As the hotel and travel marketing terrain continues to evolve on a day to day basis, business owners are constantly embroiled in a race to cater to customers’ needs and seek to provide an experience that’s unrivaled. Among the vanguards of these promotional tools that give businesses a competitive edge are websites; marketing is everything and is considered the keystone of an organization’s success and presence among consumers.
Website Design
Source: Momondo.com
Your website is the basis more or less for your marketing drive; customers will use it to identify you as a brand and it’s something that may set you apart from the competition. Most innovative businesses look to a global audience in promoting its products and services. Consumers from all age groups are becoming tech-savvy, having a website that offers a complete experience in terms of interactivity and ease-of-use is considered almost a necessity in today’s fast moving consumer world.
The website is where it all happens; your hub for making a name for yourself in the consumer market. But are you utilizing tools effectively that have been placed at your disposal? Consider these:
- Is the website optimized for mobile devices and tablets?
- Does it have blogs related to your product or services?
- Is your site integrated with social media-friendly tools
- Is your search engine optimized and moving up in ranking?
It’s vital the impact your daily business activities have, can be viewed on your website. Google Analytics can help you get a handle on this process. This value-for-money tool is considered an essential for any business that aims to keep up with customer demands. Taking the time and energy to install Google Analytics on every page of your website will inevitably save you money down the line.
Installation can help you in a major way and ensures you understand what’s happening with your site and how it’s being used:
- The amount of traffic you get in the event of a search or query – SEO traffic
- Traffic your site gets when a user clicks on an ad placed by you – Paid traffic
- And, traffic that’s related to social media applications or networks – Social Media traffic
Furthering Google Analytics’ worth as a business tool is Google Adwords; guaranteeing a top spot on a search engine page is what it aims to accomplish. The following can help boost your rankings:
- It would be wise to branch out brands into separate campaigns in order to segregate the flagship products from the poor-performing ones.
- Capitalize on your site links, email extensions and location that AdWords can accommodate. The much improved diversity of your ads will give way to more clicks.
- Tailor campaigns to specifics like mobile and tablet users, locations etc.
“Remarketing” has become a popular avenue among online businesses. The interesting thing here is that brand-wise, it can be a cheap and efficient tool. What you simply must do is to work on a list of users/customers to remarket to. A potential target could be:
- Users just looking around without buying; commonly known as shop cart abandoners.
- Those buying holiday packages on a habitual basis; booking their vacation around the same time each year
- Hold on to those high spenders and engage in a little up-selling
You might find a good deal of tips on optimizing your website. However, you must be completely aware of what visitors want from you. Search engines can extract certain information and put you forward as an authority in any given industry or discipline; understand how customers see you or how they’d like to see you as a provider.
If you’re a business owner who’s willing to commit to this in the long run, you will reap countless benefits. Google Adwords’ value cannot be underestimated: when a business is well known by users and search engines as being a reference point pertaining to a specific subject, Google “wises up” as a result and becomes better at adjusting ranking positions; this is helpful for sites that are over-optimizing.
Tap Fully into Social Media
No matter how comprehensive your site is regarding products or services, if you haven’t actively integrated social media into your website, you are simply fooling yourself and living on borrowed time. Google actually ranks websites higher when they are rich with social media. So long as you’ve a prominent social presence, your content is going to appear much closer to the listings at the top of the page.
Social media platforms available to travel companies are growing at a significant pace. It is paramount to jot down your social media strategy before you go about tweeting and posting. Seek the advice of an agency if need be. A poorly executed strategy may very well damage your brand and even bring down the team’s morale.
Try to absorb experiences of successful tourism operators in the travel and hotel sector. Identify what content is being passed around. Photos go a long way in enticing people to use your product; look into Instagram and Pinterest as they may give you the tools you need to bolster market presence.
Pinterest is a social network image sharing service that you simply must integrate into your website. Among the fastest growing networks, and ranked 4th among social media platforms, this is what hotel and travel holiday dreamers seek when picking their dream location.
A website that’s Facebook-friendly is a no-brainer. However, one should utilize all available tools; Twitter is a great platform in this case, as whatever “tweets” are made fail to remain within the confines of Twitter for too long. Word gets around fast.
Getting a good Klout score determines how high your business ranks in the social media universe. Go to www.Klout.com to learn how it works.
Providing meaningful content to your existing customers that they may be able to share is a surefire way of appealing to a wider audience. This could be in the form of dream itineraries or travel tips to making the most out of your hotel experience i.e. that your customers would be willing to share.
Leave a Comment