DIY AT HOME - Brilliant Marketing Idea ***

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Once in awhile marketers think of really marketing ideas that stand out. Ways of advertising that really interest the targeted audience and grab one's attention. Tourism Queensland in Australia has created a truly unique, imaginative and inexpensive way to market the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef and Australia. They have managed to use free off-line media and marketing sources to drive people to their website. It's really a brilliant and clever marketing approach. You probably know about it by now. I'm talking about their dream job offer of living above the Great Barrier Reef.

Tourism Queensland is seeking applicants for their 6 month caretaker job on Hamilton Island. The successful applicant will be paid $ 150,000 (Australian dollars) including free accommodation plus the chance to share your once-in-a-lifetime experience with friends or family. All this person has to do is live on the island, tour the various Great Barrier Reef Islands and write about their experiences via a blog. Basically, this person would be promoting Australia as a tourist destination via various forms of media.

I think that this is a brilliant marketing idea because it will spread Tourism Queensland's message about visiting the Great Barrier Reef and Australia to an incredibly large audience, a diverse demographic and over a long period of time, at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising . Let me explain what I mean by this statement.

I first learned about this dream job and Hamilton Islands from my friend who phoned me one night and told me about it. So I decided to check out their website (islandreefjob.com) for myself. By the time I did, there were already around 200,000 applicants. The site will be open for applications for at least another month. Imagine how many applicants there will be by then! As you can see, this is an amazing way to virally market a product or service and an excellent example of viral marketing. By now, this website and job has probably been referred and discussed on hundreds of other website. Even I am helping to spread Tourism Queensland's advertising message with this article.

Over the next few days, I noticed that the local TV news stations and news were picking up the story. It took the media a bit longer to latch onto this story. Now this dream job and Australia as a tourism destination is being broadcast for free to millions of TV viewers in every country worldwide and every demographic. Imagine how much it would have cost tourism Queensland or the Australian tourist board to place a 30 second TV ad or radio ad worldwide to reach such a large audience! Also, once a winner for this Australian dream job is announced, you will see it mentioned a lot on TV and in the news again.

This is one example of a marketing campaign that will be extremely successful for Australian tourism in the long-run with a targeted audience that is limitless and unquantifiable. For only $ 150,000 (Australian dollars), plus the cost of setting up the website and other overhead expenses, this is an extremely small small cost to pay considering the huge audience that you are able to reach to make people aware of Australia as an alternative and incredibly beautiful tourist destination.

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