Tour Marketing 101: How To Promote Your Tours And Activities
If you own a tour marketing business, then you know that you need to come up with smart marketing strategies in order to stay ahead of the competition. With the holidays around the corner, this is the best time to grow your brand by marketing your business and providing valuable content that will position you as an expert in the tours and travel industry.
People love to travel in order to give themselves a break from the monotony that everyday life has to offer. We are going to give you marketing tips on how to promote your tours and activities in a way that will help you attract and retain clients.
Here is a guide on some of the best ways to promote your tour company.
Identify Your Potential Customers
In order to create marketing strategies that will attract customers, you need to know your target audience well so that you can tailor offers and content that will appeal to them. For instance, what motivates your ideal client to travel? Is your ideal client a local or international tourist? Which sites do your ideal clients use to find holiday destinations? What type of activities do your ideal clients engage in during their travels?
Understanding the interests, demographics, and motivations of your ideal clients is the first step toward creating successful marketing strategies. We recommend focusing your efforts on a specific type of client in order to make your services more compelling.
Create Marketing Campaigns For The Holidays
Holiday seasons usually record the largest number of travels. If you want to stay ahead of your competitors, we recommend adding an extra sparkle to your tour company’s brand to match the holiday season.
One of the best ways of spreading the holiday cheers that we recommend is to create holiday-themed content on your website as well as social media platforms. By posting holiday-themed content during the holiday season, you will improve the performance of your website on major search engines like Google. This is because, during the holiday season, search engines are more likely to show holiday-themed content to people interested in traveling. Additionally, holiday-themed content will show your target audience that you are a tourism industry expert.
Another holiday tour marketing tip to boost your sales is by creating a sense of urgency in your marketing campaigns in order to prompt more people to take action. Some of the best ways to create a sense of urgency in tour marketing include:
- Posting offers with limited time
- Offering deals to current customers
- Offering promotions to new customers
- Giving away holiday travel guides
We also recommend creating vacation packages or offering holiday combos on your social media pages and your website to boost your marketing strategies.
Have A Social Media Strategy
Do you know that most people spend more time scrolling on social media than they spend browsing the rest of the internet? This means that a huge number of your prospective customers are scrolling on social media right now. If you are not taking advantage of social media campaigns, then you are giving other tourism companies a chance to beat you at the competition.
Social media pages are the best place to build an online community of travelers that you can convert into your most loyal clientele. One of the best ways to build the presence of your brand on social media is by asking your current clients to share their amazing experiences with your company on your page. By displaying customer experiences on your platform, your brand appears more credible, resulting in more bookings and sales.
Also, social platforms like Facebook allow you to create campaigns that will be shown to your ideal customer, that is, people who are more likely to buy your services. In addition to offering flexible affordable pricing, Facebook ads allow you to specify the demographics and interests of your target audience so that the ad can be shown to people planning to travel. This is why you need to have a deep understanding of who your ideal customer is in terms of age, income level, location, and interests.
Seek Out Reviews And Referrals
If you want tourists to flock to your website, book your services, and increase sales, ensure that you collect as many online reviews on your website as possible. Prospects are likely to trust the testimonials of other people about your tours and travel company as well as your tour operators compared to the experiences that you promise potential customers on your website.
If your website has many negative reviews, such as previous customers claiming that your tour operators were rude or that your company didn’t deliver all the services it had listed in the vacation packages, then such reviews will reduce the number of online bookings on your website. However, if most people loved the customer experience that your tour operators gave them and appreciate how your brand treated them and met their expectations throughout the trip, then you will not only attract new customers but also retain your current ones.
Apart from reaching out to customers to get feedback on their experiences with your company and your tour operators, you can also reward your customers with incentives for each referral they give. This will encourage more of your clients to share their great experiences with others on their social media as well as through word of mouth. We recommend offering incentives in form of discounts or gifts in order to keep the clients coming back for more.
Review platforms are an excellent way to gain the trust of potential clients because they prove that your business is real and that your services are excellent. Due to the high number of fake tourism companies online, people are afraid to get scammed and reviews are one of the most affordable tour marketing tools to get more customers while building your brand’s credibility.
Post More Social Proof
Although tour marketing ads are great for promoting your business, you need to give people social proof so that they can trust your business. For instance, if you create an ad to promote your tour services yet your website has no social proof, such as photos and videos of people enjoying your services, your tour operators guiding people, online reviews, and customer testimonials, then the ad may not produce the results that you expect.
Travelers will always want to make sure that your company can indeed meet their expectations before they book your services and travel a long distance, especially if you deal with international travelers.
Social proof works best when it shows the unbiased opinions of your previous customers towards your tour operators and the services your business provides, thereby assuring potential customers that your travel company is legitimate. Also, keep in mind that people are suspicious of companies that seem too good to be true. Therefore, you can take advantage of the negative reviews you receive on your website and use them as strategic marketing strategies.
For instance, if a disappointed client posts a review about how they did not like how your tour operators delivered some services, we recommend replying politely to the customer by apologizing and promising to improve your services. If you choose to call out the customer by accusing them and shifting the blame, it shows prospective customers that they are likely to be disrespected by the tour operators at some point if they book your services.
However, if you choose to respond politely and promise to work on the service delivery of your tour operators, it gives prospects the impression that even though your brand may not be perfect, you are willing to prioritize your customer’s needs to meet their expectations. We also recommend posting photos and videos of your team e.g. the tour operators, on your website or social media in order to show off the personality of your brand and boost your marketing promotional efforts.
Have An Easy To Use Booking System
All your tour marketing efforts can prove futile if potential clients are unable to book your services. To prevent this from happening, ensure that your booking system is easy to use and the booking process is as simple as possible to offer a great customer experience.
If the booking process is too complicated, prospective customers may give up halfway through the process. We recommend making sure that booking involves a simple navigation system that customers can follow from start to finish. Your marketing campaigns should be directed towards landing your prospects on your booking platform and ensuring they have a smooth customer experience as they book your services.
Therefore, make certain that the customers will not encounter any technical errors or be redirected to irrelevant pages during the process.
Additionally, if you want to increase bookings, ensure that the pricing of your services is based on a price that your customers are willing to pay. This is why we recommended finding out the income level of your ideal client so that you can set a price that they will easily agree to.
Post More Content On Your Website
Do you know that high-quality, educative, SEO content can continue to market your business in the long term compared to tour marketing ads that have a time limit? Posting good content regularly is one of the best marketing tips for your business because search engines will always show your website to people searching for the content online. Over time, people will learn to identify your brand and rely on your content because they will view you as a tourism industry expert.
For example, if you post a blog about some of the best beaches to visit during summer, an interested person may come across your article several months after you publish it, thereby gaining a potential new client. This will only happen if you incorporate the right keywords in the article so that search engines can show your website to people who use similar keywords when searching for your services online.
Also, providing frequent valuable content about traveling to your audience will not only boost your marketing efforts but will also generate brand awareness for your business in the tourism industry. Search engines like Google take many factors into consideration before ranking websites in the search results. If you want more potential clients to come across your website when they look up traveling guides, tourism industry content, or travel information online, ensure that your website is always updated.
Stay up to date on current matters that affect the tourism industry so that you can always post relevant content for your audience.
We also recommend finding other ways to provide high-quality content to your audience other than your website. Email marketing is a great way to keep in touch with your customers and inform them of any new deals and promotions that your business is offering.
A monthly newsletter will help you remind customers to book your services while also providing them with valuable information about traveling.
For you to successfully carry out email marketing, ensure that you collect the contact information of your current customers as well as that of any new potential clients that visit your website. The best way to collect emails is by having your website visitors fill out a contact form when they visit your website.
If a website visitor fills out the form and gives you their email, it means that they are interested in your services, which makes email marketing one of the most successful forms of tour marketing.
Generate Direct Bookings With Gondola Today
Are you ready to grow your travel business and get more bookings? Gondola is one of the best website builders with experience in commerce technology to help increase the bookings of tour and travel companies.
We help travel companies to generate more direct bookings and sell more experiences by upgrading their booking processes and systems. Here is why Gondola is the best company to work with to grow direct bookings for companies in the tourism industry:
- 100 % of our customers grow their direct bookings
- We provide 10 times more value to each customer
- 100% of our previous customers would recommend our services
If you are ready to appear at the top of search engine result pages, convert more website visitors to bookings, upgrade your booking platforms, and have a website that is easy to manage and navigate, get in touch with us today for effective tour marketing.
Our services can help to promote your tour marketing efforts to ensure that you not only receive high website traffic, but that majority of the leads you get convert to booking and sales. Call Gondola today to speak to an expert about tour marketing, upgrading your booking system, and getting more bookings for your business.
