Open Air Business August/September 2018

GLAMPSITES
GETTY IMAGES
DIY PR
How to create your own glamping business PR
strategy, with Megan Allen
you can share them too. You might even
like to create your own hashtag so that
people who are looking at booking with
you can see what other visitors have been
up to during their stay.
PUBLIC RELATIONS is a very cost-effective
and simple way of marketing your
business. All you need to do is think hard
about your target market and invest a little
of your time.
While many people think PR starts and
ends with media coverage and shy away
from it, there are several simple things you
can do to tell your story the way you want
it to be told, without breaking the bank.
After all, public relations is about building
and maintaining a reputation and who is
in a better position to control it than you?
EMOTIVE PHOTOGRAPHY
One of the things I advise my clients
to do before they start to put together
a public relations strategy is to invest
in some decent photography. Most
places already have beautiful images of
their accommodation, the site and the
surrounding areas but what people really
want to see is the experience.
Start by thinking about your target
market – are they families, millennial
couples, retirees? Then think about what
would inspire them to book a holiday
with you. In other words, tap into their
emotions.
To generalise, families will most likely be
inspired by images of other families having
a happy holiday because that is what they
are aspiring to. Couples might like to see a
bottle of wine with two glasses in front of
an open fire, and retirees could be looking
for local dog walks with a decent pub en
route.
The key thing is to make them aspire to
the experience that you are offering them.
After that you can work those images into
all forms of marketing, not just your PR.
If you are on a tight budget, one way
of getting hold of these images is to ask
people who stay with you to share their
experiences on social media and whether
“IF YOU ARE ON A TIGHT
BUDGET, ONE WAY OF
GETTING HOLD OF THESE
IMAGES IS TO ASK PEOPLE
WHO STAY WITH YOU TO
SHARE THEIR EXPERIENCES
ON SOCIAL MEDIA...”
PUTTING TOGETHER A SOCIAL
MEDIA STRATEGY
Love it or loathe it, social media is a
fantastic way of telling your story to a
captive audience, and as glamping and
camping is such a picturesque past time,
you should never be short of content.
Before the social revolution most
businesses hid behind a website or an
advertisement, but with the introduction of
social media platforms the people behind
the brands started emerging and visitors
now expect to know as much about you as
they do your site.
The introduction of Instagram stories
(which can also be linked to your Facebook
business page) means that you can keep
your audience up to date with what is going
on behind the scenes – the good, the bad
and the ugly. I have even advised clients
to show their cleaning routine and the eco
products they use on their stories, as it’s the
little things that can make the difference
between someone choosing to book or not.
I always encourage my clients to at
least have Facebook and Instagram feeds
that they update regularly because they
have such a visual impact. Pictures tell a
thousand words and as I discussed above,
emotive imagery is key to any PR strategy.
I also encourage them to manage their
pages in house. As tempting as it is to
outsource your social media management,
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