First and foremost, good marketing is all about setting up a coherent and holistic marketing strategy and then sticking to it through each and every step of your marketing journey.
However, as with every business, a travel company also needs to understand its ideal customers. And only then can it design its marketing strategy on the basis of that information.
Get to Know Your Demographics and Top Customer Personas
Of course, first of all, you need to target the right demographics. But you need to do more than that—get to know their thought patterns. For example, what inspires them to travel? What seasons and destinations they are likely to travel most at? What do they find frustrating when planning, researching and booking their tour? What websites they use most to find their information?
You can use a number of online tools and apps to get your hands on all this valuable info. For a start, you may use a free tool such as Xtensio that will help you with the above process. And once you have this information on hand, build top three or four customer personas that are most relevant to your business.
Set Up Your Marketing Strategy
For this purpose, you can book a consultation with a professional marketing service. The latter will often offer to take care of all your marketing requirements. However, that costs a pretty penny. So, if you’re just starting out, we suggest that for the moment, you just use their services to plan a proper, all-round marketing strategy. Having done that, you can then decide on the things that you can perform on your own. For the others, however, you may have to hire some professional service to get better results.
Off-line Marketing
No matter how important it is to have a strong online presence for your company these days, you can still reap huge benefits from a variety of innovative off-line campaigns and initiatives.
ADVERTISE LOCALLY. This can still earn great rewards, especially for small businesses.
So, we are talking about Setting Up Booth at your nearest mall, local trade show or popular fairs. This helps you to engage with your potential customers on a personal level. And it will spread publicity of your business on and around the areas you are serving.
And while you are arranging these events, make sure to reward the people who’ll stop by your booth by presenting them with some or other low-cost giveaways (preferably items of everyday use with your business logo and contact info printed on them).
Similarly, you can host Special Travel Nights at a nearby social café, restaurant, event space, etc. (depending on the number of people joining). Make sure to keep the atmosphere relaxed and informal so that people who’ll be joining the event can freely discuss and share their plans and thoughts with interested fellow travelers.
Direct mail marketing is another potent tool to stay on the radar of your existing clients. Send them attractive cards or letters at special occasions like anniversaries, birthdays and the like. And use these congratulatory cards to put in some message which uses a personal tone and is not too generic. You may also add info on some upcoming deals and the like; however, keep the message succinct and make sure that it doesn’t sound like a sales copy.
Online Marketing
Now, this is the trickier part. There are three mainstays when it comes to online marketing:
• Email Marketing
• Social Media Marketing
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
All of these are extremely powerful tools in gaining leads and in converting them. However, the field is too competitive, so you need to do it right. Otherwise, you’ll see little ROI.
Now, you can engage the services of a digital marketing group for taking care of all your online marketing requirements. However, if that proves to be too costly, you can invest some time and research on proper social media and email marketing strategies. And do them by yourself employing the right tactics and through using the right tools, apps, software programs and CRMs out there.
A Strong Google Presence
However, when it comes to SEO, you’re better advised to leave the optimization task to professionals. SEO is a tough job and doing it right by yourself will need a lot of time and learning. And no matter what some people may say, a Strong Google Presence is still absolutely essential if you want to grow your revenue on a consistent basis. So, don’t neglect it and don’t try to cut corners by going the DOI route on this one. Employ the pros and only then can you ensure great ROI on your SEO investment.
