Tired of paying a lot to have your hotel advertised on booking sites and not reaching the expected number of customers? Have you heard of marketing for tourism? No?!
Read on and find out how you can increase your guest count and stop relying on other websites for it! Understand once and for all the importance of digital marketing in tourism.
The Internet is the medium!
According to Google Trips, more than 70% of travelers use the internet to plan their next trip. Additionally, 83% of travelers get inspiration for new trips through Facebook and 55% through Instagram.
Another survey carried out by the Federation of Commerce of Goods, Services and Tourism of the State of São Paulo (FecomércioSP) concludes that 57,2% of people who research travel on the Internet complete the purchase directly through the website itself.
This data further confirms what is already evident in our daily lives: The Internet has become the greatest ally of sales in the tourism sector.
For this reason, you need to be ahead of your competitors, and the Inbound Marketing is the key!
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound Marketing is the set of marketing strategies focused on attracting, converting and delighting customers.
Also known as Attraction Marketing, it is responsible for increasing access to your tourism website, whether it is a hotel, a restaurant or a tour agency, and producing attractive content to convert access into reservations.
How to do Inbound Marketing in tourism?
There is no point in knowing about the process of Inbound Marketing and not knowing how to apply it. The path to success is divided into four steps:
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Attraction:
Would it be beneficial to attract anyone to your website, even if they have no interest in traveling? It would help promote your brand, that’s true… But it wouldn’t increase sales.
The first step of Inbound Marketing is discover ways to attract the right visitors to your digital channels, which is called qualified traffic, that is, traffic that has a real chance of resulting in a sale in the future.
But how do you ensure that the people most likely to become customers are attracted to your platform? Through interesting and relevant content, usually coming from the following channels:
- Blog: main content production channel that a company can use to capture new visitors;
- Website: While the blog “sells” content, the website sells the actual product. The goal is to make the message conveyed by the blog attract potential customers to learn about your service. A website needs to be well structured so that visitors can easily make a purchase. To do this, the information must provide a great purchasing experience, with clearly visible prices and accessible purchase buttons. It goes without saying that your website needs to have a great mobile experience. Testimonials from satisfied customers are essential for a successful strategy.
- Social media: essential for spreading your content across the various existing platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp…) and strengthening your brand image.
With all these platforms working, SEO work comes into play. (Search Engine Optimization), which is responsible for applying optimization techniques to its platforms, such as keywords, to increase searches for its content on the web.
Keywords are defined based on a study that aims to discover which phrases or words your potential customers use most when searching for tourism and travel bookings on Google.
In addition to ranking by keywords on Google, the platform AdWords It is also valid when it comes to getting more visitors to your website. It is a paid platform, where you can place your ads in the top positions on Google, increasing the visibility of your website and, consequently, the number of visits.
➡️➡️➡️Learn more at: SEO tools.
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Conversion:
Once you've gained new readers for your blog and engaged followers for your social media, comes the hard part: convert as many potential customers as possible.
The way to achieve this is by strengthening the relationship with your audience, using content generation, but with greater persuasive power. To achieve this, Inbound Marketing has the right tools:
Landing pages or conversion pages and forms: are designed to convince visitors to accept some free content in exchange for personal information, which is filled out in an easy-to-understand form;
This content that is made available, which may be an exclusive travel guide or exclusive photos, aims to leave the potential client with the desire to experience the place that was presented to them.
And what about the information that it provides? You can know exactly what your audience needs and use it to your advantage.
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Sales:
Once you have attracted the right audience and converted them into potential customers, the next step is to make sales. To do this, you need to use the data and information you have gathered during the conversion process to produce content based on your audience’s interests.
One of the great tools used by most tourism websites is email marketing, which consists of using information from the public, and the email already provided in the forms, to provide them with relevant information that stimulates interest in the trips in question. You can send emails with promotions, trends and even new booking packages. In this competitive segment, the maxim applies – “Out of sight, out of mind”.
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Enchantment:
After the sale is completed, one of the most important parts comes: after-sales.
Now that you have the client, your challenge is transform him into a loyal promoter of your brand. To do this, you need to offer a quality after-sales service, so that when this customer decides to travel again, he immediately remembers the name of your company, in addition to recommending it to acquaintances and family.
You should invest in the following practices:
- Product Success: If the customer has satisfactory results during their trip, whether due to the hotel they chose or the ease of payment, they will recommend it to others. It is important to encourage them to leave testimonials on your social networks, on Google and on your website;
- Active relationship: Even after the purchased trip has ended, the company must maintain contact with its customers, whether by sending new promotions, booking packages or even photos of possible travel locations. Don't abandon your customers!
- Advanced content: The key now is to create content that is specific to the needs of your customers, showing genuine concern for their well-being. You can send out forms after the experience is over, with the aim of correcting any errors that occurred during the trip.
Now that you know how it works, it's time to make your website grow and stop depending on other websites to make sales!
O marketing digital no turismo It is being used more and more by companies, don't let your competitor get ahead of you.