All types of tourism businesses feel the heat of online competition. Travel agents, booking sites, and other travel companies are all clamoring for attention – and business. Savvy travel digital marketing strategies, creative branding, and meaningful connections are cornerstones for success. Discover ten ways a respected travel marketing agency helps tourism businesses generate more leads.
1. Define the Target Audience
A general approach relies on finding random consumers who might be ready to book a trip. Defining the target audience helps companies hone in on the ideal timing, strategy, and keywords to attract paying consumers. Who wants a specific type of travel experience, and why? Getting to know the demographics of the company’s target audience is crucial to success.
A travel marketing agency helps businesses define a target audience then make an emotive connection with it. Campaigns are tailored to reach out to these people. Make sure to provide an answer to a question or a unique excursion to fulfill a need. Focus on memorable travel experiences (MTEs) based on the demographics of potential customers. What do they like to do, and how does the company make it more enjoyable? Knowing the target audience is crucial to resonate with it.
2. Develop Customer Personas
Once a travel company determines its travel audience, the process should be broken down further. Customer personas include vital information, such as age, income, interests, and buying habits. Data-driven brainstorming is the best way to develop realistic personas for highly targeted marketing campaigns. The goal is to bring these customer personas to life, enabling marketers to get into their minds and deliver what they want.
Use actual names and provide details for each persona, such as the type of job the person has and where they go for recreation. Then create a journey map to define each step of the engagement with your travel brand and what the customer is looking for – so you can deliver it! A travel marketing agency conducts the research and brainstorming to define accurate customer personas, based on what your company provides. Knowing the basics about a potential customer encourages meaningful connections and helps generate more leads.
3. Create a User-Friendly Brand
With a target audience, customer personas, and a journey map in-hand, companies are ready to connect with potential customers. The next step is to create a user-friendly brand. If past branding efforts fell flat, it’s time to revamp the approach to reach out to people and make them remember the company. Beyond the logo and slogans, a brand must be authentic and trustworthy. A travel marketing agency helps travel businesses develop an approach people listen to and trust.
Informative web content, a professional social media presence, and honest interactions all support positive brand identity. A cutting-edge travel marketing agency recognizes the latest branding trends to put them to work for travel companies. Current trends include the use of eye-catching illustrations, sharing personal stories rather than corporate monologues, and keeping the message simple and streamlined. In-destination experiences are an excellent way to boost SEO, improve engagement, and generate more leads. Travel companies that catch these customers on-the-go are realizing increased profits.
4. Perform Keyword Research
With the groundwork for success laid out, travel companies need to focus on becoming a recognizable presence in a saturated digital environment. Countless businesses are offering similar vacations, experiences, and products. Savvy travel businesses focus on a particular niche market to build a recurring business activity. From millennial adventurers looking for international action to senior tourists searching for historical experiences, there are countless niches to consider. Local keywords are also crucial for travelers to find unique excursions to specific destinations.
Once a travel company selects a niche, it’s time to find the right keywords for searchers to find the business during a simple search. What words are consumers entering into the search box to locate your type of company? Use Google Analytics and other tools to find targeted keywords based on volume and competition. Low-competition keywords are excellent for beginners looking to rank first on a few searches. As a company picks up speed, high-competition keywords put them in the game with the big players. Increased organic traffic is an excellent way to generate more leads.
5. Complete a Competitor Analysis
From small travel agencies to worldwide hotel chains, every travel company is concerned about the competition. Studying the competition’s online activities is a way to stay ahead of the curve. And observing their actions can also help travel businesses initiate new campaigns based on what other industry experts are doing right now.
A dedicated traveling marketing agency completes a competitor analysis to find out what types of keyword and content are ranking best for the competition. Smart travel businesses use this powerful information to jump-start their current and future travel SEO campaigns. The typical competitor analysis identifies the competition and what they are doing, such as backlinks and other marketing endeavors. Find backlink opportunities, hone in on a fresh niche market, and find organic keywords to drive more traffic to your travel website. Competitor analysis helps travel companies find new sources of revenue – and start getting more leads.
6. Consider Website Design Best Practices
A website is the first impression many online consumers get from a travel company. An attractive webpage keeps visitors engaged, encouraging them to move down the sales funnel. Once a visitor starts clicking on destinations, there are multiple opportunities to draw them into the funnel. Use website design elements to encourage sharing, saving, and taking action. Visitors should get a feeling of trust and encouragement from a travel website.
A travel website should load quickly and be mobile-friendly to capture in-destination searchers. Specific search parameters and drop-down menus make it easy for people to find what they want. A site should be interactive, simple to navigate, and include plenty of calls to action to transform visitors into leads. A travel marketing agency understands website design best practices that encourage people to feel comfortable enough to book a trip. A personalized journey with photos and descriptive content draws people into the potential experience and makes them want to have it, too.
7. Craft Informative and Entertaining Content
Travel industry professionals recognize the need to have a smart website design and keyword-based content. But it takes more than writing text around keywords to get people to read an article, relate to what it says, then take a specific action based on what they remember. A travel marketing agency works with professional wordsmiths who know how to craft informative and entertaining content that is also naturally infused with the right keywords. Achieving this delicate balance is a challenge, and best left in the hands of experienced pros.
Outstanding content begins with an exciting topic. What are travelers looking for today? Visit travel forums and websites to see what everyone is talking about right now. Look for “people also ask” questions that come up during a Google search for a particular location or experience. Create topic titles based on the usual inquiries people have about traveling. Take an innovative approach to traditional topics. The goal is to stand out from all the other articles about the same subject. Dare to be a know-it-all or a fun-loving friend – take an approach your target market will appreciate.
8. Develop Compelling Calls to Action
Well-written content that attracts targeted readers is just the beginning. Great content is meaningless without compelling calls to action. Readers need to know what you want them to do next. And the only way to get them to take action is to define a need or problem, agitate the readers about it, then offer a possible solution. Evoke emotional responses to the calls to action based on urgency or curiosity. For example, a limited time discount creates an urgent feeling. The visitor will miss out on the savings if they surf away. Or, sharing MTEs can make a reader want to know more about a destination by visiting it firsthand.
Calls to action should be clear and easy to execute. Provide a button or link for visitors to click and instantly move into the sales funnel. If conversion rates are slow, consider an interim call to action – such as sharing an email address to get updates about future travel discounts. Or offer something for free, such as tips for traveling with kids or how to get around on public transportation in the city. The goal is to establish a connection with a visitor before he or she leaves. The interested readers of today can be the travel customers of tomorrow!
9. Maximize the Back-end
The front-end aspects of a website are features everyone can see when they enter the site. The homepage content, blog articles, and video tours are instantly accessible. Visitors see the content, images, and links then click on them to find out more. And the keywords used in this web content attract organic traffic from the search engines. While these upfront methods are useful to generate more leads, it’s also crucial to maximize the back-end.
Each page has metadata, including a title and a description. The title is what appears when someone hovers over the site address in the browser. And the metadata is the first lines of text that appear on search engine results. A travel marketing agency focuses on improving the back-end with keyword-rich titles and metadata. These features should be continually updated to reflect current search patterns and user intent. As time moves forward, searchers change their focus. And the titles and metadata must be revised accordingly to ensure the content ranks well and can be instantly found by targeted searchers.
10. Share Reports Revealing Measurable Results
When it comes to travel SEO, there is never a “one and done” approach. Optimization is an ongoing process to help sites crawl up the search engine rankings then stay there. The strategies that worked two years ago are unlikely to yield the same notable results today. The SEO industry is continually evolving and changing. A travel marketing agency prepares reports for clients to have a visual representation of their marketing progression.
Marketing campaigns should yield measurable results based on quality keyword-based content crafted to reach out to a specific target market. An agency should report results both verbally and in writing to help companies gauge their progress. What campaigns are performing and which ones should be eliminated? Comparing past reports helps companies recognize the ROI on hiring a travel SEO pro to get results that help bring in more leads.
These ten steps are crucial to the success of your travel business. If the process sounds overwhelming, it’s time to get help. Trying to handle SEO and content creation on your own is a time-consuming process that takes company owners away from essential business development activities.
The professionals at Galileo Tech Media provide the tactical support tourism businesses need to take their companies to the next level of success. Our experts work with international travel corporations to help them build a memorable brand, create meaningful connections with travelers, and enjoy a steady stream of ongoing leads.
Are you ready to realize the ROI on your marketing investment? Discover the road to higher profits and potential by contacting us today for more information!
