Trifold brochure for new Olympic Peninsula marketing strategy

Bridge closure inspires new directions in marketing…
The Hood Canal Bridge is the main eastern access for tourists visiting Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula. This spring, the bridge underwent a much needed retrofit, resulting in a five-week closure. The local tourism organization, Olympic Peninsula Tourism Commission (OPTC), took special measures to promote lodging and other tourism-related businesses while the bridge was closed. 

Among these efforts was a brochure directed to southern markets in Olympia, WA and Portland, OR. OPTC called upon InsideOut to design the piece and implement the online elements of the promotion. With the success of this piece, OPTC may use it as a template for additional pieces targeting markets to the north and east.

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Corey Edwards has recently joined InsideOut as a Website Technician. He will be working in our updates department and with member support for our B&B Association clients.

Corey has worked in computer aided graphic design since the mid 1990s. He has been involved in web design since 2001, creating sites for a variety of artists and craftsmen, among other subjects. Initially self-taught, in 2006 he went to Peninsula College to obtain an AAS degree in multimedia and graphic design; this netted him the position of Creative Director for Northwest magazine, where he stayed until late 2008.

In his spare time Corey enjoys writing, reading, music - both collecting and playing - creating perplexing and humorous graphics on his computer, and, best of all, spending time with his 14 year old daughter. They have lived on the Olympic Peninsula since 1999.

Online promotion and print marketing for Olympic Peninsula, WA

Local tourism group takes action during bridge closure

Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula is a major tourist destination in the Pacific Northwest. Many visitors arrive from Seattle and other eastern locations via the Hood Canal bridge. This year, the bridge is undergoing a much needed retrofit to improve safety and reduce traffic congestion. The five- to six-week closure from May to June occurs during the start of the Peninsula’s tourist season.

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Garden House Map

Google Maps gives users of your website access to interactive content that you would otherwise not be able to provide them.  Giving a visual representation of your business’ location and activities nearby is a powerful way to get users interested in staying at your destination.

More than just driving directions, a Google Map with local restaurants and things to do can really sell your property.  The Garden House Inn, a very fun  Key West Lodging has a great example of a map displaying proximity to local businesses.  They are close to downtown and this map shows the many opportunities for guests to have fun and enjoy their time in Key West.

Inn at Cape Cod Map

If your business is not as close to the action, a Google Map can show the surrounding region as well.  Maybe show all of the great golf courses nearby or lakes and rivers in which guests can fish and boat.  Also, your map could show potential customers travel routes to and from your business like the the map we built for Inn at Cape Cod, a Cape Cod MA bed and breakfast.

On a blustery Sunday, Katie Pate and Jeff Logan headed to Duluth Minnesota for another trade show and several presentations during the Minnesota B&B Conference. There was much to do in lovely Duluth during this short visit, including a presentation on Facebook marketing, and the debut of the new MBBA web site.

On Sunday night Jeff and Katie enjoyed a tour of several Duluth inns, including Solglimt, one of our clients. We enjoyed an evening of fantastic architecture and jaw-dropping beauty in these turn-of-the-century mansions. Our friends Anne & Niles Deneen from Deneen Pottery, had made many of the inns’ stoneware mugs that we saw on display or in use during the tours.

Monday was a busy day; Jeff Logan presented Minnesota with their new Bed and Breakfast Association web site, which will be going live in May. We have loaded the site with great features that only InsideOut is providing, such as seven different ways to search for an inn and an interactive map that will allow users to search for inns within a certain radius of their desired location. The site will help the members coordinate within each other to target market specific attractions that bring guests to their area, and administer their individual listings whenever they want.

The crowd went wild when they saw the site, and everyone hurried to follow Jeff into his presentation on Google marketing after lunch was finished. The presentation went smoothly and was very helpful and informative for the innkeepers.

It was great to see some of our current clients, such as Chuck Dougherty from the Water Street Inn, a lovely Stillwater MN waterfront inn, who’s new site had gone live only a few days before the conference.

On Tuesday morning, Jeff and Katie did a presentation on Internet Marketing with Facebook. It was a great success, with a packed crowd and lots of good questions. Visit our facebook page to see some pictures and real-time updates. Facebook is becoming a very important space on the web, and our team is researching the newest developments and trying to keep our innkeepers informed. We look forward to updating this presentation as trends develop, and sharing it at other conventions.

Katie Pate & Jeff Logan: Internet Marketing with Facebook

As always, we enjoyed meeting new innkeepers, talking with them about their potential for online marketing and sharing with them a ranking report that indicates their position online for various search phrases. We run these ranking reports for almost all the conferences we attend, and provide them to innkeepers for their knowledge.

Now that the Hood Canal bridge will be closed up here in Northern Washington for the next month and a half or so, we will be limited to the Northwest at least for a little while. But summer conferences are just around the corner, and we look forward to seeing you at one of them!

Beth Logan, InsideOut’s lead web designer, has done it again. Her newest creation, The Shellmont Inn in Atlanta, is winning kudos all around. The innkeepers say they “are thrilled with the new web site and the guests’ response to it. Everyone loves the photo rotation and the ease of selecting their room of choice. The Google Maps are a hit with potential guests as they plan their itinerary. Needless to say, business has positively increased expressly due to the glitzy new site. We asked for a state of the art web site…and you sure delivered! Simple, easy to navigate yet elegant. Working with InsideOut was a pleasure and a real learning experience. I found early in the design process to trust Beth inherently as she is a true professional who knows her stuff. We would, and have, already recommended InsideOut to fellow innkeepers in Select Registry.”

It was a delight for us to work with the owners of The Shellmont. The photographs they provided were professionally shot, which made the process much easier for us and helped ensure that the end product looks fantastic. They understand their target clintele and what appeals to those travelers, and their new site reflects that. Their new look is sophisticated and sleek — perfect for an inn that is in the heart of cosmopolitan Atlanta.

Our analysis shows that visits to The Shellmont are up over 15%, and that their bounce rate (number of people who leave the site as soon as they get there) has decreased by over 22%. Furthermore, people are lingering on the site, visiting an average of almost 6 pages per visit - a substantial increase over the previous average of 2.5 pages.

Contact the web department at InsideOut if you feel that your website could benefit from a face-lift.

To view the web site please visit www.shellmont.com

InsideOut Solutions is pleased to announce that we will be designing a new site for the Kentucky Bed and Breakfast Association. The site will launch in August, and will be a more effective venue for the more than 60 bed and breakfasts in the state.

Kentucky is a beautiful state that is rich in history. Many of the bed and breakfasts are historic inns: a secluded farmhouses on a hundred acres; a renovated Shaker Tavern; an 1850s log cabin. There are newly built inns as well, some in contemporary style and some more traditional. The new site will make finding the right bed and breakfast a pleasant experience for travelers in- and to- Kentucky.

We look forward to working with the Kentucky Bed and Breakfast Association, and to creating a seamless new look for them.

InsideOut Solutions is pleased to have been selected to design a new site for the the Nebraska Association of Bed and Breakfasts. The NABB represents almost fifty inns from all over this diverse state, from Scottsbluff to Humbolt to Crofton. We look forward to designing a site that will showcase the natural beauty of Nebraska, and help travelers find bed and breakfasts to suit them.

Many visitors are interested in exploring the varied terrain of Nebraska. The landscape has ranch and farm land, woods and rolling hills, surprising sandhills, and crystal clear rivers and streams. There are inns spread out along miles of trails that cross the state, inviting bikers to inn-hop. Some inns cater to outdoor sportsmen, and even provide kennels and extra-large freezers for their guests. Other inns are steeped in the history of the region.

In short, there is much to praise in Nebraska, and we at InsideOut are determined to build a site for the Nebraska Association of Bed and Breakfasts that underscores that. The new site will launch in August.

Earlier this month, Steven Dunston and Jeff Logan attended the Montana Bed and Breakfast Association conference in Kalispell. Jeff gave a presentation, “Get Going with Google”, which generated many great questions and an informative discussion. While there, they had the chance to visit all member inns in the region during the annual Poker Run — members and vendors get a card each time they visit an inn, and the winner gets a prize. Jeff and Steven almost won with two aces, but felt like winners because they were able to see first-hand many of the inns we promote.
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A lot has been happening this spring at InsideOut. Jeff and Beth Logan, Steven Dunston, Katie Pate and Pat McCauley attended the PAII conference in Atlanta at the end of March; Jeff and Steven attended the Montana conference on the heels of PAII; and Jeff and Katie just returned from the MBBA conference in Duluth. Shawn, Kailey, Jack and Lisa held down the web department while Jeff, Katie and Steven were traveling.

Meanwhile, renovations are underway at our offices in Sequim. Two new offices are being built for owner Jeff Logan and Web Developer Jack Waknitz. The paint is drying, and Jack and Jeff should be able to move in soon. Their vacated desks will allow InsideOut to bring in two new employees in the coming months, thus enabling us to keep a good ratio of staff to clients.

One new person has already joined the InsideOut team; Gail Cole has been hired on to the SEO team to blog for clients, and to write and edit copy wherever and whenever needed. A former high school French teacher, Gail is excited to be developing her skills in a new environment.