Why updating your properties imagery is not optional
My how things have changed in the last few years when it comes to promoting your resort, travel destination, or golf property.
Once upon a time, you could shoot a few outstanding images and use them to create print ads, drop them into brochures, and plop a few on your website—and there you had your marketing plan for the year. What’s more, you could get away with creating a new video or TV commercial every three to five years.
Good luck with that approach in 2020! Today, we deal in the reality of the explosion we call social media, the exponential growth of booking and destination travel searches on the internet, and the rabid number of Instagram accounts promoting one’s brand and experience.
The bottom line: You can’t afford to not be on the cutting edge of creative imagery, with new stills, video, and drone work to promote your resort, golf course, and travel destination. Viewers and potential travelers are constantly looking at multiple sites to determine where they will spend their travel dollars and time away. So the impression your property’s internet and on line visuals communicates must be creatively captivating, unique, and fresh.
Your window of time to capture a potential traveler is short. If your imagery doesn’t excite, seems dated, or falls short of the competition’s offerings, would-be customers will click to another site.
I once had an award-winning creative director tell me about his search for creative talent: “Don’t give me Pachelbel’s Canon in D or high production on your site. I just want to see your work without all the bells and whistles. You’ve got my interest for 15 seconds. Make it worth my time.”
It may not be quite that tight for viewers, but don’t take the chance that your website falls short of reflecting the awesome experience of actually being at your property. With that in mind, here are the best steps to update your creative imagery assets:
1. Highlight what’s new
Consider any new amenities or renovations that have taken place in the last year and make sure that the images include the additions and the changes. Has the artwork and landscaping throughout the property changed? If so, this is a sure sign that new photography and video are in order. Adding these new amenities and looks is a great way to promote the resort with these new images.
2. Get an honest assessment of your imagery
Schedule an annual appraisal of your library of stills and video. Reach out and put together a focus group that will give you an honest appraisal of your creative and how it reflects on your property. This could be a mix of guests, staff, friends, and family who know the property well.
Here are some questions to ask: Are your images setting the right tone of the property with the right mix of demographics in all aspects of the resort life? Have the styles in wardrobe moved appreciably from what you show in the images? Do the lifestyle images paint a good picture of what one can experience while on vacation or playing a round at the property?
3. Keep it consistent
Look at your events library of imagery and determine how to best update these important times that must be captured when they are occurring: Easter, the Fourth of July, and Christmas are the ones that immediately come to mind. If you don’t plan on updating every year or so, you may be promoting your Santa Claus and kids with a Santa whose look is not the same.
4. Budget right
Budget and set aside enough funds every six months or so to bring in a team to update your imagery. It doesn’t take a week of shooting to accomplish this, but an experienced group that can produce both stills and video in a given production day. This investment of a few days of shooting will enable you to add some fresh takes on your property and to produce new videos to promote as well.
Wrapping up
These steps should help to begin the process of creating new work—weeding out tired and older images—and enabling a property to appear current and creatively appealing to the vast universe of travelers searching the web.