Find out and understand some necessary tools to start an efficient tourism marketing strategy to get more clients and sales.
If you have a company in the tourism business, surely you have a professional profile in some social network and know the value of communicating with your customers and even in increasing sales. But do you know how it can influence their destination choice?
The internet has changed consumer relations and personal communication and, thanks to social networks, we can connect and share our opinions about different subjects and experiences, which has made it easy to seek information about our next trip. When we choose our destination, it is natural that we search for as much information as possible about it, either on our social networks or on search engines like Google, to understand the opinions of those who have already been to the places and what those experiences were like.
To assist tourism professionals, there are travel marketing tools you can use to attract travelers. In this article we will address two of them, social networks and SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and give you tips on how to optimize their use.
The Influence of Social Media for Tourism Brands
As we have already said, social networks are tools known and used all over the world. Precisely because of this, tourism marketing sought to create and improve methods using social networks in order to shorten the space between client and company and help you choose your next destination.
Statista, the statistics portal, presents Facebook, Youtube, Instagram and TikTok as the main social networks of 2020. TikTok, launched in 2016, is a social network to produce and broadcast videos up to 1 minute and it gained strength during the pandemic because it showed content creators a new way to communicate with the public in a fast and creative way. The network already has over 680 million profiles worldwide.
A survey conducted by Schofields Insurance in 2017 showed that 40% of people aged between 18 and 33 choose their travel destination by how ‘instagrammable’ the location is. The results show that the way the photos of the trip will appear online – i.e. in your Instagram profile, a network with over 1 billion users – is more important for part of the travelers than the immersion in the local culture (9.4%), local tours (3.9%) and even the cost of the trip (24%).
From this data you can understand how much this tool works to influence consumers, so tourism and hospitality companies should use the opportunity that the digital world can offer. This kind of online advertising, known as attraction marketing, is a strategy that connects brands with people who want to travel.
Social Network Best Practices
Now that you understand a little about the importance of these networks in the process of choosing destinations, you should also know how to use them in the most effective way.
Produce relevant content
Having an account on social networks isn’t enough. You should also post consistently, so your profile won’t look abandoned. It is also important to be aware of the content you will be sharing. Try to give information about the destination and share the experiences of those who have already taken this trip, telling stories of friendships and love that arose there or the quiet and relaxing weeks that families had during the days away from home. The more relevant and touching your content is, greater are the chances that your audience will remember you when scheduling a trip.
Know your audience
To know if the content you are producing and sharing is relevant, you should understand who you are communicating to and know your audience in depth. All social networks provide a range of information about their followers, such as age, gender, region they live in and what devices they use.
As is the case with Facebook Business, which provides a series of data about its users in the insights tab. Through the analysis of this data it is possible to define what is the best strategy to talk to your network and even what is the ideal time to reach more people.
Doing this analysis carefully, you can create content directed to a certain age group present in your network, for example, being possible to share the experiences of a place from the perspective of profiles similar to those you want to reach, providing the feeling of belonging to that group.
Use images to talk
It is natural that in the process of choosing your next trip there will be research on the place you wish to visit. Because it is an experience, it can be difficult to put what it was like to be in that place into words. In these cases, we can use the photographic resource in our favor.
A beautiful and eye-catching photo of that destination can hold the attention of your potential client. Through this resource it becomes possible to expose the “soul” that the place has to offer, illustrating something that was in your imagination until then, the image can materialize part of the experience of being there. It can awaken the desire to know more about that destination and more about its products in the reader.
Creativity and speed have become allies in travel marketing
We receive a flood of information on the Internet and, therefore, the more diversified its contents are, the greater the chances of them standing out. A good tool to help in this mission are the fast consumption videos – like those published on Facebook and Instagram. Keep an eye out for internet trends as well, like memes, news in the field and viral content.
SEO and Organic Traffic: Google Can Be Your Best Seller!
After consuming all that content on social networks and choosing where your next trip will be, it is likely that the next step is to perform a general internet search. And when we think about searching for information soon comes to mind the largest search engine in the world: Google.
It is not only through paid ads that you can appear on Google’s first page. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the name given to the techniques used within your site that Google’s algorithms use to rank you on the first page.
Getting well positioned in organic searches is very important. Besides indicating that your page goes well, it is free and people generally prefer to visit “normal” results than paid ads.
But it is important to know that this kind of content marketing that generates organic return requires a considerable volume of relevant and optimized posts on your site. To work with good SEO, you will need time and a specialized team. A marketing professional will certainly make a difference in this process.
Advice on Travel Marketing and Communication
The process of managing and performing all the necessary techniques to achieve online organic success can be challenging. That’s why it’s important to have a solid marketing team that is attuned to all the fundamental details to achieve your company’s goals.
An arm of the well known Guia Viajar Melhor, that reaches over 5 million unique readers per year, Travel Media PR works directly with tourism marketing and has global reach, offering a series of tools to create and develop ideas for your company, strengthen destination strategies, and support campaigns.
Through tailored advice, Travel Media PR, our agency brings solutions to companies and tourist destinations, supports you in planning, executing and managing your social networks and SEO campaigns. This allows your communication to reach your target audience directly, optimizing the content and time spent to achieve your expected success. These services also include global press advisory and public relations solutions, aimed at reducing the boundaries between the foreign consumer and travel and tourism industry brands around the world.
