Hawaii Online Marketing

I’ve been experimenting with Yahoo! Answers for a few weeks to see what it was all about. Anyone can ask questions about anything they want and anybody who wants to; can try to answer the question.

The beauty of the system is that you can search for a topic like “Hawaii” and subscribe to all the incoming questions via RSS like it was a Blog.

Lots of questions are being asked by potential Hawaii visitors on a wide variety of travel related subjects. People want to know where to stay, what to do, where to get married, etc.

Here is a sample of some of the questions that have been asked and some answers that you might have been able to give.

Q: Does anyone have a recommendation for a condo or hotel in Waikiki Beach, HI area?
A: Stay at my condo.

Going to Oahu, we want to go to a Luau…?
A: Go to my Luau.

Q: Where’s your favorite place to hike on Oahu? Or other island?
A: I am a guide. I’ll take you there.

Q: Where can I find the best prices on flights to Hawaii?
A: I’m a travel agent. Give me a call.

Q: What are the best places to wed in Hawaii?
A: I’m a wedding Planner. Please visit my website and give me a call.

Unfortunately, you don’t see these kinds of answers. Most of the people answering these Hawaii Travel and Vacation related questions are not travel professionals. Most people answering these questions aren’t even from Hawaii. This creates and opportunity.

These types of questions come up over and over. If you answer a question once, you can re-purpose that answer every time the question comes up again.

Yahoo! Answers isn’t exactly a lead generating goldmine at this time, but it’s super easy to subscribe to a topic and be alerted when a potential customer is asking for your help.

Reach out to these people, give them a link to your website and start a dialogue.

Can you produce a useful and pleasing website that generates traffic and sales? If the answer is a big YES!… Keep reading.

If you can build yourself a website and drive some traffic to it, you can place Google or other affiliate ads on your site or sell links or whatever and earn yourself a few bucks. It shouldn’t be too hard for you to create a website that will generate at least $5 per day.

$5 a day is not a huge number for a person who is good at driving web sales and traffic, etc. It shouldn’t take forever to reach that kind of cash flow either. Just pick a topic like weddings, flowers, travel, golf, pets, real estate or whatever you like.

If you can make $5 a day with one website that focuses on something like “Hawaii Widgets” you can probably create a second website on “California Widgets” and make another $5 a day.

Once you’ve made your first one, it shouldn’t take you forever to create the second one… or the third… or the fourth…

If you have 50 websites that average $5 a day… You are making $91,250. per year!

I have met several people with hundreds of websites like this. They whip one out about every two weeks or so.

If you are NOT a great Webmaster or Online Marketer… This is just one of many reasons why finding a qualified person to help you build, design and market your website, isn’t usually very cheap.

Aloha,
Dave.

How soon is now?

I had the great pleasure to spend some time with the kind folks at Travelocity today. One of the people I met was Travelocity’s CEO, Michelle Peluso. What a wonderful, humble and genuinely nice person. I had no idea who she was when I first met her. She was by the table with the nametags and asked my name as I approached, helped me find my name badge, and then she asked if I needed my parking validated. Wow! How many CEO’s of major brands will act like an ordinary person? Michelle and the rest of her team at Travelocity are truly the nicest people you’ll ever meet. They all work very hard to promote Hawaii as a destination.

There are so many other tropical destinations but Hawaii remains the place at the top of the list of desirable destinations to visit.

Hawaii is such a special place, but what makes it so special?

Not everyone who would like to visit actually does. More people actually visit Las Vegas. Ironically though, whenever you see travel ads on the Internet, you almost never see Las Vegas or slot machines pictured in the ads. You always see Hawaii imagery because Hawaii is where people actually want to go. When people think about a vacation dream come true, they visualize themselves in Hawaii.

So how do you close the sale?

What is unique about your Hawaii based business that can’t be found anywhere else in the world? What differentiates you from all other global competitors? Understanding how to sell to a website visitor’s emotions, is just as important as it is in any other medium.

Our scenic beauty and unmatched reputation for hospitality help create a very strong desire. It’s up to us to help the potential visitor realize that they can achieve this goal. The best time to visit Hawaii is always now.