Summer Marketing Ideas for Newfoundland Tourism Businesses

Unleashing the Spirit of Summer in Newfoundland Tourism

Summer brings a wave of opportunity for tourism businesses across Newfoundland. Longer days, warmer weather, and busy travel schedules set the tone for increased foot traffic and customer interest. Whether you’re running a scenic boat tour, local restaurant, artisan shop, or heritage site, this time of year presents plenty of chances to catch the attention of visitors. But with so many options for travellers to choose from, making your business stand out isn’t always easy.

That’s where a smart digital marketing strategy comes in. Tourists do a lot of planning online before they even arrive. They’re searching for things to do, places to eat, and events to check out. If your business isn’t showing up or engaging in those spaces, you’re missing your chance to connect. There’s no need for complicated tech or flashy gimmicks. Simple, consistent actions can lead to better results and more bookings. Let’s look at a few ways to make summer marketing work for your business.

Highlighting Summer Events And Festivals

Newfoundland is packed with summer events and festivals that draw large crowds from all over. From music and food festivals to cultural parades and community fairs, these local gatherings offer built-in energy you can tap into. Aligning your marketing with these happenings can help bring your business into ongoing conversations and give people a reason to stop by.

Here are a few ways to make the most of them:

1. Feature event dates and nearby activities on your website or blog to help visitors plan a full day in the area.

2. Use Instagram Stories or Facebook Reels to share behind-the-scenes updates before an event kicks off.

3. Create themed content or limited-time offers related to an event and share those posts a week or two before it begins.

4. If possible, sponsor a small booth or giveaway at the event itself and feature it on your online platforms.

5. Cross-promote with other nearby businesses participating in the event to widen reach.

For example, if your café sits near a major music festival site, promote a “Festival Fuel” coffee combo and post real-time updates as festivalgoers gather. Add a hashtag or tag the event account to help your posts pop up in people’s searches. This keeps your content timely and encourages more engagement.

Most importantly, stay flexible. Weather, crowd size, or event changes can shift plans quickly, so having a few different types of content ready ahead of time can save stress and keep your posts active.

Leveraging Social Media Campaigns

Social media is where travellers often get a feel for the vibe of a place before making plans. Your online photos, captions, and comments all shape how visitors imagine their trip. The good news is, summer content tends to be fun and visual by nature, so your posts don’t need to be perfect, just genuine and consistent.

Here’s how to build out a seasonal presence:

1. Choose a weekly theme like “Waterfront Wednesdays” or “Foodie Fridays” to guide your posts.

2. Share behind-the-scenes glimpses of your team setting up for the day, prepping food, or greeting guests.

3. Use polls, quizzes, or “comment to win” contests to boost interaction.

4. Repost content from tourists who tag your business. Always ask for permission and thank them.

Staying active doesn’t mean posting all day. A steady pace, like three to five posts a week, keeps your business in people’s minds without becoming overwhelming. And don’t forget to reply to comments, even short ones. A quick response can turn one-time visitors into returning guests.

Optimizing Local SEO

Tourists planning a trip to Newfoundland usually jump online first. They’re searching things like “things to do near me” or “best seafood restaurant in St. John’s.” That’s where local SEO matters. If your business isn’t showing up in those results, you’re missing out.

Start by claiming and updating your Google Business Profile. Make sure your summer hours, photos, service details, and contact info are current. Post about events or promos so visitors see your listing is active.

You’ll also want to use local keywords on your site. Mention nearby landmarks, neighbourhoods, or popular attractions. The more specific, the better. Ask happy customers to leave a review. Most people trust real reviews, and a steady flow of fresh ones boosts both credibility and ranking.

Here’s a simple checklist to help your profile stand out this summer:

– Add bright, current photos of your space in summer

– Post specials or events using the “Updates” feature

– Use names of attractions or areas people are searching

– Keep your NAP info (Name, Address, Phone) the same across platforms

– Encourage repeat guests or community fans to write short, honest reviews

You don’t need a full-time expert for this. Just taking one hour to tighten up your summer SEO can make a difference.

Collaborating With Local Influencers

Influencers can help you reach more travellers, especially the kind who want to explore like locals. A local voice with a curious audience can bring authentic energy to your business’s marketing. It’s not about celebrity status. It’s about fit and storytelling.

Check who’s already active on your radar. Is someone posting food reviews, family adventures, or scenic hikes around Newfoundland? They might be your next collaboration.

Reach out casually and offer something like a preview visit, fun sample, or small experience. Let them capture the moment naturally and share in their own way. That style usually resonates more than rehearsed script-style content.

A few easy ways to team up:

1. Plan a relaxed influencer day with small group activities

2. Give out discount codes they can post

3. Ask them to do a social media Story takeover

4. Offer branded items that look good in photos

Once they post, engage with the content, share it on your pages, and maintain the relationship. A warm thank you and continued support can go a long way.

Summertime Promotions That Make A Difference

Limited-time offers during the summer give visitors a reason to stop in now instead of later. Since the season is short in Newfoundland, timing counts. Special deals that are simple and fun often perform the best.

Think about what a visitor actually wants. Partnering with a nearby café or entertainment spot can add value to their outing. A small “Thank You Pack” with local samples or keepsakes can make a lasting impression too.

Make sure people know about your offers in places they’ll look. That includes your website, social media, and email, not just your storefront.

Ideas that work well:

– Clear and fun promo names like “Bay Day Bonus”

– Simple steps for how to redeem

– Defined end dates that push urgency

– Little upgrades or bonus items that feel like a treat

– Ties with events already bringing people into the area

Once you find something that works, bring it back each year so it becomes part of your summer routine people look forward to.

Making Summer Work For Your Business

Newfoundland’s tourism season comes and goes fast, but it can leave a lasting impression. By showing up online in the right ways—whether that’s through an updated profile, clever promotions, or community engagement—you can stand out to visitors when it matters most.

Marketing doesn’t have to feel overwhelming. Even small steps like posting regularly or encouraging reviews make an impact. When efforts are people-focused and timely, they build trust and draw more attention.

Look ahead and plan early where possible. Building an engaging online presence now helps lay the foundation for next season’s success too.

Make the most of your busiest season with support from BrandCommand. If you’re looking for simple ways to attract visitors and grow your business, our digital marketing in Newfoundland offers targeted strategies that keep you top of mind. From Google Business Optimization, Local SEO to email campaigns, we tailor each approach to help you stand out online and connect with more travellers.

– Bill Jackman, Tourism Marketing Strategist | Trusted by NL Operators Since 1991

AI Tools That Actually Move the Needle for Local Businesses

The biggest misconception local businesses have about AI? That it’s going to take more time and cause more stress. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

I’ve spent years working with service-based businesses across Canada, and I’ve watched countless owners chase shiny AI objects while completely missing the tools that actually deliver results. The truth is, most local businesses are implementing AI wrong, focusing on flashy features instead of solving real business problems.

Let me cut through the noise and show you which AI tools are truly worth your investment, which ones are overhyped, and how to build an implementation roadmap that makes sense for your specific business model.

The Time-Saving Reality of AI for Local Businesses

One AI tool most local businesses aren’t even aware of is Social Marketing AI Pro. With this tool, you can create up to five social media posts at a time, pull images from a bank or have AI create them, and schedule those posts across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and more. The time savings are phenomenal.

But the real ROI champion I’ve seen is in digital advertising. A product called Matchcraft delivers AI-driven advertising with impressive results. I know this firsthand because I have a client, a mortgage broker, who’s seen a 117.7% increase in traffic since we started using Matchcraft for digital ads.

These aren’t just incremental improvements. They’re business-changing results that come from strategic implementation rather than random AI experimentation.

A Strategic Framework for Evaluating AI Tools

When advising local businesses on which AI tools to adopt, I use a specific framework to determine if a tool is worth the investment or just a shiny distraction.

For example, if you’re considering an AI receptionist, ask yourself:

  • How many people contact your business each week?
  • How many people contact your business after hours?
  • How quickly do customers expect a response?
  • What percentage of contacts become customers?
  • What is the average value of a customer?

By answering these questions, we can calculate exactly what impact an AI receptionist would have on your business in terms of revenue generated. This approach cuts through the hype and focuses on what matters: measurable business outcomes.

When AI Chatbots and Voice Assistants Shine (And When They Don’t)

AI chatbots appear on your website and can respond to inquiries there or via SMS. Voice assistants can actually answer phone calls. Both work brilliantly when you’ve given them enough knowledge about your product offerings, business profile, website information, and pricing.

They excel at capturing potential leads, getting contact information, and even setting appointments. I’ve found they work best for service businesses like plumbers, electricians, mortgage brokers, and law firms that require appointment setting.

I’ve also seen AI chatbots used effectively for rental properties, providing tenants with 24/7 information if they have issues like plumbing or electrical problems. The AI can give step-by-step instructions for fixing certain issues.

The key is proper training. This is where most implementation failures happen. Local businesses don’t take the time to train their AI on all pages of their website, social media, Google Business Profile, and frequently asked questions. Without this foundation, even the best AI tools will underperform.

Common AI Implementation Failures

Beyond inadequate training, I see local businesses misusing AI in several ways:

First, they don’t refresh the AI’s training regularly. You need to check everything periodically and update whatever needs refreshing.

Second, they create content that sounds too robotic or unnatural compared to posts they would write themselves. You can overdo it with AI, but as a tool to increase productivity and generate different titles, headlines, or content ideas, it’s excellent.

Third, they use AI to create too many graphics, which often look generic or contain text that’s gibberish. While AI image generation is improving, it’s one area where the technology still frequently disappoints.

Multi-Location Businesses: Unique AI Applications

Multi-location healthcare clinics use AI tools differently than single-location businesses. With tools like BrandCommand AI Pro, you can input all locations of your physiotherapy clinics, for example, and see all review scores from various locations on a single dashboard.

This gives you insights into which locations are underperforming based on reviews and feedback. For social media, you can see which locations are putting in effort and what results they’re getting.

The ability to create social media posts and distribute them across all locations’ channels simultaneously is a huge time-saver. Multi-location businesses face unique challenges in managing numerous social media channels, Google business profiles, and reviews. AI for reputation management helps respond to reviews timely and effectively and makes updates like changing hours of operation quick and easy across all locations.

The big advantage is seeing everything in real time so you can monitor how all locations are performing compared to a single location.

Local SEO: How AI Is Changing the Game

When it comes to local SEO, we’re talking about how a business can rank in the Google local pack and on Google Maps so that when someone searches for “physiotherapists near me” or “chiropractor near me,” your business appears first or at least in the top three locally.

It’s like having a full-page ad in the yellow pages versus a half-page or quarter-page ad. The more your local SEO is optimized, the more you’ll stand out in search rankings, which can mean significant business for a local company.

A great tool available inside BrandCommand AI Pro is Local SEO Pro. It allows you to input keywords you’re ranking for as part of your keyword strategy, and it monitors those keywords and generates on-demand dashboard reports showing how you rank for particular keywords against your main competitors in your local area.

It also provides a local grid so you can see how you’re ranking within up to 16 kilometers of your location across various areas of your city. This gives you insights into which keywords you should be targeting, particularly those with high traffic volume but low competition.

Once you identify these keywords, you can use them with Social Marketing AI Pro to write blog posts or social media posts targeting those specific terms. That’s a huge advantage.

Another powerful feature is listing sync, which allows you to sync your Google business profile to 39 different directories and listings in Canada. These include search capabilities in vehicles (Mercedes, BMW, Ford, Toyota), voice assistants like Siri or Alexa, and directories like Better Business Bureau, Yelp, and Yellow Pages.

Updating your business profile once and having it automatically update across all these directories helps your Google ranking significantly. And none of these practices should trigger Google penalties since you’re following proper optimization techniques.

The Reputation Management Revolution

Reputation management is critical for all businesses. Managing online reviews on Google Business Profile, Facebook, Yelp, or any other platform that allows customer reviews is essential for search engine optimization and local SEO.

To rank high on Google or Bing, you need to respond to reviews quickly, ideally within 24 hours. You also want to regularly get new reviews from customers on your various profiles.

A tool like Reputation AI Pro helps you reach customers and request reviews for various channels. When reviews come in, everything appears in one dashboard, eliminating the need to access multiple applications or pages to respond to reviews.

The built-in AI suggests responses to incoming reviews, making it super quick and easy to provide quality responses. Doing this within 24 hours of receiving a review is important, and AI makes that process simple.

The business impact is significant: increasing reviews provides more social proof and improves your ranking. When people search for your business or category, your higher ranking will attract more search traffic, which you can convert into new revenue.

AI Implementation Roadmap for Local Businesses

For businesses just starting their AI journey, I recommend a specific implementation roadmap:

Step 1: Website AI – Install something like Inbox AI Pro, a lead capture web chat AI tool you can customize with an avatar. Train it with instructions so anyone visiting your website interacts with the AI, which aims to capture their name, email, phone number, and input it directly into your CRM. This eliminates the staff cost typically involved in monitoring website inquiries 24/7.

Step 2: Reputation Management – Implement Reputation AI Pro to manage Google reviews and request more reviews. This drives your ranking, and having all this data flow into your CRM is important for the next steps.

Step 3: Local SEO – Use Local SEO Pro to develop your keyword strategy, monitor those keywords, and update listings across directories.

Step 4: Email Marketing – Implement Campaigns AI Pro for email campaigns and SMS text messaging campaigns. The built-in AI helps create email or text content quickly and efficiently, making it easy to set up campaigns for potential or current customers, including newsletters and promotional offers.

Step 5: Social Media – Use Social Marketing AI Pro to create and schedule social media posts across various channels. It can also automatically create blog posts for your website focused on specific keywords to increase your ranking, then create social media posts promoting those blog posts.

Step 6: Digital Ads – Finally, implement Matchcraft AI Ads Service to design and manage your digital ads on Google Display, Google Search, or social media channels. Let AI do the heavy lifting by creating new headlines and copy until it achieves the best results for you.

Overhyped AI Applications to Avoid

Not all AI tools deliver on their promises. In my experience, some AI applications are overhyped or not worth the investment.

Graphic design AI tools that create images or videos often produce output that doesn’t match what you’re looking for, turning into a time suck. You have a specific idea in mind, but the AI can’t quite capture it. Sometimes it puts text or copy into images that’s complete gibberish, which is frustrating to fix.

While these tools are improving as AI continues to evolve through deep learning, some graphic design AI tools and webpage tools tend to overpromise and underdeliver. Photo editing AI tools in particular often produce less than satisfactory results.

Home Service Businesses: Leading the AI Charge

Home service businesses like plumbers, HVAC companies, and electricians that are succeeding with AI are using AI voice receptionists and web chat receptionists extensively. They’re investing in thorough training so these AI workers can diagnose customer problems and match them with appropriate solutions.

These AI systems can generate accurate quotes or estimates, book appointments through scheduling apps, and advise technicians about the work that needs to be done.

Large multi-location franchises are revolutionizing the entire process. From the moment a customer calls, they interact with AI that records requirements, ensures accurate quotes and pricing, connects to the scheduler for appropriate dispatch times, and even handles follow-up to ensure service quality and request reviews.

Businesses in these categories that aren’t using AI tools will find it increasingly difficult to compete. The automation capabilities extend to pulling in leads from different ad campaigns, placing them in specific lead generation funnels, having AI handle follow-up and appointment booking, upselling products or services, automatically providing product or service information to clients through PDFs, and conducting follow-up text messaging and email communications.

The Bottom Line: Strategy First, Tools Second

The local businesses seeing the biggest AI wins aren’t the ones with the most tools or the flashiest technology. They’re the ones with a clear strategy focused on solving specific business problems.

Start by identifying your biggest operational pain points, calculate the potential ROI of addressing them with AI, and then implement solutions in a strategic, step-by-step manner. Focus on tools that save time, generate leads, or improve customer experience. Everything else is just a distraction.

The AI revolution for local businesses isn’t about having the newest shiny objects. It’s about implementing practical solutions that deliver measurable results and help you dominate your local market.

–Bill