Attract More Visitors

Part I: Pura Vida - Marketing the Experience of the "Good Life" in Costa Rica

How "Pura Vida" (Good Life), the national motto/tagline of Costa Rica, can help *you* attract more visitors to *your* website.

Two weeks ago I returned from a 7 day trip to Costa Rica where my Wife and I had a wonderful time. In fact, the feeling of Pura Vida (POO-rah VEE-dah), or "Pure Life" (or "Life is Great" ), is still with me.

Pura Vida - The Tagline/Motto for Costa Rica

Pura Vida is a national motto, or tagline, for Costa Rica. You see it everywhere on everything. Almost every hat, bag, coffee mug, and other tourist item seems to be subtly labeled somewhere with "Pura Vida". It's not always blatant. A cap may have a picture of a volcano on the front and "Pura Vida" on the side band.

Needs Being Met = Satisfaction

One of our drivers told us "If you're working, life is good." In other words, if people in Costa Rica have steady work then they can do all right and have a good life. And isn't that fundamental for all of us? It's like Maslow's hierarchies - Having food, shelter, etc. (benefits of work) satisfied allows one to consider other possibilities in life.

What Keyword Research showed about Life (Good vs. Great)

Interestingly, when I was checking Google AdWords Keyword Tool for the title of this blog post, "good life" had an approximate average of 673,000 monthly searches.  Not surprisingly, there were about 1 million searches in October - Clearly people were looking for "good life" when the financial industry crashed and the world stock markets went into a collective nosedives.

But perhaps more interestingly "great life" only had an average of 74,000 searches - monthly and in October. And "perfect life" was just searched for 22,200 times on average.

So people were just searching for "good life" and they weren't even daring to search for "great life" (let alone "perfect life"!). It's kind of sad when we're not even *hoping* for the best possible outcome versus some lesser flavor of it.

Pura Vida Exemplified: "Talk the Talk and Walk the Walk"

Clearly people should have been in Costa Rica last month! (where they could have actually been living "great life"). The people there "talk the talk and walk the walk" about Pura Vida. I never saw one upset person the whole week we were there.

Terrible Roads = Massages

The roads are challenging (terrible) to say the least...but no-one complains about them. In fact some tourists who rented vehicles seemed to take delight in  the rough pot-hole laden snaking dirt roadways. The roads just are what they are. When our drivers arrived to pick us up they would say, "Are you ready for your massage?" since the twisting turning up-and-down motion of a trip on their roads felt like a massage. This is certainly making the best of the what some may feel was the worst of situations. Pura Vida!

Leveraging the Main Industry and Trends

We were told that Costa Rica's main industry is Tourism. Eco-tourism signs are everywhere, clearing tapping into world trends and the preferences of many youthful travelers.

Omnipresent Branding

Is Costa Rica promoting "Pura Vida"? I hope so, because everyone in the country appears to be living the spirit of it. In fact the small print at the bottom of PuraVida.com home page states that "PuraVida.com is a national brand dedicated to promoting the Costa Rican lifestyle to the world." And it's not hard to see how this is expressed when their brand slogan ("Pura Vida") is on almost every piece of tourist merchandise that mentions Costa Rica, and/or has a picture of a tree frog, toucan, or a volcano on it.

But the omnipresent branding and merchandising in no way lessens the wonderful experience of Pura Vida in Costa Rica and in fact, it seems to enhance it.

Caveat/Disclaimer: By the way, I'm *not* an expert in Costa Rica and I'm *not* commenting as a social or political or historical expert on their country or life. I'm only commenting as a liver and enjoyer of life.

Part II: Attracting Visitors with the Principles of Pura Vida (Good Life)

Here are some things to keep in mind when Attracting Visitors to your website:

• Does your company have a tagline or motto and are you putting it everywhere and on everything?
  • Website, Blog, Business Cards, Literature, Promotional materials, Brochures, etc.
    • By the way, if you need your company name or motto/tagline printed on literally anything, I can highly recommend Joe and Marcy Roschitsch at SCEP Inc.

• Are you using the best/optimized keyword terms to attract visitors to your website, e.g., "good" vs. "great"?

• Are you satisfying people's needs on your website?
  • Are they finding what they came for once they get to your site?
  • Is what they find at your site congruent (in keeping with) what they were promised in the process of getting there?
  • Will they feel good about your site and want to re-visit it again and again?

• Is your website and are your employees "talking the talk and walking the walk" re: your:
  • Tagline/Motto?
  • Mission and Vision?
  • What your marketing and advertising promise leading up to their arrival?
  • What your website promises to deliver?

• Can your employees or customer service "make lemonade out of lemons", e.g., turning terrible roads into massages?
  • And perhaps more importantly can this transformation be delivered happily and without complaints, e.g., a Pura Vida "Great Life" attitude?
  • Clearly Costa Rica has tapped into the whole "spa experience"-type feeling as a lifestyle and philosophy of life people would love to come and experience themselves...again and again.

• Does your site make what people want or need easy to find, e.g., "eco-tour" signs being everywhere, appealing to the youthful environmentally-conscious traveler demographic?
  • Are you leveraging your equivalent of this for your brand, motto/tagline, products, etc.?

• Is the spirit of your brand "lived" (portrayed) on every part of your website and by your personnel and consistently used in every/all places it makes sense to, e.g., your equivalent of coffee mugs with the image of a volcano and the words "Pura Vida" inscribed on them?
  • For instance if Disneyland, "The Happiest Place on Earth"*, didn't fulfill their motto and the expectation of it, people wouldn't look forward to visiting and re-visiting their theme parks as much.
    • * The Happiest place...other than Costa Rica, that is.

In any case, I hope that you enjoyed my impressions from Costa Rica and how I think you can leverage some of these ideas to improve your website so you can leap frog (or tree frog) your competitors to success!

Does your website (or company) have its own version of Pura Vida? If so, what is it and how is it expressed on your site(s)?

• I'd love to hear your comments - please let me know what *your* thoughts/experiences are on this...

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