A lesson from Iceland

I've recently come back from a long weekend in Iceland.

For those of you who haven't been, it's a beautiful place, and I'm not the only one to think so. Since 2010, with the eruption of the volcano Eyjafjallajökull, tourism is booming. 

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They're expecting in the region of 2.3 million visitors this year. That's in a country with 330,000 people. And a growth of visitor numbers nearly 5 times what they were seeing 10 years ago.

A concerted effort was made by the Icelandic tourist board to make the most of the opportunity global coverage of the eruption gave them. A natural disaster was turned into a huge positive. 

Not only is the country beautiful, but the Icelandic people are - quite rightly - very proud of it, and want visitors to enjoy it as much as they do. And their customer service is really pretty good.

One thing I was impressed with when I was there was an off-road jeep tour we did, with a company called Superjeep.is 

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They're highly rated on Tripadvisor, Google, and Facebook, and have a great social media presence. This isn't by accident. We all know that getting customers to write positive reviews is important but is sometimes difficult to achieve.

Superjeep do this by taking lots of photographs of you during your tour. So they have something you want. They then give everyone a business card at the end of their trip, and printed on it are the links to their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts, the fact they've got a 5 star Tripadvisor status and how to download your photos from Dropbox.

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And there's a clear call to action. 'Share your experience'

So of course that's what I did. I engaged with them on Facebook, viewing and sharing my photos, tagging myself in them and writing a review. So I'm now an advocate of their business. Job done. A great example of marketing.