For any business, increasing sales is the number one priority. And since competition in the tourism industry can be steep, it’s important to always have an effective marketing strategy in place. Additionally, the recent pandemic has proven to be a burden on the tourism industry for obvious reasons, and the businesses that have managed to survive are currently seeking innovative ways to bring in more revenue.
On a lighter note, as countries continue to reopen their borders, the world’s two-year travel ban has created a demand for tour operators and adventure tourism that may not have previously existed. With this, now is the perfect opportunity to plan and implement new ways to vamp up your business and move to the forefront of your industry.
Here is a list of five ways to help bring your tourism business to the next level:
1. Engage with your customers.
Your tourism business exists both for your customers and because of your customers. Any good business knows it is crucial to learn your audience’s expectations of you and what would bring them more satisfaction. Frequently engaging with your customers is an effective way to hear their ideas, listen to their demands, and figure out what would make their experience better. The feedback you receive would not only help you vamp up your business, but it will also help create and strengthen your bond with your customers.
Tip: Do not underestimate the power of social media. Engage with your customers through comments, tagged photos, and stories.
2. Offer services with a twist, and stay up-to-date with trends.
People are always looking for something new. When it comes to experiences, customers prefer services that exceed their expectations. By thinking of services that provide a unique twist, you can create a rare experience that separates your business from its competitors. Services such as glamping, workcations, or staycations are all great trends that you could easily combine your own services with to create something truly memorable.
3. Include “Travel Like a Local” packages.
As times change, so do customers’ desires. Travelers want more than luxury destinations; they want to explore and truly experience the culture of a location. Nowadays, travelers seek to immerse themselves in local experiences and adventures. Companies that offer a “Travel Like a Local” package can earn more customers and cater to a younger demographic.
Travelers are longing to find the hidden gems of a destination. Try offering streamlined packages that tie in your services and also introduce customers to the destination’s food, culture, and traditions.
4. Acknowledge solo travelers.
Within the last several years, solo travel has increased in popularity with the stigma of traveling alone becoming almost non-existent. As the world becomes more open to change, surveys reveal a rapid increase in solo travel since the reopening of travel. It is more important now than ever before for tourism businesses to pay attention to solo travelers and to create ways to cater to them.
One unique and exciting idea could be to allow solo travelers to pair up/form a group with each other (create a solo traveler tour, deal, or meet up). This is a great way to receive solo travelers’ business while also helping travelers form new friendships, safely try new experiences, and create unforgettable memories.
5. Do not limit your search for ideas to one place.
Some of the best ideas are the ones that randomly appear to you. Limiting your search for “new ideas” to one place can greatly diminish your opportunities and stunt your brainstorming. Especially for tourism businesses, it is crucial to look for ideas around the world. Browse the internet often, maximize your social media presence, and learn new angles to spice up your existing services.
Vamp Up Your Tourism Business With Us
In the highly competitive tourism industry, it is of utmost importance to always be one step ahead of your competition. Constantly bringing in new ideas and strategies to earn more revenue and increase sales is a must. Let our team here at AAMP Agency help you discover your potential and get your tourism business to the top of every traveler’s list. Our highly skilled group of professionals are experts in their fields and are here to help you achieve optimum results every step of the way. Book a consultation with us today!
In any business, credibility is needed to attract and retain customers. This is not a quick process; building credibility in the long term takes energy and requires a lot of time. For most entrepreneurs, credibility is a complex concept. With fraud easily running rampant in our digital world, it can sometimes seem like a daunting task to convince potential customers of your company’s trustworthiness.
Considering how saturated the adventure tourism industry is, establishing the credibility of your business is one surefire way to set yourself apart from your competitors. If you want to stand out, it is important to learn the basics of boosting the credibility of your business – starting with your website.
Let’s learn some simple ways to achieve credibility through your website.
How do you boost the credibility of your website?
1. Provide verifiable information.
Verifiable information is crucial in boosting your website’s professionalism and credibility. Here are a few easy ways to provide this kind of information on your website:
Choose a reputable domain
Place your company’s physical address/phone number somewhere noticeable and easy to find
If possible, include contact information for your team
Provide links to memberships and organizations your business is affiliated with
Try to include a Google Map on your contact page for your customers to see
2. Provide social proof.
A new business can oftentimes give customers “Purchasing Anxiety,” which may delay or even stop a purchase completely. It is imperative for a business to invest in providing customers with social proof as evidence of legitimacy.
Here are a couple simple ways to provide social proof:
Post your customer reviews and success stories. On your website, the presence of customer reviews and success stories serves as a piece of reliable information that can help convince customers your business is credible. This technique has also been proven to successfully and consistently convert leads into sales.
Have your adventure tourism services featured on noteworthy sites. Level up your game by getting your services featured on credible sites. This technique will not only boost your credibility but will also expand your reach.
3. Showcase your best.
If a potential customer receives any indication you are not their best option, they may back out and change their minds about booking through you. If you want to boost your website’s credibility, put your best foot forward and showcase your services only in the best light possible. Now is the time to show off your expertise. Highlight your best tours on the front of your website, and be sure to mention your years of experience, any recognition/awards your business has received, qualifications, and more.
4. Post trustworthy content.
Hire a professional copywriter to explain the details of your services in a clear and engaging manner. Before publishing any piece of content, make sure to proofread and double-check any text for errors. You should be consistent in updating content, and you must keep your word if you publish any claims or promises to your website. Misrepresentation of your services will surely tarnish the reputation of your business.
5. Communicate policies clearly.
It is important to state your policies in a way that is clear and easy for your customers to understand. Consider publishing your company’s privacy policy to enhance transparency. This will make customers feel safer and more inclined to work with you if they can see which data your company collects and how you plan to use it.
Start Your Journey With Us
Your website has the potential to be your number one driver of sales, so it is important to invest in making it look its best. If you want to learn more about growing your adventure tourism business by improving your website, reach out to AAMP Agency for a consultation.
Let’s be real here, everyone at some point in their life suffers from a case of the FOMO’s, aka the Fear Of Missing Out. It’s a normal feeling to experience in this day and age where Instagram aesthetic is important, and social media is making millennials feel as if they constantly need to be busy. A study conducted by EventBrite found that 69% millennials experience FOMO and that 60% of millennials make reactive purchases because of it. However, this doesn’t just apply to millennials, another study has shown that more than half of social networkers experience the fear of missing out. So what if we told you that you could use FOMO to your advantage in your tourism marketing tactics? Follow these 10 easy tips and you won’t be missing out!
1. Show that People are Buying
A simple way to tap into an audience’s inner FOMO is to show that other customers are making a purchase. An easy plugin for your website will create a pop-up that features the first name and product that was purchased by the recent customer.
Example of a website pop-up
2. Show Sold Out Opportunities
Booking.com is a perfect example of using FOMO in marketing tactics. One example we can pull from them is how they show sold out opportunities in big red letters. They also make sure to include options for when a room is available, and by doing so it adds pressure on the potential customer to make a purchase.
Example of showing sold out opportunities from Booking.com
3. Tick-Tock, Add a Clock
The goal is to trigger FOMO in a potential customer and nudge them into making a reactive purchase or reservation. Amazon is another prime example (pun intended) of using FOMO marketing strategies. When Amazon features a special deal or offer, they add a countdown clock to show exactly how much time is left on the offer. One way to use this tactic in the tourism industry is to add the countdown timer onto a special offer on your website.
Example of a countdown sale from Amazon.com
4. Trigger Competitiveness
Adding a feature to your website that highlights how many potential customers are looking at the same offer is yet another FOMO marketing strategy. It adds an underlying message to the potential customer that if they don’t take advantage of the offer fast enough, that another buyer will get it. See the below example from Booking.com.
Example of showing customer interest in a product
5. Let’s Make It Exclusive
Human beings, especially millennials, love being a part of something exclusive. Offering exclusive deals is a great way to not only trigger FOMO in your audience, but it can also help with increasing your social following, email list, and spreading brand awareness. You can also create exclusivity for your tourism business by creating a rewards membership or a V.I.P offering.
6. Social Proof and User Generated Content
Social proof and user-generated content isn’t just a FOMO marketing tactic, and it is something that should always be included in your marketing strategy. Potential customers are more likely to trust the opinions and experiences of their peers than an advertisement. To utilize this in your business, encourage customers to share their experience through social media by using a specialized hashtag or tagging your business in their posts. When a customer does share their experience online, don’t just leave them hanging! Engage with them by commenting and reposting their photos. Their opinion gets recognized, and your business gets free content. One great example of capitalizing on user generated content is the Instagram of Visit Canberra, where they have a specialized hashtag, share photos and experiences of other uses, and utilize their Instagram Stories to share their content.
User Generated Content from Visit Canberra
7. Let It Expire
If your tourism business is not already on Instagram or Snapchat, it’s time you get to posting! Snapchat and Instagram Stories are two platforms that allow a user to post content for 24 hours before it disappears. A great way to take advantage of this is to post a special offer on these two platforms. Viewers and followers who are interested will be pushed into making a reactive purchase before the 24 hours is up. Another way to implement Snapchat and Instagram Stories into your FOMO marketing strategy is to feature your tours or attraction and push out great content that will allow your audience to see what they could experience.
8. Promote the Experience Not a Product
It’s natural for your audience to seek out unique experiences, and being in the tourism industry, your business is all about the experience! Focus your advertising on selling the experience and what your potential customers will encounter, and not on a product or the pricing. You can accomplish this through videos, blogs, great content, and implementing user generated content.
9. Phrasing
When creating advertisements, every phrase or sentence you use is important. Make sure you are including phrases that can create a sense of urgency. For example, use phrases such as “limited space available” or “Book now and don’t miss out on this offer!”
10. Using FOMO During the Booking Process
Our final tidbit is less of a tip, and more of a simple three-step plan you should be implementing in your business. FOMO marketing works well in the tourism industry, so don’t be sparse with it. There is no need to sprinkle a little here or a little there, use it abundantly and throughout every step of the booking process. Here’s how:
Before the booking journey begins, encourage your potential customers to share your offer or to invite their friends.
During the process, allow the customer to share your attraction or offer across multiple social platforms. You could even offer a small reward to those who “check-in” to your attraction on social media to give your business a boost.
After the booking process is complete, encourage reviews and more sharing! Take it a step even further by encouraging the customer to share photos of their experience with your company.
Having a strong marketing strategy in the tourism industry can be difficult to navigate. Implementing tactics that can trigger FOMO can help your business thrive even more and increase your brand awareness. At AAMP Agency | Adventure & Activity Marketing Pros, we eat, breathe, and sleep marketing, and we’re here to help you. Feel free to contact us with any questions you may have!
If you’re running a business, you need to be in control of your reputation online.
Potential customers can check out a business in seconds on their smartphone. With online reviews affecting nearly 68% of purchase decisions, it’s important for you to get your online review strategy right.
And the best place to start is with a positive set of Google reviews to showcase your attraction.
Here are 4 advantages of Google reviews that you simply can’t ignore if you’re looking to boost your reputation online.
Makes Your Business More Popular
No one goes into business to be unpopular, so building up reviews online can act as a loop of positive publicity for your attraction.
If you’re delivering good customer service, great products or offering a great overall service, and customers are commenting on it in their reviews, you’re going to draw others in.
Ultimately, you’re in business to make money. Building an organic set of 4 or 5-star reviews can increase your profits by bringing in customers who shop with you, based on your online reputation.
Improves Visibility and SEO
Google places a high value on the experience of its users. If you’re a business with good Google reviews, you’re demonstrating your value and Google will reward you with better search results for local search keywords.
Better visibility and better SEO for your website are added bonuses to draw in more customers. The higher your business ranks, the more likely your customers will turn to you than any of your competitors.
You’ll need a free Google My Business account to be able to take advantage. You can find out more about setting one of these up here.
Free and Useful Way to Boost Other Marketing
Reviews on Google are a great tie-in to other marketing you employ, and they’re completely free. This means you can spend your advertising revenue elsewhere while using the reviews to demonstrate the trust and value your attraction has.
If you’re buying Google Adsense ads, you can reference your average customer review score, for instance. The same method can be applied to social media marketing, where you can use a positive reputation to target new customers.
If you’re thinking about using social media to boost your visibility, check out how you can refine a social media campaign to work for your business.
Gives You The Chance to Interact With Customers
Of course, it isn’t just about publicity. You can use reviews from Google to help you interact with your customers in a way that wouldn’t be possible elsewhere.
Dropping a reply to a positive (or negative) review can show that you care about the opinion of your customers. You can address complaints head on, and if you feel any reviews are unfair, you can challenge them (constructively, of course!).
Reviews can make or break an attraction’s reputation. By interacting with your customers through review replies, you can show you’re not afraid to fix any problems that occur, and do so publicly.
Use Google Reviews for a Better Business Reputation
When somebody searches for your business, you want to convert them into paying customers. A marketing strategy that takes advantage of positive reviews from Google can set you apart from your competitors so you can do just that.
And with Google reviews costing you absolutely nothing, even the smallest local business can take advantage!
Looking for more specialized marketing advice? Get in touch to see how we can help, and if you’ve got your own tips to share, drop us a comment below!
Learn more about how AAMP Agency | Adventure & Activity Marketing Pros helps business with Reputation Management by filling out the form below.
As of 2018, 97% of consumers look online for reviews before doing business with a company.
Additionally, over three out of four individuals take online reviews as seriously as a personal recommendation.
Reviews are no longer limited to word of mouth, magazines, and professional critics. Anyone with 5 minutes and a smartphone is capable of leaving online reviews, making them a powerful new channel for leading traffic to your business.
To make sure you’re getting the most out of your customer reviews, here’s what you need to know.
1. Online Reviews Transcend Social Media
There are many channels online for individuals to leave product or customer reviews. Websites such as Yelp, Facebook, Google, and Amazon are the most well known, but there are hundreds, if not thousands of review sites online.
Individuals aren’t just checking Google reviews anymore. In fact, they’re checking an average of seven different review sites before they decide to purchase your product or service.
With this in mind, it’s vital to make sure that your company is listed on as many relevant review sites as possible. If customers can’t find other consumer reviews of your business online, you may as well not exist.
2. Customers Want More Than Reviews
Reviews are great, but customers expect more.
Many businesses simply shrug their shoulders when they receive reviews (whether they’re good or bad). They either figure that being silent will give them a better image or they don’t think online reviews matter.
This is a backward way of thinking.
Customers are elated when their reviews are answered by the business that they are speaking about.
By responding to customer reviews, you can show your customers that you genuinely care about their opinions and experiences with your brand.
If you have a bad review, you can directly reach out to that customer and try to fix the issue. By doing this, you can show the disheartened or upset consumer that you care about their grievances.
On top of this, you can show other customers who are reading your reviews that you are listening to feedback.
With this in mind, it’s important to focus not only on negative reviews but also on the positive reviews.If someone expresses their great experience with your company, it’s important to thank them for their kind words.
By responding to your customer’s reviews, you’re staying engaged and showing potential customers that you are keenly aware of the feedback and opinions of your customers. This will undoubtedly build your reputation in a positive way.
3. Reviews Can Make or Break You
Think about the last time you searched online for a restaurant to eat at, a plumber to fix your broken toilet or a product of some sort.
If that business or product had a bunch of bad reviews or an average rating of 2 out of 5 stars, did you still want to buy from them?
Many customers will not purchase a product or service unless the rating is around 4/5 stars or an 8/10 on a number scale
Alternatively, good reviews can put your business on a pedestal above and beyond your competition.
Conclusion
Online reviews carry as much (if not more) importance as social media campaigns. It’s important to monitor what your customers are saying and to stay engaged with them.
If you’re not sure where to start or you need help improving your online reputation, we’ve got you covered.
At AAMP Agency | Adventure & Activity Marketing Pros, we specialize in localized online marketing and reputation management to make sure you’re getting as much traffic and positive feedback as possible.
Feel free to check the rest of our website and visit our blog for more information!
Learn more about how AAMP Agency | Adventure & Activity Marketing Pros helps business with Reputation Management by filling out the form below.
