10 Online Travel Marketing Tips

With OTAs grabbing all the top listings on Google web searches, travel agencies need to diversify their online travel marketing efforts.  Fortunately, there are a whole host of effective online travel marketing tactics that you can use to attract travelers and build your travel agency. To help you get started, we’ve collected our favorite 10 online travel marketing tips; try a few and see how you do!

1. Set up a mobile-optimized travel website
   The vast majority of travelers use a mobile device when searching for travel options, so it is essential to have a responsive travel website design that looks amazing and performs perfectly on any device.
2. Write a riveting travel blog
   Bring your favorite destinations to life in an engaging travel blog. Your goal is to immerse readers into the world of your adventure, so write about the entire experience, including your reactions to the places and people you meet. Honesty will play much better than white-washing, so write about the bad days and less-than-enjoyable experiences as well as the moments of wonder.
3. Engage in destination storytelling
   Preachy, overtly promotional marketing does not work with today’s travelers. Your best approach is to seduce visitors into adventure – engage in exciting visual storytelling on social media and create lush verbal pictures using evocative descriptions of destinations in your travel blog.
4. Connect through social media
   Social media marketing for travel is a natural fit; the highly visual nature of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram make them the perfect forum to connect with travelers. Post questions and contests, enlivened with videos and pictures to engage visitors on Facebook and Twitter, and create your own branded YouTube channel to share travel videos; create playlists and relate videos for a more immersive experience. Use a social media management program to help you maintain a consistent posting schedule to keep visitors returning.
5. Turn user-generated content into stories
   Set up an Instagram account and invite your travel clients to share videos and photos of their adventures. Use the description area to tell the story of the marvelous adventure the contributor are embarked on; connect the visual media with links to your website, Twitter, and other social media sites, give full credit the intrepid adventurer who got the shot, and you may end up with one of the most effective online travel marketing tools around.
6. Perform ongoing reputation management
   Ask your satisfied guests to post reviews (don’t ask for positive reviews, just ask for honest reviews from guests you know had a good experience) on the major travel and business review sites; use Google Alerts to monitor for comments about your travel agency, and have an established policy to respond to negative reviews quickly and politely.
7. Obtain video travel testimonials
   Videos testimonials from some of your satisfied travel clients are powerful marketing messages that you can share on a multitude of platforms. They don’t have to be long to be effective; try to collect ones from a variety of destinations, group types, adventure levels, etc.
8. Incorporate paid search
   Recent changes to Facebook, along with scheduled changes due to take place on the other social media platforms in the near future, have all but eliminated the ability to get your travel material noticed through organic search results. Use a combination of Google Mobile Ads, Facebook Ads and Sponsored Stories, and Twitter Ads to ensure your travel company’s success.
9. Run a targeted email campaign
   Email campaigns that include discounts and special offers can be highly successful, provided you take the time to target your message. Your customers and followers have already given you a ton of information through their social media postings, texts, and emails; apply that knowledge to send them email offers specifically suited to their travel tastes, party demographics, etc.
10. Monitor the success of your marketing efforts
    Once you’ve put all these marketing tips into use, use Google Analytics and other metrics to monitor the success of your online travel marketing strategies. Identify the most successful strategies and focus your resources and efforts into continuing and expanding those marketing avenues.

The marketing experts at Travel Tech Strategies can help you implement a comprehensive online travel marketing strategy that incorporates responsive travel web design, social media marketing, and more, along with travel big data mining to tightly focus your travel marketing efforts.

Contact Travel Tech Strategies today at 954-779-2801 for more online travel marketing tips along with expert travel marketing services that will help your agency grow!