Nowadays, businesses in the tours, attractions and tourism industry deal with competition from not only local competition but also companies located around the world.
With social media’s ever expanding reach, your tourism business has 2 choices.
- Adapt with the times; or
- Disappear.
Obviously, those aren’t actually choices, as you want your business to thrive and succeed in today’s market.
For your business to stand out and surpass your competition, regularly revamp your marketing strategy to meet the ever-changing behaviors and demands of your target audience.
Focusing on inbound marketing can make the difference between success and failure. Inbound marketing can help generate leads for you while you focus on delighting your current customers.
How do you start marketing your business?
Start by asking yourself questions your competitors are likely already asking to stay ahead:
-
What does your target audience value and want?
Creating buyer’s personas based on actual data and some educated guesses can set you apart as you can tailor your marketing efforts to match each pain point of a buyer’s persona and their journey down your perceived funnel. By answering their questions, you can become a trusted authority with your audience and more likely to keep them as customers. -
How are prospects searching for information and products/services?
You can use your data to see what content your customers are engaging with. You can also see the path that brought them to the point where your service stood out above the rest.
While you can’t see what research on other websites your customers are doing, you can use online tools to see what your competitors are doing. Watching your competitors can also be a game-changer.
It can provide you with data on trends and what they’re focusing on, which lets your company either follow their lead, blaze their own trail or optimize your strategy to fill in the gaps to bring you customers. -
What types of advertising attract their attention?
Are your PPC (pay-per-click) ads setting you above the crowd or blending in like white noise?
Does your audience live on Instagram and would they benefit from ads on there? What about FaceBook? Does YouTube drive your audience?
When you have these answers, you know exactly to target your ads, save yourself money and help your business stand out above the crowd.
You’ve answered these questions and have the data. Now what?
Engage Existing and Potential Customers
Today's consumers are informed decision-makers who usually hold off on making major purchases until after thoroughly researching and comparing everything involved.
According to Expedia.com, consumers will visit 38 websites before booking, which means you need to make an almost immediate impact to stand out above the crowd. How?
Build loyalty.
The key to achieving loyalty is forming and maintaining memorable, positive connections that make it difficult for them to forget your business and expertise.
To start, use social media networks like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest to help form and maintain these ties. Find out where your target and current audiences interact and create a thriving culture on that platform.
Set up discussions in curated groups, provide interesting content, run contests and promotions and provide a platform for feedback like reviews or product suggestions. This is invaluable data at your fingertips to market your business more efficiently.
Initially, this may seem incredibly time-consuming. However, the habitual sharing aspect of social media guarantees engaging content you provide will find its way to a broader audience and your client base will expand naturally as a result.
Request and Post Customer Feedback
Mentioned previously, feedback, reviews and suggestions can provide invaluable data.
However, many business owners and managers fail to ask for feedback or share positive feedback with their target audience. In today’s connected world, you cannot afford to be the business with only one review. If your travel business is international, some customers may only book your tour or excursion based off of other trusted reviews.
How Do I Get Reviews?
Add a feedback request to e-newsletters and set up a feedback box in-store, if applicable. Also, check the Web for reviews about your business on review sites.
The easier you make giving reviews, the more likely you are to see them come back in. Offering discount codes or other rewards to your reviewers can make a difference. Make sure that you offer the rewards across the board, and don’t penalize anyone for negative reviews.
When you receive positive feedback, post these testimonials on your website and social media accounts to re-emphasize with your audience that your business has earned its amazing reputation. Don’t forget to thank anyone who has left you a review, no matter the tone.
Harness the Power of Pictures
Travelers rely on first impressions from pictures to help them decide on destination and event locations. Also, modern consumers love to look at and share beautiful pictures.
Instead of adding long-winded destination descriptions to your social media accounts, post high quality pictures and videos and an eye-catching sentence or two about the destination, such as a quote, call to action, joke or poll. Optimize every picture and description based on which platform you are on.
-Instagram. Make sure that you have appropriate hashtags and alt text. Using a consistent filter or color scheme can also help make it more visually appealing to visitors, and easier to strategize with.
Hosting a special event? Utilize stories to promote and share the event without worrying about scripting your video, as they disappear in 24 hours. Stories help your company appear more human as well, which boosts your audience’s trust in your company.
-FaceBook. Avoiding hashtags and instead using emojis can make an impact with your photos. Using your photos to create polls, contests or promotions can also make your FaceBook page stand out above the rest. Stories also exist here, though businesses seem to be slow to implement them.
-Twitter. Using URL shorteners and relevant or trending hashtags can help your website traffic.
Highlighting a particular tour or attraction on a particular day can drive traffic to those specific tours or landing pages on your website. Using unique hash-tags like #tourtuesday or #sillythingssunday can show your personality and let your customers shine.
Don’t forget to use customer generated content! If you set up a hashtag for them to share their content with or if you re-post their content, you are more likely to see those posts shared and others wanting to join in. This also provides a somewhat uncontrolled look at how your company works.
The main takeaway? Utilize recent and upcoming social network changes to drive your social media and overall marketing strategy.
Get an ADTACK Plan Today
With these three simple inbound marketing techniques, you can outpace the competition by driving traffic, generating leads, increasing revenues building brand recognition and creating lasting interest no matter your business's location or the products and services it offers travelers.
Contact ADTACK today to get a customized plan and a clear path on how to implement these actions so your business can begin to see an increase in leads.
Call us at 702-270-8772 or fill out our convenient online form for a free consultation today! We look forward to hearing from you and helping you every step of the way.
