20 Expert Hawaii Marketing Tips to Thrive in 2024

There are lots of unknowns in the world of Hawaii, but what we do know we want Fewer visitors with less issues and more money for local businesses. To achieve these goals, be crystal clear on your Hawaii Marketing Strategy.

1. Quality visitors who are respectful of our host culture, our environment, and our communities.
2. An increase in spending per visitor with lower island-resource usage.
3. Enough visitors to support our economy but not too many that destroy the island.
4. Create and sustain living-wage careers for Hawaii tourism and the general local economy.
5. Optimize your marketing strategy for 2023 and increase your ROI with synchronized marketing and efficient expenditure.

Hawaii digital marketing in 2023 will rely heavily on the quality and relevance of content and media potential visitors can find online about your experience. 

It’s up to small business owners like yourself to break out of the mold and strive for excellence. That means going beyond your comfort zones, abandoning outdated marketing models, creating more interactive tours, building more sustainable operations, and providing unique experiences at locations that donʻt negatively affect communities. It comes down to making the right content that is vital in reminding travelers why Hawaii (Maui especially) is the best place in the world to visit and re-attract tourism going forward. 

The key is to create and share high-quality content, which reminds people exactly why Hawaii is still the world’s most favorite place for vacationers. Turn what we may feel as mundane into something extraordinary.

Build Quality Content

1. A great image that tells a story is worth it. In a time when fewer and fewer people are reading what you write, hire a great photographer to help describe your service.
2. Creating the correct type of content for your demographic can be difficult. An expert with the right tools and experience can develop a content marketing plan.
3. Follow the rules in your niche. Authoritative content and a clear topic focus with the proper formatting and presentation will go a long way.

Some important points to consider when doing up new content;

• Donʻt over-promise. Itʻs better to under-promise and over-deliver. 
• Use high-quality images and angles that they will not be able to experience directly, like time lapses or drone footage. Visitors love seeing different perspectives and not a straight copy of what they will see in the experience. 
• People in images are essential. Allow your customer to imagine themselves in the scene with emotional engagement.

Get a jumpstart on vacation season by using this time to update your website content. Make a list of what makes you unique and accentuate these features and amenities on your website with new and higher quality media that instantly sets you apart from your competitors. The better your content looks, the more likely users will engage, which increases their retention.

Hiring a local professional photographer or videographer is an excellent investment that always pays for itself many times over. We know that visual medium is a great way to connect to your customers. Put higher production value into your visual experience to give potential customers an insight into who you are and what you offer.

Update Your Website & Marketing Assets

1. Create one or more videos that help explain your service and give the impression of a quality experience. Short and to the point is the best way to go. We can help create beautiful videos.
2. Review your website content. Does it still make sense? Can you explain something a little better? Improve it however you can. Every little bit helps.
3. Add questions and other user-generated content. Did customers email you questions from your site? Publish your answers to your site. Collect guest images for which you have media releases. 

Let’s get into a few technical things critical to marketing your business. After creating great content, we must ensure it gets delivered to the users properly.

On average we are seeing more than 70% of visitors on a website using a mobile device. 

Mobile speed and experience are now more important than ever and will only continue to grow as essential factors. Be sure to review how your content displays on all devices. Many sites look good on a desktop, but their mobile counterpart has a poor interface or low readability, which causes a lot of users to give up too soon. 

1. Improve website mobile experience. If you want to build a new website, focus on the mobile user experience first.
2. Review the tools and see how your current site is functioning. Use Google PageSpeed Insights, Google Search Console, and GTmetrix to see how your website performs on mobile devices and gain insights on improving it.
3. Upgrade your website infrastructure and architecture by improving the layout, the content management system, eCommerce engine, and tweak the code where you can.
4. Optimize the delivery of your information by using services like a Content Delivery Network (CDN) or setting up a private server, even if itʻs just a virtual one, so you get maximum resources allocated to your site

DEV Ask your web host or developer if you are using the latest technologies like PHP7, HTTP/2, GZIP compression, and make sure you are using an SSL certificate. Ask your web developer to configure your cache plugin for optimal loading speed for new users and test thoroughly across multiple devices and locations to ensure it’s loading as intended across all devices.

Use research tools to analyze your competition. Study your competitors’ sites in-depth and note what you are missing or need to improve. Sign up for SEO web tracking software systems that provide plenty of options for your niche and location. Plug in your competitors’ URLs to see how your site compares to theirs. Track all your important and relevant keywords to see how they perform over time. Check out our search engine optimization page for more info on SEO.

Hawaii Tourism Authority provides monthly reports and historical comparisons so you can make the right choices about how and when to spend your marketing dollars.

Please familiarize yourself with how long users stay on your website, how many pages they visit, and the bounce rate. Realize users on your site are scanning for crucial data points that present them with the info they are looking for without having to search or read a lot. Most new users visiting your website will be scanning for key points.

Use less-is-more approach by having your visitors think less, but understand more in the same amount of time. 

 Most people are in a Speedy Gonzales research mode. In many cases, a user returns to your website several times before they commit to diving into your content. It’s up to you to emphasize what you offer and do the best in the simplest way possible. 

1. Analyze your website visitor behavior. Users may have missed your best information because it was too far down the page or clicked a misplaced link that sent them outside the booking funnel. Use tools like heat maps and your website analytics data to understand what users view and click on the most.
2. Try timing yourself on your own website to see how much you can digest in 90 seconds, and consider running a user testing campaign to get feedback from real-world users.
3. Segment your audiences and track their actions. Track more than just the purchase and see what triggers your users to take action, including phone calls, emails, contact form submissions, or even clicks from your site.
4. Don’t have revenue, conversion, goals, or accurate analytic data that you can review? We can help you set that up. This issue should be your first issue to resolve because, without precise data, you will be making decisions in the dark and leaving your marketing strategy to a guessing game.

Research local reputable web designers that use WordPress to build websites. 

WordPress powers over 35% of websites on the internet, and it has the most potential for building on over time with its massive development community.

Its market share of Content Management Systems is 65%.

Source: https://kinsta.com/wordpress-market-share/

Do You Have A Low Website Budget?

If your budget is low at this time, then ask the web design company to develop only the core pages you need and provide them with content and examples of websites you like. It makes the process so much easier if you have all your content ready before hiring a web designer. If your new website deadline is flexible, you can pay over time and still afford a quality website. 

Prepare your relationship marketing strategy ahead of time with complementary approaches with other local businesses, bloggers, website owners, and professionals.

Connect with local bloggers and social media influencers. Vetting them takes a little bit of work but we can help you understand the value of this channel, how best to use it and when to use it. Set up a consultation about this today.

Start now so you can leverage these relationships and influence higher sales from upcoming vacationers that frequently read local travel blogs and follow social media influencers who are authorities in the locales. 

We encourage local businesses to contact Hawaii travel bloggers and influencers related to your niche during the slow season and offer them free tours in return for a genuine blog review or social plug. Please do this before the peak visitor seasons to leverage their postings and positive reviews during prime pre-arrival guest booking periods. 

We focus on the Hawaiian tourism market, but much of our info applies worldwide and to almost every industry.

Many talented local musicians, artists, and professionals in Hawaii need someone to take a chance on them. It’s a great time to connect and synergize with other businesses to create a better experience for your users and shared customers with lots of mutual benefits.

Donʻt miss the many benefits of business-to-business relationships. In digital marketing, cross promoting with others in your niche can bring greater visibility and ranking in organic search. The niche doesnʻt necessarily need to be your exact industry. (i.e.: Restaurants cross-promoting activity providers in the same region.)

Get started on working with other businesses and local artists with a few of these ideas:

• Connect with other like-minded businesses to cross-promote or offer deals by leveraging combo tours. 
• Reach out to local talent that complements what you offer. They may be reaching an audience you can not.
• Create your unique tourism experience by hosting a local musician or artist to perform on historically slow days or times. 
• Promote these unique experiences on your website and marketing channels to gain hype upon which you can build. Activity online helps branding and user engagement overall.
• Collaborate with the artists to promote the event and connect your audiences for mutual brand exposure. 

Hawaii businesses and professionals can start getting involved with local charitable organizations, community groups, and nonprofits by sponsoring their efforts and donating time, labor, and resources. We can help you spread aloha and win-win situations for your community and business.

One of the best ways to promote your business is by connecting with eco-conscious organizations that are already active and visible in your community. Check this list of local groups and organizations making a positive difference in Maui and Hawaii.