Your Town Is More Interesting Than You Think. Start Tapping Into The Visitor Economy.

Every time I look at how some small towns present themselves online, I wonder what they’re thinking. The Facebook page is full of parking updates. Instagram has a blurry photo of a council meeting. The website looks like it hasn’t been touched since 2019.

Small towns are blind to their own beauty.

They forget that the Georgian high street they walk down every day is exactly the sort of place someone else would drive an hour to visit. The independent restaurants, the nature reserve, the medieval church, the Saturday market; these aren’t just nice things the town happens to have. They’re reasons to come. If only someone would actually tell people about them...

I'm constantly talking about this and honestly, small towns just aren't listening. I've been on this since I moved to the UK and saw just how differently councils talk to residents and visitors here. My frustration's grown into real urgency.

High streets are struggling. Independent businesses need footfall. Towns need people to visit, spend money and come back. Meanwhile, some genuinely lovely places have an entire tourism campaign sitting on their doorstep and are using their social media to tell us about a road closure. There has to be a better way.

Towns Are Crucial to the Visitor Economy. They Just Don't Market Like It.

Every town has something to sell. Not literally, of course, but there is a product there. Towns have character, history, landscape, shops, community, and atmosphere. There are things to do, food to eat, rooms to stay in and, stories worth telling when you get home.

That is, by any definition, a tourism product. And yet the majority of small towns in England communicate as though the only people looking at them are those who already live there. Their social media feels like an extension of the community noticeboard. Planning applications, bin collection changes, road closures. Once in a while, someone remembers to be fun and up goes a three-year-old photo of the summer fair.

There’s nothing wrong with communicating any of that. Residents need information. But none of it is doing the job that destination marketing could be doing for them.

Domestic day visits in the UK generated £54.8 billion in spending in 2024 alone.

People are already getting in their cars, jumping on trains and deciding where to spend their Saturday. They’re looking for a good lunch, a walk, a market, or simply somewhere they've not been before.

The question isn’t whether people are willing to visit small towns. They already are. The question is whether your town gives them any reason to choose yours.

My Top Argument With Local Councils: The Familiarity Problem

What's ordinary to the people who live somewhere is frequently extraordinary to the people who don't.

Someone living in a small Cotswold town might walk past a row of honey-coloured stone cottages every day on the way to the post office. They barely notice them anymore. Why would they? It’s just the street.

But someone arriving from London, Manchester, Seoul, or Los Angeles sees something completely different. They see the Cotswolds they’ve saved on Instagram. They take a photograph, they post it, they share it, the marketing is in motion. That instagram photo they saved might genuinely be at the heart of why they booked the trip in the first place.

The same goes for the wildflower meadow where everyone walks their dogs. The market square that’s been there for centuries. The pub with the low beams and the fire going in winter. All that, to a first-time visitor, feels like stepping into something out of a novel.

When you see something every day, you stop seeing it. Familiarity sets in. That’s completely normal. But it’s a problem when the people responsible for promoting a place have stopped seeing it too.

Good destination marketing needs an outsider’s eye. It needs someone to look at the things locals have become completely accustomed to and recognise which of them might make somebody else think: I want to go there.

What Good Town Marketing Actually Looks Like

None of this is particularly complicated. But it does require a change in mindset. A town needs to think a little more like a brand: who are we talking to, why would they come here, and what do we have that might persuade them? It also needs to show the whole town.

That means not defaulting to the same handful of businesses because they’re good at social media, or only promoting events the council happens to be involved with. The independent bakery matters. So does the chain café that heavily invested in a refurb, especially if that’s where everyone actually meets. The community theatre, the big annual festival, the riverside walk, the museum, the heritage railway, the brilliant pub, the new restaurant, the cute footpath, and the market that’s been there forever. Together, they tell the 360 story of the place.

In practice, that means:

• Good photography and a recognisable visual identity. Not everything needs to be professionally shot, but it should make the place look like somewhere you’d actually want to visit. The identity should feel like the town too, rather than something designed by a committee fifteen years ago or an editorial spread. Good but true to fact.

  
  

• Actually showing people what there is to do. Where to eat, where to walk, what to see, where to shop, what’s happening this weekend and what you might discover that you weren’t expecting.

  
  

• Giving people reasons to visit throughout the year. What’s in bloom, what’s just opened, what’s on this month, why autumn is beautiful, where to go at Christmas and what makes a wet February weekend still worth the trip.

  
  

• Talking about local businesses regularly and fairly. Not just the businesses that are particularly vocal online or already have great marketing. Part of the job is shining a light on the places visitors might otherwise never find.

  
  

• Putting visits together for people. A Saturday in town. Three places for lunch. Market in the morning, a walk in the afternoon and somewhere for a drink before the train home. Make it easy for someone to imagine spending time there.

  
  

• Paying attention to what people already love about the place. Look at what visitors photograph, what locals recommend, what gets shared and what people mention in reviews. Sometimes your strongest tourism assets are the things nobody at the council thought needed promoting.

As Scott Turnmeyer, creative strategist and destination specialist, puts it:

"Travel trends continue to show that many travellers increasingly seek authentic, smaller communities that offer local character, walkability, and meaningful experiences rather than crowded, generic destinations. Small towns possess something many large cities cannot manufacture: authenticity."

The Visitor Is Already Interested. Don't Lose Them to Admin.

Someone is sitting in Birmingham on a Thursday night wondering what to do on Sunday.

They search. They find your town’s Instagram page.

The last three posts are about temporary traffic lights on the road into town, the library closing for staff training and a slightly out-of-focus photograph of someone receiving a certificate at a civic event.

They scroll for a bit. There’s nothing about the market on Sunday. Nothing about the great new restaurant that opened last month. Nothing showing the walk along the river or the independent shops on the high street.

So they click out and end up somewhere else on Sunday.

This is not a hypothetical; it's happening constantly, in towns across England, while the platforms people turning to are being used as a substitute for a community newsletter.

Resident information and destination marketing are two different jobs, for two different audiences. They don’t necessarily belong in the same place and, if they are going to share a platform, the balance matters.

It's Not Just About What's There. It's About What People Don't Know Is There.

One of the most common things I hear from towns is: “We don’t really have that much to offer.” Almost without exception, they’re wrong.

They have a farmers’ market that nobody has photographed properly in three years. There’s a stretch of river that looks incredible in autumn, but the last time it appeared on social media when it flooded in 2020. How very welcoming...

They might also have three genuinely good award-winning independent restaurants that have never been talked about together. There’s also a walking trail with views people would happily travel for, and the only evidence it exists is a PDF buried somewhere on the council website.

None of this things needs inventing; it's all already there. It just needs someone to package it properly.

This is where an outside perspective can make such a difference. Someone needs to look at the town without the familiarity that comes from living there and ask some fairly basic questions: What would make me come here? What would I do when I arrived? Where would I eat? What would I photograph? What would I tell someone about afterwards? And, crucially, would I know any of this from looking at the town online?

VisitBritain says that 60% of the additional visitor spending generated by its campaigns is spent outside London. People clearly want to explore beyond the obvious destinations.

Stop Talking Your Town Down

This one matters more than people realise. Some towns have developed a habit of apologising for themselves.

“We’re only a small town.” “There’s not much going on this week.” “It’s pretty quiet here.”

I always wonder: why are you telling me not to come? Can you imagine a restaurant saying "we don't have much on the menu tonight"? Small towns have got to stop hedging against themselves. That's where it starts. Knowing what you are, owning it, and communicating it without apology. Brag a little! I know you're British and it's hard, but it'll be ok!

As Kelly Ballard, destination marketing specialist, has noted: "Know who you are as a town. Identify your brand proposition, what you offer that's special, and build on it. This could include your history and what you are most known for today."

The Bigger Picture

A town doesn’t market itself alone. Every restaurant, hotel, shop, museum, attraction, theatre and event is contributing to what people think about the place.

So are the council, the BID, the chamber of commerce, and the organisations working to bring people into the area. They all have something to gain when the town gets this right.

A busy Saturday market can mean more tables filled at lunchtime. A great restaurant can persuade someone to stay overnight. A festival brings people onto the high street who might discover a shop they would never otherwise have known about. A beautiful hotel might be the reason someone discovers the town in the first place.

That’s why the best town marketing doesn’t happen in separate little pockets. The council shouldn’t be saying one thing while the BID says another and individual businesses are left to promote the destination themselves. They should be talking to each other, sharing what’s happening and, ideally, building a recognisable picture of the town together.

For anyone interested in the numbers behind this, the ONS has also looked at the relationship between visitors and residents across English towns. Its research into visitor-to-resident ratios is a useful way of seeing just how significant the visitor economy can be at town level.

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At Common Goal Creative, destination and place marketing is one of the things we know best. We work with towns, cities, villages, shopping centres, chambers of commerce, and Business Improvement Districts to build the kind of content strategy and brand identity that makes a place genuinely compelling to the people who haven't been there yet, and worth returning to for those who have.

We understand the collective nature of hospitality and destination brands. We know how to bring stakeholders together around a shared story. And we know how to look at a place and find what's worth saying about it, even when the people who live there have stopped seeing it.

If your town, your BID, your chamber, or your destination organisation is ready to start marketing like the business it actually is, we'd love to be part of that conversation.

Get in touch with the CGC team