Travel agency advertising - ideas and tips for online promotion
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27 July 2023
About advertisement is a lever of trade, probably no one needs convincing. It is no different in the highly competitive travel industry. Hundreds of companies compete for customers both with offers displayed in the windows of travel agencies and on the Internet. The web is a particularly difficult field in the fight against the competition, which requires multifaceted action. What should a travel agency's promotion look like? It is time to find out a few ways to advertise it effectively!
The online travel industry - trends and challenges
The biggest challenge the tourism industry constantly faces is its seasonality. Equally important is providing the customer with a sense of security. In the marketing of a travel agency, it is also important to have a personal approach to each of the people buying a trip.
Seasonality of the industry
Travel agents can count on customer interest in their services above all in spring and summer, i.e. during the time when trips are planned and ordered and last minute offers are used. Winter travel offers are less popular, although still sufficiently popular. However, the promotional activities of the travel agency should be carried out throughout the year despite the limited profits in the other months.
Although advertising travel services is an additional expense, it brings results at crucial times of the year. By carrying out marketing activities, the company is constantly reminded of its existence. In this way, it increases the chances that, during the peak period of interest in travel, a customer will remember the travel agency and it is to this person that he or she will direct his or her steps or purchase a trip via the website. For this to happen, however, it is not enough to convince such a person with an attractive price, but also to reassure them that they have made the best, safe choice.
Ensuring a sense of security
Why is it so important to instil confidence in the consumer? For many people, travelling is not just about pleasure, but also about stress beforehand. It is necessary to give the person interested in a trip the confidence to return to Poland safely and at a predetermined time after a pleasant holiday. How can this be done? The best way is to show awards and industry certificates attesting to the high quality of the service.
Individual approach to the customer
The third challenge is to respond to the trend for a personalised approach. More and more people expect a trip to be tailored to their tastes. They expect not to have to participate exclusively in a top-down itinerary set by the tour operator.
Personalising the offer requires providing additional activities to choose from. In addition, the tourism company's advertising should be detailed, i.e. showcasing all the main and side activities that you will be able to enjoy.
How do you prepare to advertise your travel agency online?
Visibility in the real world requires that the company's headquarters be located in a busy part of town, as this provides an opportunity for random passers-by to become interested in its offer. On the web, such a place is the first page of Google. To be on it, you need to take care of the positioning of your own website.
The first step to reach your audience is to analyse the competition at the top of the search results. This is done by using specialised software to check the key phrases typed in by internet users. Using these on your own website helps significantly to improve its visibility.
There is a fee for access to advanced tools that show which phrases web users most frequently type in, but anyone can subscribe. However, not everyone is familiar with SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), or website optimisation. For this reason, the budget for a travel agency's advertising campaign should include the amount needed to hire an agency that takes care of this. In addition to keyword analysis of competitors, what can an SEO specialist do for their client? Activities include:
- checking the speed of the travel agency's website and, if necessary, improving the speed at which it loads;
- ensuring that the website is optimised for correct display on computers and mobile devices;
- modifying the URLs of the homepage and subpages to be shorter (these are preferred by Google bots searching the web before displaying search results);
- the creation of a sitemap, which also makes it easier for search engine bots to index sites, i.e. to verify their relevance to an internet user's query;
- reviewing content for duplicates (unique content is better positioned).
The technical side of optimisation is necessary, but it cannot stop there. Advertising a travel agency online still requires reaching the customer through various types of content. Importantly, publishing them should not be limited to a blog on the company's website. In other words, you will need extensive content marketing activities to promote yourself.
How to advertise a travel agency through content marketing?
Content marketing, i.e. the promotion of products, services and brands through content, makes it possible to reach potential customers in a friendly manner. The guiding principle of content marketing is to give the Internet user what he or she is really looking for. There is no place for a pushy message that presents the company in superlatives. Instead, questions and concerns are answered and topics of interest are described. In this way, a brand image is also created as a group of customer-friendly experts.
Promoting your offer on the company blog
How to use this form of tourism advertising? One way is to publish articles describing particular cities and countries. This allows you to link to your own offerings, and it's a simple way to ensure that readers remember which company they can go to a particular place with and return when they want to buy a trip.
It is worth remembering that the article itself should be factual and focus on the place described and not on the travel agency itself. At all times, it is important to remember that the text should be useful to the user. Weaving in a sentence about the company and a link to the offer hidden under one of the key phrases is enough.
Blog texts on other places of interest
Every company has a more or less limited portfolio of tour offers. However, the advertising of a travel agency does not have to be limited to describing only the destinations to which it takes its customers. People who are interested in a particular city or country will find information of interest on the company's blog and may also check out other destinations subtly alluded to in the text.
In this way, you also increase your chances of benefiting from the potential of whisper marketing. This is because there is a possibility that an Internet user will tell other people about the tours offered by the travel agency. It is not unlikely that these people will find someone who is interested in them.
Sponsored articles on other sites
Launching a blog allows you to build a positive relationship with the customer, who has the feeling that there are experts at the tourism company who want to help them. It also allows for internal linking, i.e. between sub-pages and with the homepage. Moreover, it improves their positioning. These measures do not yet exhaust the possibilities offered by the marketing message on the Internet. Travel agency advertisements can also be placed on other websites in the form of sponsored articles.
On which sites to publish and what? There is no rule, but it is best to publish on popular general interest and strictly travel-related websites. The former have the largest readership and therefore offer the greatest chance of generating interest from potential customers. Websites about tourism and blogs of individuals describing places they have visited, on the other hand, are nothing more than a natural place to advertise a travel agency. You can be sure that a significant proportion of the people who visit them are planning a holiday and, consequently, will be looking for a tour company.
Publication venues need to be well planned, as you will have to pay for them. The most expensive sites are those with high traffic. The difference between the cost of a text on these sites and on less popular ones can be colossal. However, it is worth considering what will have a better effect - a sponsored article on a well-known site (or a smaller, but thematic one), or a lot of texts on sites with only a handful of visitors.
Moreover, it is not necessarily cheaper to publish on little-known sites. The preparation of a large number of texts by copywriters from an SEO agency may prove to be more expensive than a smaller number of texts, but created for important portals. The marketing strategy of publishing a large number of articles on both popular and lesser-known sites can only be afforded by travel agencies with large advertising budgets. _3.png)
Travel agency's online business card - take care of customer reviews
Advertising a travel agency in the form of sponsored articles allows you to build your brand image and, in addition, avoid the risk of blocking content for which you have paid. Unlike on-page banners, these texts cannot be switched off. But you can't stop there either. For the modern consumer, the opinions of others who have already used the product or service are more important than the marketing message.
The feedback section of the travel agency's website
It is a good idea to prepare a travel agent's website with a comments section underneath the tours. This way, interested customers can immediately see what others liked about the trip and what they did not like. If there are significantly more positive votes, the chance that a person will choose that particular offer increases.
Company profile on feedback pages
The reviews published on a travel agency's website have a great deal of influence, but this can be further increased. In order to do this, it is worth ensuring that the company's profile is present on other sites, including those that collect customer opinions about many companies in the same industry in one place. This will allow interested parties to compare individual companies and, on this basis, choose the one they consider to be the best.
How to deal with critical comments?
Unfortunately, we may also have to face criticism. In such a situation, they must not be left unanswered. Substantive explanations and sometimes also asking what the other (new) customers didn't like about the trip can give other (new) customers the feeling that the company wants to improve its services. If, on the other hand, the author of the negative comment does not receive a reply, other visitors to the website may feel that the travel agent is not trying to change anything and is simply ignoring the customers.
What to do when company reviews are lacking?
Negative reviews, or the lack thereof, are equally detrimental to a travel agency. A company about whose activities no one has an opinion will appear insufficiently verified against a background of well-described competition. It will be difficult for those interested in trips to trust such a company, and, as already mentioned, this is a key aspect in the tourism industry. How to prevent such a situation? It is worth encouraging customers to write a few sentences about it after returning from their holiday.
However, soliciting reviews of a travel agency should not be pushy. So do not send customers a text message or even less so a phone call. Instead, it is better to use e-mail. This communication channel is also an excellent platform for remarketing, i.e. reminding people about your offer. In this way, you can gain doubly - commentary and sustained interest in your tours.
How to advertise a travel agency on social media?
Today, no business can exist without social media promotion. For any company, and therefore also a travel agency, it is a great opportunity not only to showcase their offer, but also to interact with former, current and potential customers.
Travel agency advertising on Facebook
This portal is used by almost everyone and, most importantly, regardless of age. This makes it an ideal platform for reaching an older clientele as well. What can be published on Facebook? Basically everything, i.e. videos, photos, promotional graphics. In practice, however, other sites are geared towards the first two ad formats. The profile on this portal is best used for:
- presentation of the current offer;
- announcements of new destinations;
- conversations with customers;
- building brand image by publishing posts that will receive a positive response from observers (not all of which have to be related to the agency's offer or travel in general).
Travel agency advertising on Pinterest, Instagram and TikTok
The power of image and film is something to be harnessed when running a travel agency. Beautiful views of golden beaches, mountain peaks or the most famous landmarks are able to arouse the desire to go on a trip like nothing else. In order to convince customers, it will be necessary to ensure that the photos are of the highest possible quality. It is therefore best to obtain them from a professional photo agency.
For these sites, it is worth using the format of a short video such as Reels or Stories to show excerpts from trips or present interesting facts about a place. In addition to this, sales targets still need to be considered when planning a strategy for Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, but also other social media. It will therefore be necessary to determine:
- where the ad is displayed - e.g. in News, Stories, Reels;
- format - photo, film, video carousel, etc;
- the target group - the age of the people to whom the ad will be displayed, their place of residence, their interests, etc;
- financial target - to increase tour sales by the percentage indicated.
Travel agency advertising on YouTube
Short videos have dominated the internet and for some time now can also be published on YouTube. Shorts are undoubtedly a good addition to a marketing message, just like a simple travel agency advertisement displayed between other videos watched by the portal's users.
However, it is important to remember where YouTube's popularity came from and to exploit the potential of longer videos. In the case of a travel agency, a travel-themed channel is likely to become an effective method of promotion. Content that engages users, although not directly related to advertising the company, is increasingly being created by companies in various industries. Electronics retailers offering advice and reviews of appliances are a good example of how to promote themselves in this way. _3.png)
Travel agency advertising on search engines
Another method of showing yourself to customers is through advertisements displayed on websites and in the search results themselves. The first type takes the form of graphics or video just like the suggested content displayed on social networks. However, the disadvantage is that they can be blocked by users using browser extensions.
For this reason, paid links appearing at the top of the first page of a Google search are more effective than these. Over the years, they have become increasingly useful to internet users, which is made possible by extensions offered by the Google Ads platform. Among other things, they make it possible to include:
- contact form at the link;
- a button for a quick telephone call to a travel agent;
- links to sub-pages with specific tours or promotions.
The company's visibility can also be increased using Google Maps. It is a good idea to set up an office profile and fill in information about its location. It is great to also add opening hours, phone numbers and a link to the main website. For an additional fee, you can also highlight your business with a larger, square marker that is more visible among the dozens of locations marked on a particular section of the map.
Travel agency advertising with InPost? Reach a multitude of users
The potential of the internet as a marketing tool is enormous and therefore every company should be concerned about having the best possible visibility on the global web. However, the virtual world is only a part of people's lives, and therefore activities carried out in the real space also help to increase sales. For this reason, we offer our business clients (not just travel agencies) effective methods to promote their business:
- wrapping of Paczkomat® machines, of which there are already more than 20,000 throughout Poland - the recipient has direct contact with the advertising, and the Paczkomat® itself is a permanent fixture in the lives of our customers;
- the display of advertising on the screens of the Paczkomat® devices;
- placing their advertising banners on the InPost website or the InPost Mobile app;
- the use of push notifications in the InPost Mobile app.
Companies in other sectors may also be interested in our service. For many of them, product sampling, another form of advertising available in our offer, may come in handy. Thanks to the extensive network of Paczkomat® machines, the distribution of advertising materials is simple and fast.
Advertising your company with InPost? Always a good idea!
Take a minute to leave your contact details and we’ll prepare a tailored offer for you.
There are plenty of possibilities:
- Branding on Parcel Locker machines
- Ads displayed on Parcel Locker screens
- Sampling of promotional products
- Banner ads on the InPost website
- Advertising in the InPost newsletter
- Push notifications in the InPost Mobile app
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