not be venturing overseas until the end of the European summer. Without these high-paying clients to rely on, tour operators and hospitality venues around the world will need to rethink their targeting strategies.

In the meantime, however, several Eastern European countries are opening their borders. Multilingual destination marketing is the best solution to home in on this new target market, (and many others) especially with many itching to escape isolation and travel once again. If you wait for your normal guests to renter the market, it may be too late – and you’ll be up against enormous competition.

Multilingual destination marketing to tap into new audiences

The global tourism industry is losing millions in revenue – and jobs – on a daily basis. In Africa, Tanzania’s famous Serengeti National Park used to welcome 6,000 visitors a day. Based on park entrance fees of $60 alone, that’s $360,000 daily. This is before you even consider the lost revenue of safari lodges, tour guides and tour operators, who miss out on roughly $500 per absent tourist.

No matter where you’re located, every day without tourists is crucial. If you cannot reach your normal English-speaking tourists because of lockdowns, then you need to start targeting those who will be able to travel first, and are ready to start booking now. Take a look at these projected reopening dates for airports around the world. Several of countries will be accepting international flights again as soon as June 10^th – so the time to start promoting your offering to these travelers is now. Great example of destination marketing campaign is Serengeti Show Live project launched by Poly Digital Marketing and a few other parties for Tanzanian Board of Tourism.

Remember also that while people may be reluctant to start traveling again straight away, you can still capture their imaginations and guarantee your hotel, guesthouse, resort, spa, or lodge a top spot on their travel bucket lists!

Selling the dream through multilingual destination marketing

Here’s what businesses in the hospitality industry should be doing right now:

• Scaling up your international marketing efforts to encourage overseas tourists to visit post-lockdown
• Promoting local tourism in your region, so you can start attracting local guests before international borders open (especially if overseas guests will be subject to quarantine periods)
• Expanding your marketing reach to new target audiences and in new languages

Most of all though, you want your destination to grab attention, stand out from the rest, and stay with your audience long after they’ve been exposed to your brand. To do this, you need to create tourism marketing campaign with stunning visual content, with messaging in the language your target audience speaks.

Destination marketing video for Serengeti Show Live  by Poly Digital Marketing interational videographers in Africa, Brendan John Allen.

You’re not selling just a destination, or a stay in a hotel, or even a unique experience – you’re selling a fantasy and a dream! That’s why you need a strong message and striking visuals that go deep into your potential guests’ subconscious minds, and stay with them long after they’ve seen it.

The best tools and channels for multilingual destination marketing

Multilingual destination marketing is all about making your potential guests feel at home before they’ve even arrived. It’s about telling a story, and giving your audience a taste of what they can expect if they choose to stay with you. That’s why multilingual video marketing is particularly helpful, and gets such great results for tourism companies.

Video marketing by the numbers:

• Video ads are the #1 way consumers find out about a new brand before converting into customers
• 85% of internet users use the web to watch video
• 88% of marketing agencies are satisfied with their video marketing ROI
• 73% of consumers are influenced by a brand’s social media presence, and video is their favorite way to interact with companies on social media

Furthermore, highly tactical use of PPC ads on YouTube and social media platforms means you can ensure your offering is seen by the viewers most likely to turn into customers.

At Poly Digital, we combine our multilingual approach with in-depth research and target audience insights to create unforgettable campaigns that really connect with viewers. By positioning your brand on the channels tourists like to find travel news and inspiration on, and speaking to them in their own native language, incredible results are possible!

Swahili marketing is something that most international companies rarely consider when entering the African market. What really matters when marketing a product or service is not just what the advert says, but also how well your audience understands what it means.

For the best possible results, a marketing campaign needs to be delivered in a language that resonates with your target audience, and easily conveys the full meaning of your message.

Swahili is the most spoken and popular language in Tanzania

All marketing efforts should be in a language that all (or at least a very large percentage) of your audience will understand. Swahili is the official language spoken in Tanzania, as well as the most popular language for everyday communication. If international companies want to succeed in East Africa, then Swahili is the language they need to be marketing in.

Absa Bank uses Swahili marketing to enter the Tanzanian market

A good example of a company advertising in Tanzania is the Absa Bank Tanzania Limited (ABT), formerly known as the Barclay Bank Tanzania Limited. This is a commercial bank in the country and a subsidiary of South Africa-based Absa Group Limited that is licensed by the Bank of Tanzania. In Tanzania, the re-brand concluded on 11 February 2020, when both the bank’s legal and business names became Absa Bank Tanzania Limited.

Coca-Cola chooses to market in Swahili

Coca-Cola is another company that has established itself globally. Invented in the late 19th century, the company’s groundbreaking marketing tactics have led Coca-Cola to dominate the international soft-drink market.

When arriving in Tanzania, the company had to change its language of advertising from English to Swahili in order to deliver its message without creating a language barrier. Coca-Cola is well known for its slogan ‘taste the feeling’, which the brand adapted to the Swahili ‘onja msisimuko’.

Pepsi provides another prime example of Swahili marketing in Tanzania

Pepsi is adored by more than 200 million people worldwide, and is one of the biggest selling soft drink brands in Tanzania. In a genius move, Pepsi reached out to WCB president, Diamond Platnumz, to become their Brand Ambassador in East Africa.

The massively popular Bongo Flava artist was charged with promoting the brand in the region in the hopes of boosting sales. The Pepsi team also used the opportunity to introduce a 500ml bottle of their drink to the market under the tag “Mkubwa Wao”.

This turned out to be an excellent idea by the company, as Diamond’s many social media followers switched to the Pepsi brand under the influence of the Tanzanian household name.

Do you want to succeed with your brand in Tanzania? Contact us for digital marketing in Swahili today.

 

Having visited Russia several times, and seeing how South African wines were becoming popular there, young entrepreneur Dean de Beer saw an opportunity. Not sure where to begin though, he Googled “How to start export wine business from South Africa to Russia”. This search led him to Poly Digital Marketing – a Russian marketing team with a presence in both Cape Town and Moscow. The rest, as they say, is history!

Wine industry in Russia:

• In 2015, EU sanctions against Russia forced wine importers to look at new markets. By 2016, exports of South African wines to Russia had skyrocketed by 76% to more than 3 million liters.
• While alcohol consumption on the whole is declining in Russia, wine is the exception, with the average household consuming 10 liters in a year.
• By 2020, research body Euromonitor predicts Russian wine consumption to reach 1 billion liters annually.

 

Russian Marketing for Vina Yuar – background:

Dean got in touch through our website, and within an hour we’d set up a Skype call to discuss the possibilities. We agreed that the best approach would be to start developing his brand and business model from scratch, specifically designed around the preferences, tastes and purchasing trends of the Russian market.

Russian Marketing for South African Wine Exporter:

Research of Wine Market in Russia

Poly Digital Marketing conducted extensive, in-depth marketing research to analyze the wine market in Russia:

1.1. Market Research – evaluation of:

• Market size and trends
• Statistics on e-commerce wine sales and retail wine sales
• Premium wine market size and trends
• Average margins
• Main market players and price analyses

1.2. Competitors’ Analysis (direct and indirect)

Poly Digital Marketing’s top skilled multilingual team used the latest tools for digital marketing research to size up the competition:

• Online presence and reputation
• Number of website visitors, bounce rate and conversion rate
• Traffic sources and marketing channels utilized
• Advertising spend
• Keyword and key phrase analysis
• Most successful strategies

1.3. Target Audience Research

At Poly Digital, we know from experience that understanding your target audience is crucial to the success of any marketing campaign, and getting the best possible ROI for our clients. To that end, we considered: Demographics (Age, Location, Gender, Income level, Education level, Marital or family status, Occupation, Ethnic background); Psychographics (Personality, Attitudes, Values, Interests and hobbies, Lifestyles, Behavior)

Armed with this information, Dean and our marketing team were now able to start selecting the perfect South African wines to suit Russian tastes and budgets. We brought together a panel of sommeliers from both countries to choose wines suitable for each price segment, from bulk/affordable to premium options. In addition, we also assisted with a SWOT analysis before moving on to our marketing strategy.

With all these aspects now in place, we began the exciting process of Brand Development based on our target audience, SEO and competitor research.

Russian branding and SEO:

We came up with a shortlist of 6 suitable Russian brand names for Dean to choose from based on our SEO research. In the end we selected “Вина ЮАР” – which simply means “Wines of South Africa”.

It’s important to note that with 55% of market share, Russia’s preferred search engine is Yandex – which makes SEO and keyword research a little different than for many other countries.  The brand’s online home became the Cyrillic URL: www.винаюар.онлайн

Logo Development in Russian

Poly Digital Marketing made use of a team of South African and Russian designers to come up with an impressive logo for the new brand – one based on an elegant mosaic design to appeal to culture-orientated Russians, combined with the instantly recognizable colors of the South African flag:

Along with the Logo, we also created professional branding materials including a Corporate Identity guide, Multilingual Business cards (one side in Russian and the other in English), Letter Head, Email Signiture, Wine Catalogues, Banners and Promo Videos with Russian subtitles.

Launch of online shop in Russian 

Finally, it was time to take our newly developed brand to the marketplace!

 

Poly Digital Marketing created a user friendly online shop www.винаюар.онлайн where Russian wine consumers and distributors can buy a variety of South African wines online.  All content was created by wine journalists and Russian SEO specialists to ensure the site would rank high and be easily found through Russian search engine Yandex.

 

Brand Launch at Moscow World Food Show 2019

After fully developing the brand, website and marketing materials we launched the brand at the perfect location and moment at the Moscow World Food Show which took place at Moscow’s Crocus Center from 22 – 25 of September 2019.

 

In order to make an unforgettable first impression, Poly Digital developed all banners and brochures, as well as an outstanding promotional video for the South African Wine Exporter Stand – and it worked.

Our stand quickly became the most popular at the entire expo, thanks to our Russian-speaking staff who conducted wine tastings with the public, as well as the fact we had all our marketing materials already available in Russian. Our eye-catching logo and branding even had some attendees thinking we were the official South African pavilion.

Our location at the expo (right next to the registration stand) was also strategically chosen. This way we had plenty of traffic, and were able to draw huge interest from the biggest retailers and distributors in Russia.

It’s safe to say the launch was a tremendous success. We went through 6000 wine glasses over 4 days, and received several direct orders from distributors and retailers who had already fallen in love with the wines. From an ROI perspective, our marketing efforts paid for themselves and then some immediately following the expo.

Do you have an exciting brand you want to take the Russian market? If you’d like to have a success story like Dean’s, then contact Poly Digital Marketing today!

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South African companies can double their profits by doing the right Russian digital marketing. Russian market presents enormous business opportunities for South African companies such as winemakers, citrus farmers, food producers, tour operators property developers etc. We take a look at why trade between the two BRICS countries is so mutually beneficial, and how your business can take advantage.

[Read more…] about Business opportunities for South African companies in the Russian market