Social media and in particular Facebook is popular and well fitting for the industry so if you’re working for a travel/tourism related business, you’re going to like this.

I’m obsessed with travel and have decided to specialise my Digital Marketing Agency to service the Travel Industry. In my research on how to do this best I have come across some good advice:
1. The key is in both Search AND Discover
Applying both a pull and push strategy – let people “search” for you in Google but let them equally “discover” you in Facebook. You will know which one may have more relevance depending if you are in tours and experiences or more focused on flight/hotel bookings. Many hotel bookers look for a place to stay last minute so it logically makes more sense for hotels to be active on Search as it is intent based. Tour and travel agencies’ bookings can take up to 3-6 months and are a bit less time- and price sensitive.

Facebook advertising may be the easiest to afford and should be your first step.
Doing Google Search can be tricky and expensive as so many of you will be bidding for the same keywords.
Some tips to make Google Search more affordable as well as effective is to:
• Adjust Your Offerings, Bids, and Budgets to Seasonality Patterns & Target Demographics – be extremely diligent about timing as well as demographics, because within the travel industry timing and catering to specific personas is beyond critical. AdWords should continuously be adjusted, pausing seasonably irrelevant campaigns, making adjustments to ad text, and monitoring locations, time and hour of the day are even more critical to avoid wasting large sums of marketing spend. Run your campaigns for a while and learn: once you have a substantial amount of data, dig into your geographic report to get a sense of the main locations people are searching from and make adjustments to your bidding strategy from there.
• Create separate campaigns for each destination: Aside from giving you better control over your budget for higher interest locations, which have higher advertising needs, this will also allow you to easily pause and un-pause your campaigns that are relevant per season.
• Find an unexplored niche and own it!

2. Be Specific in Your Messaging!
You will see much better results from a very specific message delivered to highly targeted customers than a general message. The more personalised it is, the better the response.
By sub-segmenting and personalising the ads to specific target audiences, your brand will usually get more bang for your buck and the audience will be more interested in the ads. Bringing you more Return on your Marketing Investment.
Sell the sizzle not the steak!
To boost their interest, add a line or two that tells potential clients why they want to visit – intrigue them!

3. The critical factor is Targeting – knowing your ideal customer
The most critical question you as Travel business owner should ask yourself is – who is my ideal customer? – if you cannot answer that clearly then your digital advertising will fail.

Targeting is the key to make Digital Advertising Work! And you can only target effectively if you can clearly identify your ideal customer, your avatar.
By using Facebook’s targeting options and tailoring the ads to fit, it should be a lot easier to capture the interest of you target audiences. Targeting your audience in Facebook around special occasions, such as anniversaries, weddings & engagements, promotions etc. could be especially effective if that is your speciality.

4. It’s visual and Video is KING – Opt for Breathtaking
When people book travel, they often choose a destination based on how the idea of a trip makes them feel.
Whilst images are a lot cheaper, faster, easier and requires less commitment to produce than video, video will perform a lot better and fits perfectly with displaying destinations and experiences. Next best is a carousel ad. But whatever you do make sure you visuals are top, top quality – rather go for stock images if not. Though authenticity is still the best.

5. Why you? – differentiate your agency
Successful advertisements show customers why they should book travel with your business instead of choosing another company or even handling the arrangements themselves. This means making advertisements that are not just informative but also intriguing.

Ask, what makes us different? Showcase your company’s distinctive offerings because this is what will guide them to book with you over your competitors.
Potential clients have numerous travel companies from which to choose. Provide the reasons a travel customer should choose your business in your advertisements.
If you specialise in highly personalised travel arrangements or last-minute vacations, mention that in your ad. If you are the authority on adventure travel, let potential clients know. Likewise, if you specialise in booking trips for groups and ensuring hassle-free vacations, you can attract customers by mentioning this in your ad.

6. Offer something of real value. Be a solution! What problem does your customer want you to solve for them?
General branding ads are great when needed but specific promotion campaigns, sales or special deals will generally perform better, especially if your targeting is right. Again: sell the sizzle not the steak!
People are almost always ready to buy but they are not ready for you to hard-sell. They key insight is to solve a meaningful problem for them, then no hard-sell is required.

By placing your customers’ needs first, you’ll transform your relationship and your own business, identify what your audience needs instead of guessing or putting your interests first.
If you offer content to address client needs and then offer a solution to fulfill those needs, then you’ll achieve greater results.

7. Use ads as part of a longer funnel or specific lead generation
For Tours and Experiences the cost of most of the bookings made is a significant amount of money to the traveller, so generally, they take more convincing and longer time to book – hence the need for travel consultants at tour agencies.
This means we need to “warm” up your audience. Let your ads take your audience to a great piece of content where they can take the next step. Not directly to the booking page which is too fast (that’s great for the buying intent you get through Google) and not simply straight to the website frontpage as that offers them too many options to not find your offer or to click away.

This is also closely linked to understanding your buyer’s journey. Offering the most relevant messages at each of the “phases” they find themselves in, is critical!
Quite often you need to build a relationship with your prospective client over time:
• during the pre-awareness phase you will need to make them aware of a “problem”,
• then during the awareness stage, you may want to “educate” them on their options (you are also establishing your credibility),
• then let them find YOUR solution to their “problem” and
• only then make them an offer they cannot refuse.

Create Trusted and Socially Validated Landing Pages – Let’s face it, traveling is a financial investment! When people book travel they’re providing confidential financial information, which is always a risk. This is why providing proof that your services are secure and legitimate is beyond necessary. Client testimonials on every landing page is a trust-builder and “selling tool”.

8. Retargeting and Remarketing – Nurture your leads!
One of the most important “tricks” is retargeting and remarketing to those that have visited your website or have interacted with your ad and serving them some more ads to entice them further.

If I had to choose just one piece of advice this would be it.

But also pay attention to the next part: The biggest downfall in small businesses is the process of response and follow-up on enquiries. You have spent the money, now treat those leads like gold – nurture them!
So how do you go from leads to customers? If you are able to work with them through a personal touch that is great (usually this means a warm body and a phone).
If that is not possible you manage them through email marketing – an automated email chain that guides your lead to the point where they are ready to purchase often is the best approach.

9. Dedicate time, resources and budget to Digital Marketing
Digital marketing makes it much easier for small business owners to compete for market share.
And businesses that dedicate time, resources and budget to digital marketing gain significant advantage over those that don’t.
Due to the cost effectiveness of digital marketing, small companies may make their mark and even compete against larger, more established businesses.

If it is not something you are sure you can do exceptionally well then outsource it to a Digital Marketing expert.

10. Monitor, Measure, Track
What gets measured gets managed.
Digital Marketing allows you to ultimately measure your Return on your Advertising Spend. Measure every step, know where your results come from and focus your efforts there.

Continue to refine and tweak till you have a success recipe.
With traditional media in the past the conundrum they faced was beautifully summed up in the famous John Wanamaker quote: “Half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I do not know which half.” With Digital Marketing those days are over.
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If you are ready to grow. If you believe in Digital Marketing. And if you need help in getting your Inbound Digital Marketing done then contact purplefirefish – we are waiting for your call.

Not sure? We offer a FREE (30 min) Strategy Consultation Call where we talk about your business, your goals and the best strategy to generate quality leads for your business. It might very well be the best 30 min you spend time on this week.
Click here to set it up.

References:
https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/5-steps-powerful-digital-marketing-strategy
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/12-building-blocks-digital-marketing-campaign
https://adespresso.com/blog/ive-analyzed-100-ads-in-the-travel-industry-and-heres-what-i-found/
https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2015/02/11/travel-marketing