As a result, images can be a powerful tool for selling tours and activities online.

Learn how to create perfect images and use them to boost sales and build trust in your brand.

Ready? Let’s go!

Why images are super important

Images are valued assets in the modern era and can massively help your business attain success in many ways. Let’s look at what makes them so important.

Brands are going digital

Most tour and activity companies are actively working on their online presence. So using a unique approach to visuals is a great way to differentiate your business from the competition.

What is more, images can introduce your brand and help you create a great first impression to potential customers. They can make you recognizable and help you reach more people from your target audience.

Improve digital content delivery

Due to the overwhelming amount of digital content and increased use of mobile devices, attention spans have become shorter than ever. Competition is fierce and users are not engaging with static lines of text as they used to 10 years ago.

So using images is a great way to break up textual content and also communicate an idea without using words. They allow you to deliver content in a more interactive and appealing way that also helps retain attention. According to marketer Jeff Bullas, articles with images get 94% more total views. What’s more, he finds that 60% of consumers are more likely to consider or contact a business when an image shows up in local search results.

Powerful impact on sales and marketing

Since images can easily communicate messages about your brand, as well as offerings and services, they can boost your sales and overall online performance.

A great image will surely increase the engagement with your marketing campaigns. Depending on the channel you’re using, you can observe various positive outcomes.

For example, eye-catching imagery shared on social media can increase your followers and website traffic. If you decide to invest some budget in paid social and search ads, you are likely to take things to the next level and sell more tours or activities through your website.

Create a brand personality

Achieving consistency in visual style is key to establishing and growing your company online. That is why every design element is crucial for your brand strategy.

Along with colors and fonts, imagery plays a crucial role in building your brand identity. It can help you build awareness and connections with customers through visual storytelling.

So images deserve as much attention as any other aspect of your branding if not more!

How to create the perfect images for your tour or activity

Your brand imagery includes anything from social media graphics to user-generated and/or own photography. But what is that you need to make it stand out?

All it takes is a little know-how and experience. Here are our tips for great images:

Consistency

First and foremost, you need to stay true to your unique approach and style. Find out what works for your brand and stick to it. This will help you become recognizable and stand out from the competition.

Brand guidelines

Following the previous point, brand guidelines will set the framework you need to achieve consistency. They are extremely helpful when it comes to social media graphics and print marketing materials because they define the way key brand elements are used. This also saves content creators and designers valuable time.

Explore even more reasons why your brand needs a style guide and what needs to be included in it.

User-generated images

Consumer-generated content is probably the most authentic and influential type of content when it comes to the travel industry. You will mainly receive it in the form of social media tags or photo reviews. If the content is created by an experienced influencer, you will have a quality asset to add to your image library!

So make sure to make the most of it and utilize it in your marketing campaigns. You can repost UGC on your social media and stories. Perhaps feature it in your artworks for digital and print. Remember to always request permission from the creator just in case.

And the best part of it. Since user-generated content is created by your clients it also acts as a free review of your business or services.

There are many ways to encourage customers to create content for your tour and activity business. Among them are hosting contests and creating hashtags unique to your company. Learn are some other effective ways to facilitate more UGC.

Learn photography basics

Although you might receive some outstanding photographs created by your clients, you also need to know how to produce good quality images yourself.

Photography of people enjoying your activities or tours is a great start.

Surveys show that when it comes to photos of people wide shots are preferred to closeups. 72% of the best selling stock images are wide shots compared to 12% close-ups and 16% mid-shots.

If you want to go for nature or landscape photography, remember to use the rule of thirds for best composition.

The rule of thirds in action – imagine the frame is divided into 9 equal parts and use this as a guide when taking your shot. 

Equipment

To create outstanding photos it is not enough to just follow the right techniques. You also need to use the right equipment for the best results. Most modern smartphones are supplied with very good cameras that can serve your needs perfectly.

Depending on the setting you are taking pictures of you might also need additional lighting and a tripod to stabilize the camera. Additionally, using editing software can be extremely helpful for achieving the desired final effect.

If you want to go the extra mile, you can sign up for a photography course or invest in a professional photographer to do the job.

Examples of great tourism images

We found some impressive Instagram accounts that regularly share great images of tours and activities. They will inspire truly awesome ideas so make sure to check them out!

Airbnb

Instagram: airbnb

Followers: 4.7m

Hashtags: #airbnb #airbnbsuperhost #airbnbhost #airbnbexperience

The Instagram account of Airbnb shares some fantastic places to inspire your next vacation. They feature both user-generated content provided by the host and some own photography done by professionals. Either way, the account stays true to its mission, namely to motivate people to travel and explore the unique spots and places to stay around the world.

They have another account – Airbnbexperiences – dedicated to the one of a kind experiences you can try through the Airbnb platform. It presents the various activities through some excellent images and graphics that you might want to recreate for your activity business too!

Abercrombie & Kent UK

Instagram: abercrombiekent

Followers: 60.5K

Hashtags: #aktravel

This luxury travel account shares some outstanding landscapes from around the world. They post some inspirational travel photography while promoting the holidays and places they can take you to. So if you own a tour business or organize luxury journeys, follow this account to inspire your social strategy and visual content.

Tour Eiffel

Instagram: toureiffelofficielle

Followers: 207K

Hashtags: #toureiffel

This is one of the accounts that don’t need introducing as everyone has come across it at some point. A celebration of UGC and at the same time a luxury catalog of the memorable moments and one of a kind experiences that one could have at the Eiffel Tower.

It once again proves that a single tour or experience can be presented in so many different ways. So whether you offer a canal cruise or tour around a historical landmark, there is so much visual content you can create around it. Just use your imagination and explore these amazing accounts for a pinch of inspiration.

9 free tools to create great images

In our list below you can find the best free tools to prepare eye-catching, memorable images. Let’s dive in.

Canva

Canva is one of the most well-known tools for non-designers to prepare and create stunning images. There are hundreds of templates which you can choose and customize for your business and free stock images you can use as well.

Infogram

Infogr.am is perfect if you want to create graphs, chart, and maps. Why not create a customized map showing your location or chart what shows customers booked your activity?

Pablo

Pablo is another great tool for creating engaging images for your social posts in just under 30 seconds. Try it, especially if your business has an Instagram account.

Picmonkey

Picmonkey is one of the simplest online photo editors. There are several free filters you can play around with and create visuals for Facebook i.e.

Befunky

Befunky helps you to edit and design your photos and also make collages for albums. The tool is easy to manage and used by millions of people daily for their social posts.

Quotes Cover

Quotes Cover lets you prepare inspiring quotes for your social media accounts. Especially Pinterest is all about quotes.

Piktochart

Piktochart claims that it is the easiest tool to create social media infographics with just a few steps. There are hundreds of free templates to choose from and an easy to use interface.

Venngage

Venngage is the go-to tool for creating easy designs. It offers several user-friendly themes and icons to choose from.

DesignWizard

DesignWizard lets you create beautiful images quickly and easily. It’s a great alternative to Canva (above) and all of its features are available in the free version. With over 17,000 templates (10,000 free) and 1.2 million images in their database, you’re sure to find some great ideas for viral images.

Conclusion

Think of your perfect customer and what would impress them the most? Answering this question will help you adopt the right approach to using images for your tour or activities business.

Whether you are targeting local or international travelers, understanding what can influence their decision to choose you over a competitor will make a big difference.

Since images are proving to be among the most powerful tools for increasing sales, it is definitely worth the effort!

You might also like:

• An Introduction to SEO for Tours and Activities
• A Simple Guide to Google Analytics for Tours & Activities
• 7 Email Marketing Tips to Grow Your Tour and Activity Business
• The Keys to Effective Video Marketing for Activity Providers

The post How to Use Images Effectively to Sell More Tours and Activities appeared first on Regiondo.

A great story that’s well-told can help you connect with readers, build your brand, and even increase conversion rates. This is because stories have been around since pre-historic times and have the capacity to stir emotions and grab people’s attention.

Storytelling is an effective marketing tool that can be used to grow your tour company and increase your sales. This is why in today’s article we are focusing on how to promote and grow your tour or activity company with storytelling.

We’ll begin by addressing why storytelling is important for tourism companies, steps to crafting a great story that drives sales, and conclude with a real-life example of great storytelling in marketing a tourism company.

Without further ado, let’s begin.

Why is storytelling important for tourism companies?

Storytelling makes you unique

There are so many tour operators and activity providers out there competing for the attention of tourists and travelers. One way to survive the crowded digital space is to make sure your company stands out.

Apart from having unique features, storytelling is one of the effective ways your marketing team can use to distinguish your brand from competitors. Crafting a moving brand story can make your voice heard above the noise that fills every consumer’s ears today.

Another way stories can distinguish your brand is by including them in your experiences. Instead of just pointing out the attractions during a trip, your tour guides can engage travelers using captivating stories of the indigenous people and popular events in that destination. This makes your tour experience more exciting and memorable.

Stories help build a deeper connection with your audience

Do you know that emotions are what really drive the purchasing decisions of customers? Most of us buy things based on how we ‘feel’ but later justify using logic.

This is an important concept to keep in mind when marketing your tour company. Appeal to your audience’s emotions in order to have a chance at getting them to book with you. This calls for connecting at a deeper level with your clients, and storytelling can help you do that.

A good story can pull at the heartstrings of your readers and move them to take action when you need them to.

Stories share your company’s benefits in an engaging way

When creating content for your company’s website or social media platforms, simply presenting a list of features and benefits may not trigger as much reaction from your audience. You need more than facts to get people talking about your brand, sharing, or liking your content.

Including stories of previous travelers’ experiences is the spark that can trigger a blazing interaction between your company and target audience.

Detailed anecdotes of the exciting experiences shared in your tours or photos and videos of the fun times tourists have at your activity park are a memorable way of portraying your brand’s benefits. This makes clients understand how your company can meet their needs and why they should book with you.

You can leverage this power of storytelling to get more sales and grow your tour company.

Storytelling makes customers trust your brand

An authentic story, whether it’s your brand’s narrative, stories of your customers’ experiences, or historic tales of your tour destinations, is a huge contributor to building trust with your customers.

Consumers crave a unique and honest experience with a brand and something they can relate to on a personal level. This makes them identify with your brand and want to buy from you as a result.

More to just building trust, storytelling can trigger brand loyalty among your clients. When they read your story, connect with you, then go ahead to experience a fantastic time at your tour or activity, these customers are more likely to leave positives reviews or recommend you to their friends or family.

Storytelling helps you sell without sounding “salesy”

When marketing a product or service to potential customers, there’s the tendency to want to take a “salesy” approach where you tell clients to “buy this because it’s the best on the market.” But that may not work as well as using a story.

Storytelling gives you an opportunity to talk about your offering and allow your listeners or readers to make the purchasing decision on their own. This has a higher success rate as most people are much happier making a purchase when they feel the decision was theirs and they weren’t coerced into buying something.

6 Steps to Craft a Great Story That Drives Sales

As we’ve seen so far, storytelling can give your company an opportunity to showcase your authenticity. You can engage with clients on a deeper level through your stories, show your uniqueness, build trust and loyalty, and ultimately increase your bottom line by getting more bookings.

So how do you craft a successful story that can result in these benefits? Let’s go through the steps to creating a great story:

1. Know your target audience

One of the crucial steps before weaving your story is understanding who your target audience is.

What age group are they in? What do they want? What are their pain points? How can you best solve their problems? On which platforms are they mostly found?

The importance of this step is to decide on the ideal tone of your narrative and the message that will best resonate with those travelers. The language you’ll use will also be determined by your target audience.

Let’s say your audience is mostly made up of younger folks, say millennials. That may call for a more casual tone. Are they into adventure? Do they prefer low budget tours as opposed to luxurious trips? The answers to these questions will advise the direction the message in your story will take.

2. Make your story relevant

As a tour operator, your brand’s story is almost as important as your tour destination. You cannot craft a story that’ll resonate with every person on Earth. But by focusing on your audience persona, your narrative can be as relevant to their needs and wants as you like.

This takes us right back to the first point on understanding your client base.

Apart from resonating with your audience, your story should also be relevant to your tour destination or activity. It should be able to accurately represent what your customers are bound to experience once they book with you.

The relevance of a story for a tourism brand is crucial – whether it’s your brand’s narrative on your website or the story your tour guides share with travelers offline during the trips.

3. Appeal to your audience’s emotions

A great way of triggering sales in any business is making people care about your product or service enough to want to have it. The same goes for tour and activity operators. If you can appeal to your audience’s emotions and pull on their heartstrings, then you’re more likely to make them pull out their wallets.

So, instead of focusing on “selling” your activity or tour, pay more attention to the travelers and tell them a story about your tour that will arouse positive emotions. Let your story create that connection with your audience and a sense of familiarity that can move them to act.

4. Be authentic

Be yourself. Stay true to your brand. Don’t steal other companies’ ideas with an aim to impress your audience.

This is what it means to be authentic.

People like authenticity and are more likely to buy your story when they get that sense of honesty and uniqueness oozing out of your carefully developed narrative.

By being authentic, your story will stand out and make your brand unique. This is one of the strategies that can set you apart from your competitors.

5. Use tension

Storytelling as a marketing strategy works on the same principles as telling a story in a movie or a book. Tension can be used to hold the audience’s attention and keep them engaged.

You can create tension by introducing conflict in your story. Conflict is something that prevents a character from reaching their goal of getting what they desire. By posing such an obstacle in your story, you can build anticipation in your audience as they wait to see how the character will overcome the challenge before them.

In the end, show how the character is able to reach their goal when they find your product or service.

A simple example is a worker who’s become less productive at their job because they are stressed and burnt out. They come across your tour company online and book a trip that offers such a great experience and helps them relax. This character eventually gets back to work all refreshed, rejuvenated, and with a whole lot of amazing memories.

6. Include powerful visual storytelling

In your storytelling strategy, including catchy visual storytelling can pump up your engagement even further. You already know that a picture is worth a thousand words, therefore including them on your website and social media pages is a great idea.

Even more effective is the use of videos. Here are some statistics that show just how powerful video marketing is:

• 84% of people admit that watching a brand’s video convinced them to buy a product or service
• 66% of consumers prefer learning about a product or service through watching a video rather than reading a text-based article
• More than half the consumers (53%) want to see more video content in the future.

Example of great storytelling in marketing a tourism brand

Now that you know the benefits of storytelling and learned the steps to crafting your own powerful story, let’s have a look at a real-life example to help you put all the pieces together.

Visit Faroe Islands has an about page that’s a great example of a captivating story.

Source: Screenshot (Visit Faroe Islands- About Page)

Though one may think of this as a really isolated destination in the North Atlantic Sea, the tour operator uses that to their advantage by painting it in a mysterious light, “Europe’s Best Kept Secret”. This is bound to spark some curiosity in the reader causing them to want to find out more about this place.

The copy includes emotionally-charged words to describe what travelers can experience when they visit the Faroe Islands. At some point, the challenge of “highly changeable weather” on the islands builds a bit of tension. This is well tackled by pointing out that the brand offers numerous experiences regardless of the weather conditions.

Apart from the website content, Visit Faroe Islands uses video storytelling in a lot of its campaigns, one of which is the “Closed for maintenance, open for voluntourism” campaign.

This campaign showcases an initiative that cleverly promotes both tourism and sustainability. It targets travelers that desire an authentic experience by passing a relevant message of an opportunity to work side by side with locals to carry out some maintenance projects on the island.

Conclusion

Storytelling is one of the most effective aspects of content marketing for tour operators and activity providers. Having a brand story helps foster a deeper connection with your audience, maintain engagement, and build customer trust and loyalty. Having a narrative also makes you stand out from your competition.

To be able to create a powerful story that drives sales for your tour company, here’s a recap of the steps to follow:

• Know your target audience.
• Appeal to their emotions.
• Tell a relevant story.
• Be authentic.
• Use tension and conflict in your story.
• Include images and videos.

You might also like:

• How to Market a Tour Company for Free: 7 Big Platforms You Should be on
• 10 Ways to Promote Your Tours for Maximum Sales
• 8 Underestimated Tactics for Successful Tour Marketing
• Marketing Mix for Tour and Activity Operators

The post How to Grow Your Tour Company with Storytelling appeared first on Regiondo.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a free website analytics service by Google. It helps you track your website traffic and offers helpful insight into your business performance.

Why should you pay attention to Google Analytics?

Although web analytics looks like a little part of your marketing strategy, it’s implications are enormous! Google Analytics helps you track and understand customer behavior and whether your business is catering to their needs.

Most importantly, Google Analytics (or GA for short) gives you insight into the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. This way, you can see new growth opportunities and find out if you’re leaving money on the table or wasting your budget.

How to set up Google Analytics

If you haven’t already, installing Google Analytics is a pretty straightforward process. You only need to follow these simple steps:

Get your GA tracking code

You’ll first need to go to this URL. Next, sign in with your Google account or create one if you don’t have an existing account with Google. After signing in, Google will ask you for your website info, and then you’ll be taken to a page with your tracking code.

Image courtesy of Quicksprout

The Global Site Tag is your tracking code.

Install tracking code on your site

Now that you have your tracking code, it’s time to install it on your website. Your tracking code needs to fire on every page of your website to track your site traffic efficiently. Google provides detailed instructions on installing tracking code for all types of websites.

Confirm your GA installation

You can now test if your Google Analytics has installed on your website correctly with everything set up. You can use the real-time data to check if your tracking code is working. Just open your GA dashboard on one tab, and your website on another. Then, click through a bunch of pages on your website, and if the code is installed correctly, you’ll see the data reflect in real-time.

How to set up Goals

You can’t track progress if you don’t have a goal in mind. That’s why Google Analytics lets you create goals that you can use as a yardstick to measure your progress. There are a few goal options you can use for your tour and activity business. Let’s break them down:

Destination goals

GA records a destination goal when a user visits specific pages on your website. For example, if you want to launch a newsletter, you can use the destination goal to track the number of people who see the “Thank you” page. You can also compare the number of people who visit the “Signup” page vs. the number of actual signups to determine your conversion rate.

Pages/screen per session goals

Unlike other goals that track where users visit on their website, pages/screen per session goals help you figure out how engaging your website is. GA calculates this type of goal by dividing your page views by the total number of recorded sessions (i.e. visits from unique users). For example:

5000 page views ÷ 1500 sessions = 3.3 pages per session

You can set the minimum number of pages you’d like a user to visit before considering them as engaged visitors. For example, if you set the minimum pages to 3, GA will track every user who visits three pages as a goal completion.

Duration goals

Duration goals are used to track the number of users who spend a specific duration of time on your website. This type of goal provides useful insight into how well your site works and areas that need optimization to retain more users.

Like pages per session, average session time is a great way to measure how well users engage with your website. For example, let’s say you have long-form blog posts on your website. If the average session duration for a specific post is lower than the rest, you’ll know that it probably needs optimizing.

Event goals

Event tracking is an invaluable way to track interactions with different elements of your website, such as video views. Tracking these events gives you more insight into your customers and allows you to have a deeper understanding of their behavior on your website.

In contrast to pageviews, Google Analytics doesn’t track these events by default. Things like clicks on downloads, video views, and form submissions slip through the cracks if you don’t set up event-based goals.

What type of goals should you focus on?

Different business models require different approaches. The goals for a tour and activity business should revolve around:

Completed bookings

As a tour and activity, one of your measures of conversion is bookings. That’s why completed bookings should be among your goals. Setting a GA goal for completed bookings will provide you with useful insights such as your best traffic channels that result in a sale. If you use Regiondo, you will see booking data automatically on your dashboard. You can also connect your Regiondo account with Google Analytics to track new sales in both systems.

Email signup

Email subscriptions can be a valuable metric, especially if you intend to do email marketing campaigns. With GA, you can keep track of the users who sign up for your email list by creating an event-based goal or integrating with your email marketing software. You can then use this data to understand where you should focus your marketing budget to get more emails.

Enabling e-commerce

Although you’re not running an e-commerce store, it’s advisable to enable e-commerce on GA. As a tour and activity company selling online, your business follows the basic rules of e-commerce. Enabling e-commerce will provide you with useful insights into your sales and revenue that you can use to optimize your site for increased bookings.

Connecting Google Ads

GA can link to Google Ads to help paint a complete picture of user behavior and ad performance. Linking Google ads to Google Analytics makes it easier to identify your pages’ problems since you will see both ad conversions and individual page data side-by-side.

Analyzing reports in GA

You have your GA set up, and the data is streaming in. Now, how do you make sense of it all? Your analytics are pretty much useless if you can’t use that information to optimize your website. There are several ways to analyze your reports in GA, but for tour and activity companies, here are the most critical areas:

• Understanding traffic channels
• Using custom UTM parameters
• Comparing channels by goal completions
• Traffic by country & language

Traffic channels

If you’re driving traffic from multiple channels, it’s essential to compare their performance to allocate your budget accordingly. With GA, you can pinpoint the most and least effective traffic channels. Just go to Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels to find out where users are coming from. You can then cut down efforts for the least performing traffic channels and go all-in on the ones that are giving you a better return on your time (and money).

Use custom UTM parameters

While GA gives you excellent information out-of-the-box, you can use custom UTM parameters to get more insight into your campaigns.

Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) is an analytics tool that marketers use to measure their marketing efforts’ performance and understand their audience. UTM parameters’ advanced tracking option helps you stay on top of the marketing campaigns that maximize traffic.

For example, you can drill down into campaigns for specific keyword sets and seasonal promotions that would otherwise be classified as simply “Paid search” or “Social”.

To get started, head over to the Google Campaign URL Builder where you can tag your URLs with UTM parameters. Use the new URLs across your various social media, email, and advertising campaigns so you can isolate their performance from passive traffic and lead sources (i.e. ones that you did not proactively work on).

After you accumulate some data, head over to Acquisition > Campaigns > All Campaigns to track their performance.

Compare channels by goal completion

GA allows you to sort your traffic channels by goal completions. For example, let’s say you had 100 goal completion in a week. When you sort your channels by goal completions, you can see that 17 came from Organic traffic, 26 came from Ads, 44 from Social Media, and the rest from Email. You can also analyze this data to see the conversion rate for each channel, e.g. 17 goal completions came from 4500 organic visitors.

The first step here is setting up your goal tracking as we discussed above. Next, head over to Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium and select the goal you’d like to analyze from the Conversion drop-down menu.

Next, click on Goal Completions or Goal Conversion Rate to understand how effective each of your traffic sources is.

Traffic by country and language

As a tour and activity company, your business is heavily reliant on targeting specific locales and languages. GA gives you insight into the locations of your website visitors and their languages. This information can help you create custom tour and activity offers for visitors, depending on their language and location.

To see this report, head over to Audience > Geo and review your traffic by Location or Language.

Conclusion

Google Analytics is an invaluable tool for website and customer insight. If you don’t have GA installed, you’re missing out on helpful insights to improve your business. And if you already have GA installed, you can use our strategies to enhance further the data you receive and analyze it.

You might also like:

• How to Use Images Effectively to Sell More Tours and Activities
• An Introduction to SEO for Tours and Activities
• 7 Email Marketing Tips to Grow Your Tour and Activity Business
• The Keys to Effective Video Marketing for Activity Providers

The post A Simple Guide to Google Analytics for Tours and Activities appeared first on Regiondo.

The demand for videos is growing daily. In fact, 53% of people want more video content from marketers, and over half (51.9%) of marketing professionals across the globe say video is the content with the best ROI. Video works so well that adding one to a landing page can increase conversions by 80%. In addition, your chances of showing up first in Google rankings are 53 times greater if you have embedded videos on a site page. After all, Google now owns YouTube, and thus the ranking impact of video has significantly increased. Predictions from experts show that by 2020, 80% “of all Internet traffic will be driven by video.

In short, video marketing works – but there are some key elements we have to talk about. It is worth it!

Understand Video Marketing

Video is now the primary medium by which content is shared. And the main reason is the explosion in ownership and use of mobile devices. As a result, video is the way a large share of people shop for goods and services online, and video consumption is growing at a rate of 100% per year. This means that whatever you do in your video marketing efforts, it should definitely be mobile friendly.

The human brain, in some estimations, can process video approximately 60,000 times faster than it can process written text. Therefore, video helps people make decisions quicker and more easily – ideal for creating a more pleasant experience and improving customer retention.

Video marketing as a species of content marketing is not related to sales (at least not directly). Video content, even more so than written content, is all about the story. Sure, you should provide useful, relevant information and move the content consumer toward a sign-up or sale, but your primary purpose is to tell a story that provides a pleasant experience. And while telling that story, you’re also trying to:

• Inspire viewers to experience something new
• Assist them in selecting a destination
• Help them choose the right offer for their level of experience
• Inform them about new tours and activities
• Increase positive reviews by heading off unrealistic expectations

The ultimate goal is to have your videos shared and re-shared on social media until one or more go viral. Video is the most effective kind of marketing, because, as we mentioned, it continues to gain momentum and can take on a life of its own.

Have a Plan

As with any kind of marketing, you need a planned strategy. And the first step in that plan is understanding that a video is not intended to be a commercial and your video marketing isn’t a promotional platform primarily. Rather, your videos should be an “experience” that people enjoy while watching and want to share. The next step is to fully understand your target audience and what makes them share and, ultimately, buy. Then you have to create video content that viewers want and need and will appreciate.

Again, as with any kind of marketing, you need to deploy a sales funnel that gradually and inexorably moves potential customers from the broad mouth of the funnel down to and eventually out of the narrow end where a sale occurs. So, then, because a video marketing campaign requires a series of videos, you should make several at a time so that each one builds on the previous one.

When you plan these videos, keep in mind, too, that the first 10 seconds of each video are the most critical. It’s during those initial seconds when a viewer will decide to watch the whole video or click away. So get right to the point and get the essential information right upfront. And then don’t neglect to include a call to action in them so that the viewer feels compelled to take the desired action.

Different types of videos

You know you have to produce video content that gets shared and remembered and moves viewers to the next step. But what kind of videos, exactly, do that?

Experience Videos

As one of the most powerful of all marketing videos, experience videos involve filming of the actual event or tour and present that experience to viewers. You can show viewers what they will actually see and experience on your tour. This kind of video gives viewers a good glimpse of what they will get, builds anticipation, and motivates them to take action.

Product Videos

These videos treat a particular tour, an aspect of a tour, or event/activity. They are a bit more information-based and explain what viewers will experience and other pertinent information about destinations and events/activities. Product videos also give you an opportunity to showcase your resources and explain how easy it is to book with your company. Product videos work with less action compared to experience videos. They should serve an explanatory purpose.

Testimonial Videos

We all want the assurance of social proof, and that’s why testimonial videos are so effective. In this kind of video, you simply have satisfied customers talk about their experience and what it meant to them. The goal is to make the video compelling by capturing genuine emotions and reactions. This kind of video often works best coming right on the heels of an experience video.

Besides your testimonial videos, TripAdvisor could serve as your best friend if it comes to customer reviews. Regiondo helps you to collect reviews automatically in order to promote your business!

Many marketers also try to combine these different types of videos. Make sure to mix it up in a sense that it won’t confuse your viewers but give an insight into what you have on offer.

Distribution channels

Once you have a series of carefully planned-out videos ready to go, what do you do with them? You put them everywhere you can, but some places give you a lot more bang for your effort.

YouTube

YouTube may not be as new and exciting as it once was, but it still works. It gets over a billion unique visitors every month and three in five travelers who watch online videos use it to narrow down their brand, destination, or activity choices.

Instagram

The most recent Facebook changes have caused it to lose a good bit of its marketing effectiveness, but Instagram is heating up and growing more popular for marketing by the day. The only drawback with Instagram is that you have a limited amount of time to capture viewers’ attention, so you have to provide something arresting, snappy, or intriguing.

Marketing Newsletter

You do capture information and send out email newsletters, don’t you? It’s a struggle to keep coming up with fresh, useful content for them. But your marketing videos can fix that while getting wide distribution at the same time

So. Video marketing for activity providers in the travel and leisure industry can provide the greatest ROI of any other kind of marketing. That’s why a growing number of tourism companies are investing heavily in video. Simply put it has greater emotional impact, provides a better experience, and makes viewers want to take the next step. And when they are ready to take that next step, Regiondo has the booking software to make your life a whole lot easier.

Conclusion

This was a quick look at the keys to effective video marketing for tours and activities. We hope there was at least one valuable tip that you’ll be able to utilize and grow your business using the power of video!

You might also like:

• How to Use Images Effectively to Sell More Tours and Activities
• An Introduction to SEO for Tours and Activities
• A Simple Guide to Google Analytics for Tours & Activities
• 7 Email Marketing Tips to Grow Your Tour and Activity Business

The post The Keys to Effective Video Marketing for Tours and Activities appeared first on Regiondo.

But how do you stand out from the crowd and make sure your company wins the business? To quote Bill Gates from an essay he published on the future of the internet ‘Content is King’, and we strongly agree!

In this article, we will discuss our top 5 content marketing tips for tour and activity providers that will help you boost traffic to your site and ultimately convert visitors into paying customers.

But First, What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a way of reaching the customer and increasing interest in your brand. In a nutshell, it means creating and distributing content that is both valuable and relevant to attract and retain your target audience.

Why should you do this? Well, if you provide consistently useful and interesting information, your buyer will ultimately reward you with their business as they gain trust in your brand and your messaging.

Content can include blogs, podcasts, newsletters, webinars, infographics, and videos, to name but a few examples. It is a low-cost way of increasing brand awareness and maintaining recognition, particularly in these difficult economic times.

Traditional marketing techniques like direct mail and TV ads push a message out to an audience who may or may not be interested in your product or services. Content marketing pulls an already interested audience to your platform and establishes a dialogue, automatically bringing relevant people into your sales funnel.

Should Tours and Activities Do Content Marketing?

In a word, YES! 82% of all tourism bookings from 2018 were made online. That said, simply having an online presence is not enough – to truly stand out in a saturated market and bring visitors to your webpage, content marketing is a must.

It takes at least 6 to 8 touches to generate a valid sales lead according to Salesforce. These touchpoints give you the opportunity to educate and inform people about your product and services. The more valuable the touchpoint, the more likely that they will convert into paying customers.

What’s more – content marketing in the tourism sector shouldn’t be seen as too challenging. Tours and activities are fun and visually appealing which makes them easily marketable. So let’s use this to create some fantastic content!

Ready to learn more? Here are some of our top tips for content marketing.

5 Tips to Improve Your Content Marketing

1. Understand your customer

Yes, this may sound incredibly simple but you would be surprised how many tourism brands ignore this simple rule and fail to gain any traction in their content marketing efforts.

Sit down with your team for a brainstorming session and picture your ideal customer. Ask the following questions: Who are they? Where do they come from? How old are they? How do they tend to book? Where do they go for information? What struggles do they face and what annoys them about the process? Use all of this information to create at least 3 buyer personas – a fictional representation of your ideal customers.

There are a bunch of tools out there that can help you with this research. Check out Google Trends to find out which keywords are trending for your industry and/or geographic region and see how you can incorporate them into your content strategy.

2. Address pain points

Following on from your research above, you should know what stumbling blocks your customers are facing when it comes to booking tours and activities. Do they want to see more reviews? Are they missing some destination knowledge? Take this information and write about it!

Are you trying to attract female travelers for your activity in Lisbon? Why not post a blog article about how safe the city is, then promote your blog post on your social channels and newsletters.

By addressing the pain points that your ideal customer is facing (and no doubt googling!) your content will attract them to your website and you will become a trusted source of information – leading them to convert into paying customers.

3. Plan for perfection

Create and maintain a content calendar. Use this template from HubSpot as a starting point. Having a concrete plan will allow you to stay consistent and relevant, and also hold you accountable to post on fixed deadlines. You should be opening your content calendar every morning and updating the status column to ensure that everything is kept up-to-date.

Aim to work at least 2 weeks in advance but never lock your calendar in 100%, as breaking news might require you to spontaneously write new content and move around previously planned posts.

Make a note of festive occasions, theme days, or national holidays – if you are offering cooking classes and it’s World Nutella day (February 5th for those of you who didn’t know), why not compile a list of your favorite recipes that incorporate Nutella and share on your various channels?

4. Check out the competition

Make a list of your current competitors and companies that you aspire to emulate. Sign up for their newsletters, check out their blog and social media channels. Don’t be afraid to see what your competition is doing for content and learn from it!

Keeping an eye on what your competitors are putting out there and examining the traction their posts are getting will keep you on the right path. Does it inspire you? Could you do better? Give it a shot but remember, stay true to your brand and your unique selling points to really make a difference.

5. Take advantage of User-Generated Content

User-Generated Content (UGC for short) is key in the tourism industry. Why? UGC images are 5 x more likely to convert than non-UG as consumers tend to trust more in content developed by their peers than in content created by brands.

Featuring UGC on your chosen channels will increase engagement as it is considered to be more relatable. It also allows you to tell a more authentic story of your product or services while saving you some time in content creation. How to get started? Create a # and ask your customers to use it when experiencing your tour or activity. You can then re-post the content on your channels – but be sure to tag the original poster!

You can adapt User-Generated Content and use it on pretty much every marketing channel that you use, from print marketing to Instagram Stories. It’s a powerful way to stand out from the crowd and with zero-cost attached.

Content Marketing in Action

Let’s take a look at some great examples of content marketing in action.

Fat Tire Tours is a US-based company offering bike and segway tours in 12 cities around the world, from Florence to San Francisco. They have been operating since 1999 and provide over 190 different tours.

The Fat Tire Tour Blog has a variety of different categories offering information relating to travel and the cities they operate in, without selling their product.

Interested in owning some espadrilles from Barcelona or where to grab brunch in Washington D.C? The Fat Tire Tours blog acts as a travel guide for their locations, showcasing their local knowledge and expertise. This allows the reader to gain trust in the company and when they come to book their holiday activities, they will remember just how much they enjoyed reading this blog.

Not only is their blog a great example of content marketing, but they also have a YouTube channel with over 7.6k subscribers. They post short video snapshots of their services so that potential customers can see exactly what to expect when they book a city tour.

Want to see more? Head over to their Instagram to see how they combine User-Generated Content with destination imagery to create a sense of wanderlust amongst their followers.

Conclusion

Content marketing and your business definitely mix! We are fortunate to be working in an industry that is not only visually appealing but also elicits emotional reactions. Using our tips above, you can improve your content marketing offering, gain brand awareness and increase revenue – what more could you possibly want?

One last piece of advice? Be consistent. There is no point in writing a fantastic blog article one week, and then not posting anything for another 2 months as you will lose all of the interest that you gained from the first post. Make sure that you use your editorial calendar to make a concrete plan and stick to it! You will soon reap the rewards.

You might also like:

• How to Use Images Effectively to Sell More Tours and Activities
• An Introduction to SEO for Tours and Activities
• A Simple Guide to Google Analytics for Tours & Activities
• 7 Email Marketing Tips to Grow Your Tour and Activity Business
• The Keys to Effective Video Marketing for Activity Providers

The post 5 Content Marketing Tips for Tours and Activities appeared first on Regiondo.