PROMOTION STRATEGIES FOR TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEEDS TO FOCUS IN THE YEAR 2020
Tourism is a lucrative business niche. While it’s helping people to sight beautiful scenery, it’s also enriching business owners within the industry. Two decades ago, about 2.4 million international tourists came to India annually. During January-July 2019, Foreign Tourist Arrivals (FTAs) were 60.84 lakh with a growth of 2.1 percent. In July 2019, Foreign Exchange Earnings (FEEs) was Rs 1,34,689 crore (US$ 19.27 billion) with a growth of 7.2 percent from July 2018-July 2019. The industry is indeed impactful to both travelers and business owners.
In the year 2020, the industry is expected to attract more travelers to Indian Destinations. If you intend to grow your business bottom line in 2020, you must hone your social media promotion strategies. Before the internet era, TV and radio advertising methods were effective in growing leads and converting prospects to loyal clients. They brought sweeping changes inthe attitudes and behavior of tourists. They helped the Indian Tourism Industry flourished like never before in recent years. However, since the evolution of the social media platform, more people have shifted attention from watching TV programs to consuming content on the internet. Also, entrepreneurs have been using social media platforms to humanize their brand. That’s a proof that we’re now in a digital era. Social media is now the kings of business promotions and marketing. As social media users keep growing, brands are frequently rolling out brilliant promotions to capture their audience. So, if you want your business to scale in 2020, you also need to tap into social media promotions. Are you even aware of the following statistics? As of the third quarter of 2019, facebook had 2.45 billion monthly active users. In 2019, Instagram announced they had more than 1 billion monthly active users (MAU). As of Q1,2019, Twitter boasted of 330 million monthly active users. LinkedIn boasts over 645 million users in more than 200 countries and territories across the globe. Those statistics are not made for viewing purpose. Rather, they’re provided for decision-making purposes. The implication of such data is that the social media population is increasing every day. And smart entrepreneur are taking advantage of such an increase. In the tourism and hospitality world, travel journalists, media experts on travel and tourism entrepreneurs in India are now using Facebook, Instagram etc. to offering highlightsabout places of tourist interests to prospects. Those data are prime motivations for their actions. If you’re yet to engage in social media promotion, here are key reasons you need to do so. 1. It permits you to target and retarget ideal consumers.
With advanced targeting capabilities, social media platforms like Facebook help you target your ideal buyers. This ensures you to drive more relevant traffic to your site. Facebook allows you to serve your content to those individuals who display the same types of behaviors that your target audience does. As you drive more relevant traffic to your brand site, you can improve outcomes, no matter what your ad goals may be. 2. Social media promotion is cost effective. One of the greatest benefits of social media promotion is that it helps you reduce marketing costs without sacrificing results. Most of your social media promotion results will come from investing time in creating and publishing content as well as having conversations with your fans and followers. The good news is that even just a few hours a week can have significant results.
3. Social media promotion can lead to higher conversion rates. Social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than any form of outbound marketing tactics. That could be because you’re humanizing your brand through the content you curate. Every post you make and each conversation you have on your social media channels is aprivilege to convert an interested lead into a happy customer. By building a relationship with your leads and customers and posting valuable content on a consistent basis, your brand can work to improve trust and credibility, which leads to more conversions. 4. Social media promotion can help you enhance brand authority. Marketing through social media allows you to build authority for your agency. This is a crucial part of effectively positioning your business as a leader in the marketplace. The more valuable content you are sharing on social media, the more you opportunities you have to demonstrate your expertise to leads and customers. CONTENT CURATION: AN IMPORTANT SOCIAL MEDIA PROMOTION STRATEGY
A recent study by the Asian Institute of Hospitality & Tourism revealed that people are more likely to comply when more eye contact is used. Sure, people will request for your services if you can offer them something that is visually appealing. While focusing on social media promotions, you must learn to offer prospects with content that appeals to their eyes. You must ensure your contents influence them to travel inside their minds. By engaging them with such contents, chances of having them as leads are higher. LET CONTENTS SPEAK FOR YOU! Online content consumption is growing at a rapid pace. Anyone who must get people's attention must work harder in curating quality content. The content can range from text to pictures and videos. In the travel industry, efforts must be invested in creating contents that leverage: Past client testimonials Experiences of other people who have visited certain tourist centers Agency’s expertise. 1. PAST CLIENTS TESTIMONIALS
Past client testimonials are undoubtedly a strong tool for business promotions. What past clients say about you is important. Feedback is a reflection of what your brand represents and offers to clients. It’s an opinion of previous clients about your start-up. It offers you an honest guage of your service. According to Spectoos, customer testimonials are powerful tools for building trust and credibility. They significantly influence the new buyer purchase decision. When prospects learn good things about a travel agency, they easily develop positive vibes towards the business. In fact, they are eager to transact with such an agency as quickly as possible. Some agencies have taken shortcuts to create fake reviews about their agency. In past years, many agencies have followed such a trend and made positive result from the action. But over time , they regretted their actions. New customers didn’t enjoyed what was promoted to them through previous testimonials. Hence, a decline in their services. Know that feedback about your agency must be authentic. Even when it’s a negative type, you must accept it and adjust to your client's comment. Doing so improves your services over time and ensure you’re agency is reputable and reliable. 2. EXPERIENCES OF OTHER PEOPLE WHO HAVE VISITED A TOURIST DESTINATION
The experience of other tourists matters a lot. What other peoples say about destinations you are offering to people matters a lot. If the destination is promoted as a nice and awesome type, other people would also love to be there. Assuming you’re a client, won’t you love seeing the masterpieces of the Louvre in Paris or the replica of the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas. Sincerely, you would love to be there? Now ask yourself this question – why would you love to be in such a destination? Because of other people’s experiences,right? That’s exactly what we’re saying here. People approve or disapprove a commodity or service based on other people’s opinions. If you must get clients,you must behave like them. You must be willing to leverage on other tourist experiences and promote them to clients. That intrigues them more to partner with you for a trip to such a destination. 3. AGENCY EXPERTISE
While the first two points may be out of your control, it’s pertinent to know that promoting your agency expertise is within your reach. Your commitment to this strategy can determine if your promotions will scale. It helps create an experience inside people’s heads. People require a solution to their challenges. They want an agency that can help them accomplish their goals. Only travel agencies that solve their challenges and meet their needs promptly would have their attention. In that regard, you must choose several alternatives to promote your expertise to them and ultimately create a good experience inside their head. If your contents contain any of those three ideas, you’re likely to gain more exposure for your business. WHAT TYPE OF CONTENT WORKS BEST FOR YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA PROMOTIONS? If you can’t imagine and create nice visuals, your conversion rate may be low. There are so much content on the internet today that has a lower engagement rate.
All types of contents – text, pictures and audio-visual are useful for your social media promotions. ♦ Their qualities depend on your creativity. ♦ When you create content, you’re offering people free and insightful information regarding an issue or idea. At the same time, you’re promoting your business to them. The key to curating quality content is to ensure your audience feel like you’re communicating directly to them. ♦ Whether you’re providing an information through text, picture or videos, always speak directly to your clients. ♦ In terms of video content, you can create a short documentary about a destination,offer vacation tips, recommends quality travel kits and lots more. ♦ Regarding text, you can create content on top destination people are visiting in India during summer or winter. You can even write on the cost of traveling to certain destinations. ♦ You can also use pictures to get the attention of people and subsequently promote your services to them.Identify locations people love to visit, create interesting pictures about such location and publish them for prospects to see. Infact, the pictures could be that one of your team members in a specific destination.It can showcase the fun you’re having at such a destination. ♦ All that matters here is: be that one agency that offers quality information to people. ♦ Then at the end of every content – text,picture or video, promote your agency expertise or past customer experiences to the audience. TAKE-AWAY: We now live in an era where the internet is a king. It’s not only making the spread of information easier, but it’s also ensuring that businesses gain popularity at an increasing rate. If you must rule in this digital era, you must adapt and evolve. Your brand must invest in relationship building. Everything your brand posts on social media must drive conversation and amplify reach. So, if you’re serious about growing your business bottom line in 2020, you need to start curating contents that bother on customer testimonials, brand experience and expertise. Remember the only limitation you have is YOU. Work on improving your brand presence by on social media by promoting your agency through text, pictures and videos. Perhaps you need the help of an expert in social media promotion, feel free to contact us now! Read the full article