10 Digital Marketing Tips for Travel Agencies & Suppliers page 1
INTROduction Jaclyn, onq & the ebook About jaclyn Jac is the Chief Steward at OnQ Marketing. Her working years began in the travel industry, so travel marketing is something she is particularly passionate about. She is driven by sugar kicks and the notion that advertising alone simply doesn t cut it anymore. She believes that to deliver a message we must use enthusiasm, encourage creativity and tell a story. A lover of social media and design, she rarely stands still and likes it that way. Jac is all about generating positive change for her clients, whatever their needs may be. Jac manages tourism and travel industry clientele at OnQ Marketing. Ask Jac about social media, web development, ecommerce optimisation, local marketing and email. page 2
About ONQ Marketing OnQ Marketing is a digital marketing agency providing a range of marketing services to engage and interact with your audience. We re web design gurus, SEO nerds and social media freaks. Put simply; each member of our team has a specific skill set to support your digital strategy. We offer access to a suite of digital marketing services without the commitment of a full-time digital guru. We eat digital marketing for breakfast and lunch and dinner (and the occasional snack in between). About the ebook This ebook has been compiled for the travel and tourism sector. The travel marketing landscape is constantly evolving and the seemingly endless marketing options can sometimes mean that the simplest opportunities are missed. Our aim is to provide you with a simple guide to kick-start (or positively alter) your travel marketing efforts. page 3
contents Make the customer your the hero 5 Tip 1: Serve Up a Responsive Website 6 Tip 2: Develop a Social Media Strategy 7 Tip 3: Test, Test and Test Again 8 Tip 4: Start Creating Content 9 Tip 5: Create an Email Newsletter 10 Tip 6: Know Your Data 11 Tip 7: Ramp Up Your Search Marketing 12 Tip 8: Find a Brand Ambassador 13 Tip 9: Do Something Useful 14 Tip 10: Engage Experts 15 Our services 16 page 4
MAKE THE CUSTOMER the hero Chris Brogan, American author, journalist and marketing consultant, suggests that we should all be working to make our customer the hero. The common approach for many travel agencies is to make the destination or tour offering the hero. How so? By talking about how awesome it is, filling social media feeds with brochure-worthy images of holiday hot spots, advertising earlybird offers, or sending out emails with sale notices. While this approach may generate customers who are loyal to a particular type of travel package or supplier, how loyal are they to you? You should aim to make your customer the hero, and in the process create a story about your agency. Use the digital space to share your customer reviews, create testimonial videos, ask customers to blog about their experience and share their photos and travel tips. By engaging your existing customers you can reach out to new customers in a completely different way virally. Recent studies show that 82% of travellers trust recommendations from family and friends and one in three travellers use social media as a main source of travel ideas and inspiration. Digital marketing is considered more efficient and cost-effective compared to traditional methods of advertising. This assumption is partly right, but also a little misguided. Digital marketing allows you as a travel agency to improve the relationship with your customer. With a better relationship comes a better understanding of what your customer wants and how you can provide that. Make your customer the hero and reap the rewards. We feel it is important to mention this before outlining our top 10 tips for travel agencies because the notion of making the customer your hero should be the underlying premise for every one of these tips. page 5
TIP # 1 Serve up a Responsive Website While these ideas are not listed in any order of preference, it is no accident that we have outlined responsive websites as tip #1. The amount of time people spend browsing the web via a smartphone or tablet is skyrocketing and is predicted to surpass desktop usage in the near future. Are you tracking what percentage of users visit your website from a mobile device? You should be! It all comes down to the customer experience. If your website offers a terrible browsing experience from a mobile, potential customers may leave and go to your competitors. If the experience is mediocre then you might, at the very least, lose the opportunity to make a sale. Handy Tip Responsive websites are recommended by Google, so feel safe in the knowledge that they will not be forgotten overnight. Get some professional advice - be mindful that contentheavy sites often require a different strategy in terms of responsive design. One strategy may be to build a lean version of your site and serve it from m.yoursite.com. page 6
TIP # 2 Develop a Social Media Strategy Like every other business, you have a Facebook page may not be sure what else you should be doing. Take the time to identify your audience and where they spend their time. Identify your competitors and where they are having success. Take a look at industry bodies and where they choose to engage with their customers. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube and Google+ are all well-suited for a travel agency. Your strategy should be more than just identifying who uses what site and where; the aim of course is to create content that will engage your audience, encourage them to share it, and ultimately to book and recommend your services. The word travel should evoke warm feelings, positive emotions and excitement, and so too should your social media content. Travel is a popular vertical on social media and well produced images or videos of travel destinations or users experiences tend to generate positive responses.the key is to identify your objectives with each platform. You should have different conversation styles for different platforms, post different items with varying regularity, and optimise everything before posting. Use social media to make your customer service better than your next three competitors. Don t forget to make your customer the hero. page 7
TIP # 3 Test, Test & Test Again Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) is the practice of optimising your website to convert leads. The idea being that it is cheaper to get more sales from existing traffic than to go out and find more - a sound theory. It is important to keep in mind that the practise of conversion testing will improve the user experience, therefore improving your customer s satisfaction. You will need the correct tools (or an agency) to manage testing for you. Start by testing your home page and elements within it. You might test a change to the text for your key messages and call to actions, or deliver a different image to half of your audience. Test your contact forms on individual travel packages and contact page. Conversion rate can be improved simply by changing the colour of a button or changing wording. Create a culture of testing within your workplace. Keep testing your website in order to improve it. While we touch on these further on, you should also be testing the delivery times, subject lines and content within your email newsletters. Check out Optimizely, Visual Website Optimizer or Google s own testing product to get you started. Your email newsletter software should enable you to do what you need with your newsletters. page 8
TIP # 4 Start Creating Content Content is king. All the technology in the world won t help you if you don t have anything interesting or useful to share. By producing great content you will attract and nurture great customers. Great content will build your social following and improve your search performance. It all comes back to making your customer the hero. Produce online content that helps them, and in-turn they will click on it, share it on social media, subscribe to your newsletter and hopefully eventually contact you to book their next holiday. Start writing a blog, produce destination or testimonial videos, take great destination photos, create funny travelinspired memes and even look into creating an ebook (Perhaps your own 10 hottest travel destinations for 2014). page 9
TIP # 5 Create an Email Newsletter Facebook might be sexy but email is still one of the leading communication vehicles at our disposal. Whilst Facebook fans are great, who knows when something better will come along and we will all stop using it. Email is here to stay. Set yourself up with a leading email software provider; MailChimp and Campaign Monitor are both fantastic for different reasons. Get someone to design an awesome responsive template for you and include a subscriber form in a prominent position on your website. Don t stop there; have an opt-in option on all of your material where appropriate, run promotions to collect emails in-store and use your social media profiles to drive sign-ups. Take it one step further and segment your databases to ensure you have the ability to send newsletters with more targeted content. Whatever you do, don t just throw people onto your list without their permission! Give them a clear option to unsubscribe, and don t be a pest. Make your customer the hero. page 10
TIP # 6 Know Your Data Do not make the mistake of thinking that data is an asset only large corporates should be looking at. Data is crucial for even the smallest of agencies. Take advantage of analytics software. Google Analytics is currently the best free software on the market.take the time to familiarise yourself with the different features and if you need help, engage someone to either teach you or provide you with a monthly report. The right data will tell you a myriad of things to help you update your website, configure your packages, drive your social media strategy and generally improve the way in which you engage with your customer. page 11
TIP # 7 Ramp Up Your Search Marketing Before you can make your customer the hero you need to find them! The key search engines are a terrific place to start because we know that your potential customers are out there, you just have to make sure you are where they are when they are looking for you. Concentrate on your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) as it s a more sustainable approach than paid advertising. Yes, SEO will cost you money and time but once your on-page site optimisation is to a certain level and your content strategy is in place, it shouldn t be a massive burden on your budget. Search advertising or Google Adwords are crucial to your strategy because travel is such a competitive market. page 12
TIP # 8 Find Brand Ambassadors Know your VIP customers. Some may be reserved individuals but others could potentially become your unofficial brand ambassadors. Consider them a huge asset to your agency and don t let their high opinions of your business and service remain private. Look after them, encourage them to write reviews, make it easy for them to share your content on social media and spruik your business. page 13
TIP # 9 do something useful If you re serious about making your customer the hero then do something useful for them. Think about the problems they face in their pursuit of a holiday and find a way to help tackle them. This could come in the form of an FAQ booklet, a complimentary Lonely Planet destination guide, a personal concierge service at their hotel, a free upgrade, a private airport transfer, or a dinner reservation to celebrate a special occasion. Remember to be helpful and make it about the customer, not you. page 14
TIP # 10 Engage Experts Digital marketing is still in its infancy and the landscape is always changing. Ten years ago we didn t have Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram and Google+. This is not to put a dampener on our preceding 9 tips; they re general tips that will remain relevant for some time. It will help however, if you can engage with a digital marketing expert or agency to remain on top of future developments. Look into affordable monthly packages or retainer arrangements with credible agencies that will provide you with support and ongoing strategic advice to ensure you remain a benchmark in your industry and capitalise on opportunities before your competitors. If you prefer to task your staff with digital marketing consider engaging a digital agency to sit down with them for a few hours a month to make sure everything remains on track. page 15
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