Gone are those times when you’d have to book hotels and manage transportation for a trip all by yourself. Due to digitization and the influx of digital marketing in the travel industry, your trips are just a few clicks away from you. Everything from transportation to entry permits and anything you might need for a relaxing trip is taken care of by a travel agency.
With the massive growth in the travel industry, competition has also increased rapidly in the industry to get more tourists in. To stay ahead of the curve in such a competitive era, you must apply a good chunk of time and money into marketing, mainly digital marketing. There are many marketing strategy companies that are specialized in digital marketing strategy for travel agency and running those strategies successfully.
Fact: The tourism and leisure industry is a multi-trillion industry worldwide at an average growth rate of 3% annually.
11 Proven Digital Marketing Strategies for Travel Agencies
Here are some digital marketing strategies that have been proven successful strategies for travel agencies:
Followed by explaining in detail
- Social Media Advertising
- Travel Directories
- Content Marketing
- Website and SEO
- Search Engine PPC
- Email Marketing
- Influencer Marketing
- Affiliate Marketing
- Review Management
- YouTube Marketing
- Application Marketing
Incorporating these strategies is bound to get you more visitors and leads.
1. Social Media Advertising
Social Media advertising is one of the most effective ways to generate more leads and increase your brand reach. Now, everybody is on social media and can be reached in one media or another.
Social media advertising lets you target a specific audience group who are interested in traveling and hence are more likely to book a trip with you. You can analyze various data and statistics that help you develop ad campaigns that are properly targeted and bring in more clients.
2. Travel Directories
Getting listed on travel directories help you get more exposure capitalizing on the brand and trust built by the said travel directories. The most popular directory designated for the travel industry is undoubtedly TripAdvisor.
There are countless more travel directories that you can be listed on. Here are some popular travel directories that you can get listed on:
- Tour Radar
- Expedia
- Viator
- Booking
3. Content Marketing
Sharing creative and attractive content on digital platforms like your website, social media, or forums can help increase your brand reach and increase clients. Sharing engaging content kindles hodophile (travel-loving) people to book their next trip with your company which can create a chain of recurring bookings.
Content Marketing can mean many things, especially in the travel industry: Sharing pictures of an alluring landscape or video customer reviews or informative content about a trip, or anything that can be interactive based on the target audience.
You can also run fun games such as the “Guess this place” quiz or other text-based quizzes to increase engagement on your channels.
4. User-friendly Website and SEO
SEO is one of the most popular digital marketing strategies for travel agencies. A well-optimized and user-friendly website gets more recurring visitors from organic searches and referrals. An easy-to-navigate website ensures your website visitors turn into leads which then convert into customers.
5. Search Engine PPC
While the benefits of investing in SEO are undoubtedly there, it takes time for SEO to work. On top of that, competition for the leading places on search engines is high. Your travel agency cannot wait for months to get tourists that you can serve.
For those agencies who want quicker results, they should go for Search Engine Marketing or Pay-Per-Click. These ads are displayed on top of organic results and can be targeted using selecting various buyer personas and keywords.
PPC is a powerful digital marketing tool from which you can increase your business and scale your agency. One of the major benefits of PPC is that you are charged only if someone clicks on your ad and visits your website. It is one of the most effective digital marketing strategies that almost guarantees some Return-On-Investment.
6. Email Marketing
Email is a great way to reach out to potential customers through personalized emails. Email marketing is often overlooked due to the domination of social media, however, they still work. Emails are a great way to send out information about new destinations and offers.
You can collect emails by conducting fairs, newsletter subscriptions, travel bloggers, etc. Buying email leads can be harmful if not bought from reliable sources.
The most impactful audiences that will respond to your emails are your previous customers or people that have inquired about your services.
7. Influencer Marketing
With the rise of social media has arrived the era of influencers. As the word speaks for itself, influencers have an impact on the general population’s buying patterns. Brands and companies endorsed by these influencers experience a surge in their leads and conversion rates.
An influencer approving that your company gives top services is more effective that a 2000-word blog content on the qualities of your services.
8. Affiliate Marketing
There are many ways a potential customer might be searching for your services. They might be going through travel bloggers or referral sites. By establishing an affiliate relationship with these bloggers, you can drive traffic to your website and get clients. You will pay a certain percentage for the sales you made from the client you acquired from them.
9. Review Management
Reviews have become a major entity in marketing. People tend to check reviews before making any purchase. Hence, you should keep an eye out for reviews you are gathering on various channels such as travel directories, google maps, and social media.
Building a review procedure to ask for a rating of your services helps build a stack of reviews and allows you to improve your services when there’s a low rating. These reviews consolidate the benefits of the services that you are marketing and push sales.
10. YouTube Marketing
YouTube is the second most used search engine after Google. Videos are more-preferred ways of information gathering than texts. They provide more information in a shorter span of time without making the viewer feel tedious.
YouTube is a great channel for the travel industry as travelers like to gather visual information through videos. Video contents are easier for travel agencies to create due to the vast number of destinations to create video content on. YouTube has many features to work on like Reels or Live streaming.
11. PPC or PPI on Mobile Applications
The humongous rise in mobile users over the last decade makes PPC and PPI on mobile apps one of the most suitable markets. You can select various target audience groups to adjust your ad campaign.
Difficulties in Digital Marketing for Travel Agency in Nepal
As Nepal is still catching up on various communication technologies that the Western part of the world, digital marketing has not yet fully made its mark on the Nepali travel industry. Local tourism still majorly relies on offline marketing and word-of-mouth marketing to gain travelers.
However, all is not so bad for digital marketing in tourism. Change is more and more visible in recent years in the way people look for travel destinations and manage travel plans.
Conclusion
Although Nepal is a few years behind in online communications, digital marketing should be one of the highest marketing priorities for travel agencies. Building proper marketing strategies and implementing them requires witful planning, professional employees or partners to execute them, and top-notch services to satisfy the customers.
