While the travel industry is heavily affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the travel & tour business is still a lucrative business opportunity in a growing industry. However, how well you market your travel and tour business is now extremely important to ensure potential buyers are aware of your business and the services you provide.
Obviously, the travel industry is also a very competitive one, and so marketing can be challenging and expensive. This is why having the right strategy is very important if you want to achieve success.
With that being said, here we will share seven effective marketing tips that you can use for your travel and tour business, and let us begin with the first one.
1. Research Your Target Market
As in any business, the most important thing is to identify your target audience and understand what they want and need.
Without a proper understanding of your target audience, you won’t be able to market your trip successfully.
So, identify who your ideal customer is, and create a buyer persona.
A buyer persona is a semi-fictional model of your ideal audience, where you’ll list various demographics information about this buyer persona from gender, age, income, as well as their needs, behaviors, and problems, among others.
The better you can identify your target market’s needs and behaviors, the better you can design your trip for them, and the better you can tailor your marketing campaigns to attract them.
So, before anything else, do your market research homework: analyze your existing customer base, as well as your competitors’ customers to create the best possible buyer persona and gather as much data as you can. Also, check various travel industry research reports.
2. Make Sure You Have an Optimal Website
In today’s digital age, your website can be considered the digital equivalent of your storefront.
You have to make sure your website is attractive for travel lovers but is performance-optimized so it’s also easy to use and navigate. You should also optimize the website and its content for SEO to ensure it’s visible on search engine rankings so you can generate more organic traffic.
While website optimization can be a pretty deep subject to discuss, here are some key areas to consider:
- Make sure your site is mobile-friendly or mobile responsive.
- Make sure your website loads quickly. According to Google, 50% of visitors will bounce from a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.
- Make sure your site is free from typos and grammatical errors. Your written content should be valuable and relevant for travelers.
- Use high-quality images and photos, very important for travel websites. Add videos when you can.
3. Leverage Social Media
In this age of social media, it’s fairly obvious to build brand awareness on social media that your target audience frequents.
We can generally divide social media marketing into three different tactics:
- Organic: that is, building your social media followers and organically reach out to them. This is the most cost-effective tactic and can be totally free. However, it can take a lot of time before you can build a substantial amount of social media followers.
- Paid: most social media platforms offer paid options to advertise on their networks. Advertising your travel and tour business with Facebook Ads, for example, can help amplify the scope of your sales.
- Influencers: work with travel influencers in your area and let them promote your business.
Be creative when marketing your business on social media, and the secret is to consistently publish meaningful and engaging content.
4. Partner with Local Businesses
Partnering with other businesses in your area can be a cost-efficient and effective way to amplify your reach and grow your customer base. For example, you can partner with hotel providers or even restaurants in your travel route to help promote each other.
The basic idea here is simple, you’ll share your audience base with other businesses, and vice versa, which will end up benefiting each other.
5. Make It as Easy as Possible to Book Your Service
You’ve tried so hard to attract your valuable customers with all the marketing tactics we’ve discussed above, and the last thing you’d want is for them to abandon your service because it’s difficult to book a ticket on your site.
This is where having a professional tour booking software like Bookeo can significantly help not only in providing an easy-to-use system for your potential clients, but also to eliminate double bookings, no-shows, and other typical issues with travel booking.
With Bookeo you can accept travel bookings from your website and Facebook page, 24/7 and you can also sell more trips through various distribution channels like Tripadvisor and Expedia, all within a single dashboard.
6. Email Marketing
Despite all the newer marketing channels and technologies, email marketing remains one of the most effective ways to market your business with one of the highest ROI.
A lot of potential customers might not book a trip directly after they’ve visited your site, and this is why you should encourage them to subscribe to your email newsletter. You can send promotional emails offering your affordable trips and discount coupons, and you can even include testimonials from previous travelers to attract them.
7. Service Excellence
Above anything else, remember that your travel & tour business is a service business, and one of the best ways to attract more customers is to continuously provide high-quality, excellent service to your customers.
When they are happy with your service, they’ll also recommend your service to their friends and peers, and this is the most effective, affordable way to build your customer base.
The better you understand your customers’ needs, the better you’ll be able to provide excellent service. So, make sure to pay attention to your clients’ demands and encourage them to give feedback.
