September Digital Marketing Q&A

For West Highland Chamber Members, by Lamont Design

Q&A covering digital marketing questions relevant to Highland Businesses. Web, AI search, social media, and online visibility. Plain English, no jargon. Each month Lamont Design addresses some important and relevant questions and we publish them here on the Chamber website. Members can submit questions to us and we’ll pick the most useful to cover.

What marketing should we, as Highland businesses, actually be doing?

Match your activity to the customers’ discovery journey. Inspiration, search, AI itinerary, validation, booking. And being visible.

Follow the customer through the discovery and decision stages they actually move through. They’re inspired somewhere social, they search to check if it’s real, they increasingly ask an AI tool to build them an itinerary, they validate you against reviews and third-party listings, they book, and then they’re here and looking for things to do.

Different marketing activities work at each stage. Social and photography feed the first; a clear, well-written website feeds the second and third; reviews and consistent listings feed the fourth; a booking route that doesn’t fight the customer feeds the fifth; and email or on-site content feeds the last and brings them back.

So … Something social weekly, something substantial monthly, and a proper look at the numbers quarterly. Then an honest section on what to do yourself and what to hand over.  Tasks that involve knowing your customer stays in-house, research, technical work and structure usually don’t.

Someone said my website needs to be ‘AI-ready’. What does that actually mean?

It means content worth summarising, in text a machine can read.

It doesn’t mean adding a chatbot – or having a site full of AI interactions.  It means: content worth summarising, in plain text a machine can read, arranged so both people and machines can find their way around.

The content matters most. “Warm Highland welcome” gives an AI tool nothing to work with. Every competitor says it. What earns you a mention is the specific stuff you know: how far to the ferry, what’s open in February, whether the walk suits a five-year-old. Say it early and say it in text. Facts locked in a photo, a PDF menu or a clever headline are effectively invisible, and the summary gets assembled from someone else’s listing instead of yours.

Structure does the rest. Up front: clear headings, one page per real topic, links between related pages. Behind the scenes: schema markup labelling your address, hours and prices so nothing’s left to guesswork, and your name and contact details matching exactly what’s on your Google profile and every directory. Inconsistency is a common reason a business gets skipped by AI.

Most of my bookings come through OTAs and agents. Do I still need a website?

Yes. Customers check you anyway, and AI tools describe you from what you’ve published.

The first argument is of course, commission. Booking.com might take 15–18% of a room your own site would have sold at full value. The goal isn’t replacing the OTAs, they’re very good at reach, it’s taking a slice of repeat and direct-intent bookings across.  20% direct changes your margin substantially.

The second argument is that people check you anyway. Most guests who find you on an OTA will open a tab and look you up before booking; for photos that aren’t cropped to an OTA template, for what’s nearby, for reassurance you’re a real place run by real people. And more details.  Same with Maps: someone searching “hotels Fort William” taps your pin, then your website link. If there’s nothing there, or it’s five years out of date, that’s a doubt introduced at the moment they were deciding.

And increasingly the research happens before any of that. When someone asks an AI tool to plan four days in the Highlands, it builds the answer from what’s published about you. Your own words first, if you have them. No site, no words, and you’re described by whoever else has written about you.

What’s actually worth doing with a mailing list, and is it too late to start one?

Almost never too late. It’s the only audience you own outright.

Every other channel is rented. Facebook decides who sees your post, Google decides where you rank, and an OTA decides what your listing looks like. A mailing list is the one route to your customers that nobody sits in the middle of.  And for a seasonal business that matters most in the months when you need bookings and nobody’s searching.

It works very well alongside your website. The site is how people find you and decide; the list is how you reach the ones who already have. Every enquiry form, booking and signup box on your site adds a name. Which makes the website an asset that compounds your contact database. And because those emails send people straight back to your own booking page, they’re the cheapest direct bookings you’ll ever take. 

Timing beats volume. One useful message a month outperforms a weekly one nobody opens, and the ones that work land when the customer is already half-thinking about it. February for the summer season, August for the shoulder months, a gallery emailing before a new show rather than after it opens, an estate agent going out in January when people are deciding whether this is the year they move.

Give them a reason to open.

Digital Marketing Q&A for West Highland Chamber Members
Written by lamontdesign

Submit your questions

Each month we’ll address several questions and publish them here on the Chamber website. Members can submit questions and we’ll pick the most useful to cover.

Questions and topic suggestions welcome at
[email protected]