With the significant growth in the field of Digital Marketing, the Travel Industry has to compete for online booking opportunities today. However, a great marketing strategy can yield good profits and build long-lasting customer relationships.
Mostly, travel agencies focus on marketing their facilities and luxuries. In addition, they need to sell a unique and enticing experience that will attract more guests to their hotel and more customers to their agency.
The content of the travel website should be unique and enticing, offering personalized services like latest travel deals, finest seasonal destinations, new menu items, and even inform about the hotel renovations also on the site, that will give it an edge over other websites. The only thing travelers want from the travel agency is the quality of service.
Deliver whatever you are marketing.
Online Marketing Strategies for Travel:
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Marketing and SEO in the travel industry is highly competitive. Travel related keyword phrases need to be divided into categories.
Long tail keywords become far more important in the travel sector, for example, ‘holidays in Kerala’, ‘where is the best place to stay in Goa’, ‘family hotel in Mumbai’ … the possibilities are endless.
Travel Brand HolidayIQ is a good example of this. Targeting long tail keywords is expected to generate a focused traffic as well as good conversion rate, which one may not get from generic terms like holiday, hotels.
Link Building in Travel SEO
Travel SEO is much dependent on high-quality link building. Link development for travel sites is tricky. Businesses should get links from the business directories. Getting links from sites with relevant section is a bonus. Relevance is important in link building, so getting links from the niche travel directories is a good idea.
In the past, Google has banned low -quality directory sites so be sure to submit site to directories with visible toolbar PR.
Tripadvisor is a good example of online recommendations.
Social Media Marketing
In this highly social media savvy era of today, there has emerged an excellent way to give recognition to the consumer brands. As a matter of fact, Social Media has become one of the most prominent tools in influencing the mindsets of customers. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, BlogSpot, etc. are some of the highly used social media platforms.
Travel is a business that mainly depends on the use of petty gossips and word of mouth, for that matter. Through social platforms, you can share the opinions, tips and suggestions, give recommendations, and do a lot more of such activities that can positively impact the decision making process of present day tourists. More than 50% consumers trust recommendations and suggestions from their social media followers. If the consumers’ experiences get viral, it will have a major influence on the bookings.
It is easy to understand the fondness of any destination, hotel or other travel related activity with the number of likes on a particular post, the number of shares as well as the number and quality of comments made on the post.
Most popular travel Facebook Pages in India:
Content Marketing
Content marketing is all about creating and cultivating relationships with your customers. As long as marketers produce quality, authentic content, consumers will reward them by believing for their brands.
Best practices in content marketing for the travel industry:
Blogging
Blogging is the most effective social media marketing method that helps to provide useful data to customers and increases the visibility of a website on search engines. If you blog once a week, there will be something to talk about with your customers and followers.
Include pictures in your posts, and also ask for the feedbacks that will let you know about the marketing traits which are working and more important abut those which are not. In a way, this will certainly help you to survey your customers.
Article Marketing
Article marketing is a great way to build backlinks for your website. You need to create good quality content that supports a promising experience of your brand. You need to deliver informational and compelling content that will attract a community of serious travelers.
Now, once you are done with the writing part of the content, the next step, and perhaps, a highly important one is to market it rightly.
Some Article Marketing Sites:
Distributing content to these sites makes them noticeable for others to view. You can post a link below the article to get the traffic and backlinks from the hosting site.
Press Release
Press Release is the news about the business or the services offered. Most of the people get their news online every day. Many of them are customers, fans. This is an inexpensive way to gain visibility in search engines.
Video Marketing
Video Marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools available on the web today. It affects the sites SEO as it helps in the content management strategy.
Benefits of using video to market the Online Business:
* Improves SERP rank
* Increases CTR
* Provides Quality Backlinks
* Lowers Bounce Rate
This is not all! According to Forrester study videos are more likely to rank on the 1st page of Google search results. Thus, needless to mention, videos do give the much-needed visibility to your business, and the much-needed results to your marketing campaign.
