What Is Tourism Marketing And Why Your Business Needs It
What Is Tourism Marketing and Why Your Business Needs It
What is Tourism Marketing?
Tourism Marketing is the process in which tourism businesses or organizations select their target audiences to communicate with them to find & influence their needs, motivations, and desires, at a local, regional, and international level. Tourism marketing aims to formulate and adapt their products so that they can achieve tourist satisfaction, as well as organizational goals.
Why Does Your Tourism Business or Activity Need It?
In today’s digital world, businesses can implement a comprehensive marketing plan to reach new customers, retain existing customers, and build brand awareness. As to why your tourism business or activity needs tourism marketing, it should be obvious, shouldn’t it? You cannot expect customers to find you and instantly book. Your business needs to reach out and tell your story to grow. Keep on reading, as we will be diving into the five pillars of marketing, what your business needs for an effective marketing strategy, and current tourism marketing trends. Or instead of creating and implementing a strategy, contact us at AAMP Agency for a quote!
Five Main Pillars of Tourism Marketing
Before you move forward with creating your marketing strategy, we highly suggest that you review the five main pillars of tourism marketing. By reviewing key factors of your business first, you will be able to devise and implement a strong digital marketing strategy that will drive traffic to your business.
Product
To have a strong product pillar, your business needs to provide a product or service that meets the customers’ needs and desires. To compete with other companies in the same market, tourism marketers need to focus on showing potential customers how they can benefit from their products or services. When creating or evaluating a product, you must also consider several factors such as ease of traveling, surrounding hotels & their amenities, local nightlife, activities offered in the area, and the overall culture of the region. By considering these factors, you will begin to understand the areas that your business should spend time focusing on, and begin creating solutions that fulfill your customers’ desires.
Price
Pricing is a critical component in tourism marketing and includes not only the out-of-pocket costs for a customer but also the customers’ perception of value. Even the best product or services that is set at the wrong price point will struggle to achieve conversions, so it is highly suggested that the price pillar is re-evaluated often and accurately reflects the product or service value.
Place
The place pillar refers to the physical location of your business, and also it’s accessibility to consumers. With the digital world expanding every day, your tourism business should be easily accessible to increase conversions. When it comes to tourism marketing, this involves having an attractive and effective website that allows online bookings.
Promotion
The fourth (and the most important) pillar of marketing is promotion, which focuses on telling potential customers about your services and why they should make a purchase decision with your business. In tourism marketing, several different strategies and technologies can be utilized to promote your tourism business to any specific area and audience.
People
The fifth pillar in marketing is people because they become a part of the product or services itself. In any setting where a service is delivered by a person, such as tour guides, the actions of that said person become critical in the marketing process. The people pillar reflects how the actions of staff members can result in positive experiences for customers.
Basic Necessities For A Great Tourism Marketing Strategy
Once you have your five pillars of marketing set and ready to go, you need the necessities to build a strong digital marketing strategy for your tourism business. This includes an awesome-looking website with an online booking option, Google Analytics, social media, and so much more. When joining the digital marketing world, the rabbit hole seems to continue further and further down. It is easy to become quickly overwhelmed, which is why tourism businesses across the country are calling our experts at AAMP Agency! Whether you have a few questions or want a dedicated team handling your marketing, we can help. Contact us today to get started!
Website
If you are a tour operator, activity, tourism business, or destination, you NEED a website. In the digital world, billboards and tv commercials are no longer enough to drive customers to your business, meaning your tourism business needs a functioning, well-thought-out website. By having a website, your tourism business will be easy to find, tell your story to build brand awareness, and increase your conversions if you implement an online booking capability. We’ll be diving deeper into what your tourism website needs, so keep reading!
Facebook Pixel & Google Analytics
A Facebook Pixel is a short snippet of code integrated into your website. It collects data that helps you track conversions from Facebook Ads, optimize ads, build targeted audiences, and remarket your tours to website visitors. Google Analytics is a powerful tool that provides information about your website and visitors. More than 56 percent of all websites using Google Analytics, it’s also one of the most popular tools out there for digital marketers — and good reason. The tool gives you access to tons of information regarding your site’s visitors such as the amount of overall traffic your site gets, where your leads came from, demographic information, and so much more. By having both integrated into your website, your tourism business will be able to run highly-effective advertisements that will lead to higher conversion rates!
Social Media
If your tourism business does not have business accounts on Facebook or Instagram, or if your business is not active, you are missing out on one of the best ways to reach your audience with your products and services. Being active on social media assists your business in building its brand by being able to directly connect to potential customers. The world of social media is a beast, and we could go on for days about how it is vital for businesses in the modern digital world. However, we’ll keep this short, simple, and sweet.
Benefits Of Being Active on Social Media • Access to Facebook Business Manager – Features analytics & the ability to run advertisements. • Builds brand awareness and authenticity of your business. • Receive user-generated content (Read more about that here). • Drive traffic to your website.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization (aka SEO) is thrown around often in digital marketing for the tourism industry. It is the practice of setting up your website to gain more visibility on search engines such as Google. By utilizing SEO tactics, your website could earn one of the top spots on Google and could see a significant increase in your web traffic. To learn more, check out our 12 SEO Tips Tourism Businesses, Attractions, and Destinations.
Online Reputation
Consumers by default tend to trust other humans’ opinions when they are thinking about working with a business. Usually, there is one medium they use to figure it out: Social networks. Communities like Yelp, Google Reviews, and Facebook Reviews have grown because people want to know if a company deserves their attention. If you have more positive reviews than negative ones, then you can expect more bookings. If it’s the other way around, you have a big problem. Your online reputation matters because it forms a public image. Check out our tips for building a trustworthy reputation.
Website Necessities For A Strong Tourism Marketing Strategy
Does your tourism business have a website? Does it rank well? Is online booking simple? Your website is one of the first things that a potential customer should be experiencing, meaning it needs to be eye-catching and functional. At AAMP Agency, we have years of experience in tourism business website development. Here are our 5 must-haves for websites for tour operators, tourism businesses, and destinations.
Clear & Fixed Navigation
One of the most important features if your website is having a clear, easy-to-understand navigation bar. Make sure that your navigation makes sense to your team and anyone with an outside perspective. Another feature is a sticky menu, AKA fixed navigation, which is when the navigation bar is locked in place. By having fixed navigation, your website visitors will be able to quickly navigate your website.
Fast & Easy Online Booking
As previously discussed, your tourism business needs to be digitally accessible to consumers. To accomplish this, ensure that an optimized booking flow is integrated. By utilizing partners such as PeekPro or Farehabor, your website can become a high-converting segment of your marketing strategy.
Mobile Responsive Design
Mobile-responsive means that your website can shrink or expand to the size of the screen that it is being viewed on. By having a mobile responsive site, not only will it help increase your conversions, but it will give your website a better search engine ranking.
Compelling Story & Eye-Catching Imagery
The average user spends less than 15 seconds on a website, so how does a business capture their attention? With a compelling story, interesting graphics, and high-quality photos and videos! In order to increase your online conversions, your tourism website needs to show the potential customer what sets you apart from the competition, what your business offers, and the value that they will receive when booking with you.
Common Tourism Marketing Advertising Strategies
There are numerous targeting strategies for tourism marketing that can give your tourism business or tour operating business the growth it needs! Here are 3 of the main targeting strategies that our tourism marketing agency implements.
Location-based Marketing
Location-based marketing is using data from mobile device users’ current or previous location to display relevant advertisements to them. This is also known as geo-targeting marketing, proximity-based marketing, and hyper-local marketing. For example, if a consumer visits a local hotel in the area, in the future that hotel could target promotions to that visitor when they’re in the area to encourage them to book another stay, utilize their amenities, etc.
Activity & Interest Marketing
This type of advertising requires businesses to keep location and the activities performed in such places in mind when executing the ad. Activity marketing includes targeting travelers who are adventure lovers or activity enthusiasts! Many locations all over the world are famous for specific activities such as snowboarding, hiking, art museums & galleries, etc. By segmenting the groups of potential customers by their activity interests, tourism businesses can approach these specific groups with relatable advertising.
Re-targeting
Re-targeting is a digital marketing strategy that helps convert online window shoppers into actual buyers. The first time a potential customer visits your website, there is only an 8% chance that they will book or purchase something. By implementing re-targeting advertisements, you can serve previous website visitors or page engagers another advertisement to persuade their purchase decision with your business.
Current Tourism Marketing Trends
Video Marketing
70% of marketers have claimed that video content has led to higher conversions. Having a well-made video to showcase your tours makes a highly-visual impact on consumers, and is infinitely more attractive. By utilizing video content, your tourism business can tell your story to consumers in a minute or less. Check out this blog on why video marketing is important in the tourism industry.
Storytelling
Today’s consumers are craving authenticity and uniqueness. Tourist businesses often find it difficult to differentiate their offer and seem to forget what makes their tours/products unique. A good story is what will capture (and keep) the attention of customers, as well as build your brand awareness. When utilizing storytelling in your marketing strategy, try to include the following: • Useful information • What your brand stands for • Emotional & engaging content • An interaction between your customers & your brand
Mobile Marketing
Mobile marketing is advertising that is created specifically for being delivered for mobile devices. In mobile marketing, often find campaigns with vertical video ads, the use of video content, and personalization of the mobile browsing experience.
In Conclusion
Tourism marketing is a form of marketing that has been adapted for tour operators, destinations, and tourism businesses. It often requires a wide range of moving parts to have an effective strategy and marketing plan. From a unique website to social media advertising to search engine optimization, each part is integral in helping your tourism business grow.
At AAMP Agency, we eat, live, and breathe tourism, and we’re even in the tourism industry ourselves! Our team of adventure & activity marketing pros knows what it takes to ensure that businesses thrive in the increasingly competitive market, and we’re ready to help! Contact AAMP Agency today for a quote.