Like with parenting and other stuff I write about, I understand just enough about social media, search engine optimization and search engine analytics to be dangerous. But I think I might understand more than the marketing “gurus” at Visit Duluth.
Marty Weintraub is a nationally (internationally?) sought out speaker and consultant on every kind of web marketing that you can imagine – Social Media, Keyword Search, Ad Placement, and so on. He also, apparently, loves Duluth. So he did some research on how the community is being marketed online and produced a study for free to give us all some food for thought on how Visit Duluth is spending its (tax generated) budget and if it couldn’t be optimized to deliver better results in the digital age.
Did $10 Million In Destination Marketing Make Duluth Famous?
He came up with gems like this …
… Duluth’s automatically generated Facebook page is in the top of the results, 3 or 4 places above “Camp Bow Wow” in Duluth, Georgia. Really Duluth? Are you even trying to generate buzz for the Visit Duluth page on Facebook?
So what was Visit Duluth’s response to this well-intentioned free advice from a local business person who is an expert in the field? “We took a very serious look at the study they put out there,” [Visit Duluth] said. “But, actually (we) ended up finding a lot of flaws in it. A lot of problems with it.” source, Kevin Jacobsen, Northland’s News Center (but only because I can’t find an actual news release or rebuttal directly from Visit Duluth itself on their website.)
Instead of disputing the results with a knee jerk reaction, why not just admit that he might be on to something, that we could do some online marketing maybe a percentage or two of the $10M they are spending in print TV and whatever else right now. And above all THANK the guy for his free research and move on er, move forward.
