If you’re constantly running your tours at max capacity, expanding your global reach probably isn’t a big priority. But if you’ve found that despite your best efforts, you’ve still got some spots left open, it might be time to consider expanding your marketing efforts.

International guests are great because they can act as a massive opportunity to increase your sales, depending on where you run your tours. Tour operators in the United States, for example, may not be so reliant on visitors from outside the country simply because the population itself is large enough to sustain high tour numbers. For business owners in Mauritius, however, attracting an international audience is an absolute must. Here are a few tips to get you started introducing your tours to a global audience.

Editor’s note: This is a guest contribution by Alison DeGuide. Alison is the Sr. Web Coordinator for TourismTiger – the premier web design agency for tour and activity operators.

1. Translate your website and marketing efforts into other languages.

The easiest way to market your tour business to international guests is by making sure your website, brochures, pamphlets, and any other materials you use are in the language of the country or region you’re after. For example, if you’re seeking tourists from Latin America, your website should be translated into at least Spanish and Portuguese. As long as you make it clear that the tours themselves aren’t offered in this other language, having a translated site can be useful for your guests.

I am personally much more comfortable browsing a site in my native language, English, and nearly always do so, even if I’m looking at experiences that I know will only be offered in another language like Spanish. There’s something about going through the booking and payment process that is much less anxiety-provoking if I can read it in my native language, and I’m less likely to stop the process simply because I don’t recognize a certain word.

On the tours themselves, however, it’s not as big of an issue if I misunderstand a word or two. Therefore, even if you don’t offer bilingual or multilingual tours, I still recommend translating the site itself.

With Regiondo, you can implement your ticket shop, booking widgets or booking buttons in different languages. That way, you can place offers on your multilingual website in up to 11 languages. Try it for free.

2. Keep your audience in mind when considering your content and SEO strategies.

Implementing keywords in your content is great for search engine optimization, but you never want to prioritize it over actual readability. You’re not going to be able to translate your website into every language, so it’s pretty likely that at least one of your visitors will be forced to read in a language they aren’t as familiar with as their own.

Stuffing your content full of irrelevant keywords is not only bad for SEO: it can also make your content difficult to comprehend. At Tourism Tiger, we’re big fans of the Hemingway App, which tells you what reading level your content is at. It’s good practice to aim for 8th grade or below, as it will be understandable to the largest amount of readers possible.

The same care should be taken when deciding what keywords to use. If you’re a tour operator targeting the U.S. audience, you can bet that they’re going to be looking up “customizable tours” with a “z”. On the other hand, a U.S. tour operator may want to keep in mind that their friends across the pond are more likely to look up “bespoke tours” or “customisable tours” with an “s”.

3. Get on the relevant social media and use the necessary software.

Having a strong presence on Facebook, Google My Business, and Instagram is definitely a recommended practice since those are big sites with lots of users. However, it won’t do you much good to share the posts that you’ve had meticulously translated into Chinese onto these forms of social media since they’re blocked in China. Instead, you need to go to the social media that the people in your targeted international audience are using, like VK in Russia.

The same goes for how you receive inquiries from clients. While it might not be a big deal for your German customers to phone a tour operator in Spain, your Australian guests probably won’t want to pay for long-distance phone fees. Making yourself accessible by Skype or similar video chat software is one way to solve this issue and ensure that guests who prefer to discuss an experience over the phone are still able to do so, despite the distance.

This is also why it’s important to use the popular messaging application WhatsApp. If your customers are from a country where communicating via this platform is a way of life, you won’t be winning them over by not using it. It’s easy enough to make an account for your business and to take calls or messages there. Making yourself available on WhatsApp might even set you apart from your competition if other tour operators in your area don’t allow potential guests to reach them via this software. And who wouldn’t want to take advantage of extra opportunities to make your business shine?

4. Make use of targeted advertising opportunities.

Both Facebook and Google allow businesses to use their advertising services to target specific groups of people, whether that be by age, location, or another demographic. The location targeting option is especially useful if you’re trying to attract guests from a specific country. Just create your ideal ad, have it translated to that country’s language, and let it fly! Not sure where to start? Check out Tourism Tiger’s guides on how to use Google Ads and Facebook strategically for your business.

Remember that advertising doesn’t have to be completely online. Putting ads in local newspapers or magazines in the country whose residents you’re trying to attract could get you directly into the hands of your target audience. If that sounds like a lot of work, don’t fret! You can always begin by reaching out to travel agents in said countries and seeing if they would be willing to help sell your tours. Once you develop a relationship with them, they’ll probably be able to tell you the next best place to market your brand.

Conclusion

All in all, expanding your promotion strategies to an international audience doesn’t mean you have to learn a new language or completely revamp your tours. It just requires a little more thought about the needs of potential guests when they’re looking to book with ease. This is something you’ve probably already considered for your domestic audience, so don’t let the process intimidate you! Just start with some of our tips, and get ready to welcome your new international guests.

You might also like:

• 10 Ideas to Help Differentiate Your Tours in 2021
• 10 Tourism Marketing Campaigns that Work Despite Difficult Times
• 5 Ways to Offer an Innovative Tourism Experience to Your Clients

The post Four Ways to Promote Your Tours to an International Audience appeared first on Regiondo.

Read on to learn more about influencer marketing and how to successfully partner with influencers in 3 easy steps!

Ready? Let’s go!

What is influencer marketing?

Even if you haven’t come across the term before, you probably already know what it’s all about.

Influencer marketing is a form of online marketing that has been rapidly growing during the past decade. Some describe it as a hybrid of old and new marketing tools where celebrity endorsement is utilized in the contemporary marketing mix. The main difference being that celebrities in the modern context are actual individuals who have dedicated social followers and are called influencers.

Based on their network and expertise, influencers usually serve one industry. For example, food and entertainment, healthcare, fashion and beauty, travel and lifestyle, etc. After spending a few months or years building a community of loyal followers, they often have the chance to work with brands representing other industries and sectors.

Let’s say you’ve been a travel influencer for a while. Once you become established you are likely to get proposals from a wide variety of companies. You can be invited to promote swimwear, a local gym, perhaps a book or event.

Anyway, our point is that as social media becomes integral to our lives, trust in influencers is growing significantly. Many see them as reliable experts, and what’s more, after years of following the relationship between user and influencer goes even further. A study shows that the intimacy and emotional intensity of this unique communication make us feel like friends.

As a result of this and also the rise of social media in general, influencer marketing is gaining increasing attention as a marketing tool. You’ve probably seen a ton of sponsored campaigns, giveaways, and collaborations on your Instagram feed. The truth is that companies reach out to influencers more and more often because of the genuine engagement they get. According to The State of Influencer Marketing 2020 Benchmark Report, the majority of people believe that influencer marketing is effective. Another research by Twitter shows that consumers not only seek product recommendations, but 40% of them actually had purchased something after seeing it used by an influencer.

And lastly, if you associate influencer marketing with Instagram, remember that it’s not the only social platform where it can happen. TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Vine, Amazon, are some of the other major channels where collaboration and sponsored promotion happen all the time.

Should you partner with influencers?

As we explored how influencer marketing is steadily taking over social platforms, dedicating part of your budget to it is definitely worth it.

Partnering with influencers can be beneficial to your tour and activity business in many ways.

Firstly, they can help you grow your own network of followers from all over the world. Perhaps, you might get on other travelers’ to-do lists when they visit your country.

Influencer marketing is also good for increasing sales and in-person interaction. A good collaboration is likely to attract more inquiries from local followers. Even if you are a relatively new or small business, it can give you a kick by spreading the word about you.

And despite the outbreak of Coronavirus which undoubtedly affected the travel and lifestyle sectors, relevant influencers are still finding ways to inspire and talk to their audiences.

What’s more, some travel and lifestyle influencers serve as ambassadors who pitch services and maintain a relationship with new and potential clients.

How to work with influencers to grow your tour & activity sales

Now you might wonder how influencer marketing can work for your tour and activity business. Since there is no straightforward answer to this question, here are 3 easy steps to follow for ultimate success.

1. Set a budget

Many leisure, travel, and activity businesses have a set budget for influencer marketing. So those of you who plan to give it a try need to allocate some funds for it too.

The cost of working with influencers depends on many factors. The number of their followers and engagement rate is of course the main one. As their audience grows, influencers have a wider reach and thus can charge more. Specific rates apply for set ranges like 0-1000 followers, 1000 -10 000 followers, 10 000 – 50 000, and so on.

Still, the cost varies across different platforms. On average, Facebook influencers charge about $25 per 1000 followers while Instagram ones come cheaper at $10.

Other factors that affect the pricing are the type of post you agree to. Is it an image, video, or perhaps hosting a giveaway? How well does it fit with the influencer’s channel? Who supplies the featured content and imagery?

There are thousands of travel influencers out there so finding the right ones can take a while. Knowing how much you can afford will not only ease your search but also help you plan the right kind of strategy going forward.

2. Plan your campaign

The Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report shows that 68% of people prefer their influencer marketing to be campaign-based rather than a long-term relationship which could be more restraining.

There are various influencer marketing campaigns you can launch based on your budget and goals. We’ve done your research and here are the best options for tour and activity companies.

Sponsored post

This type of collaboration is particularly good for businesses that want to work on their brand awareness and customer acquisition. You will be paying influencers to create content featuring your brand and share it on their story or feed.

For this purpose, you will need to invite them to try your activity or services for free. This will give them the necessary insight to openly speak about your brand and promote it. Additionally, you will have quality content to re-post and highlight on your feed and stories.

Brand rep program

Depending on your budget, you can arrange a one-off or regular collaboration with the influencer. The second option means they have a permanent discount for your services but will feature you in stories or posts more than once. You can arrange a daily, weekly, or monthly schedule, or even just set the number of posts for the duration of the campaign.

This kind of collaboration is particularly appropriate for businesses that want to give their sales a boost and also build a relationship with their online audience.

Review

This option usually comes cheaper and is easier to arrange with influencers who have a smaller number of followers. How does it work? You let them try and experience your products or services and then they share their impressions online with the audience.

Some of them would try out a few times before they recommend you to other people. What’s more, you have no guarantee that the review will be positive so need to be extra careful with this option.

Giveaway

This is a type of contest where influencers giveaway your products to randomly selected users who satisfy certain criteria. This could be following your account, commenting on a post, using your brand hashtag, or anything else that can get you closer to your goals.

This way, in addition to increasing your network of followers, you get access to great user-generated content that can be re-shared online.

3. Find the right influencer

Social media is used by a wide variety of people with many different backgrounds. From political leaders, through celebrities and popular brands, to ordinary people, influencers are diverse. Of course, not all of them can promote your brand but still, it is not easy to cut the list down and approach the right ones.

If you already know a travel influencer who visits your area, you are lucky! Most people don’t. So need to go to the platform you want to run your campaign on and start searching. You can use a relevant hashtag like #sponsored and #promotion to find the ones who do collaborations. Searching by location hashtag is also a good idea. For those of you who haven’t got the time, there are external platforms where you can search by desired criteria. Influence.co is a good example where you can perform custom searches by industry, location, and follower count.

Once you’ve shortlisted about 10-20 potential accounts, there are many ways to reach out to the influencers behind them. You can either contact them directly or through the agency that represents them – it will often be mentioned in the Bio.

Lastly, be alert for frauds as they are quite common. Influencer fraud is increasing and so is the concern among businesses. Many people have already experienced it so you need to check the account thoroughly before agreeing to pay anything. Check the ratio between followers count and actual likes and comments. Scroll through the followers and see whether the majority of accounts are authentic. You can also use this free Instagram Audit tool to spot fake profiles.

Influencer marketing in action

Now to see influencer marketing in action, here are two great examples of ongoing and one-off collaborations.

Cavotagoosantorini @cavotagoosantorini

Cavotagoosantorini is a luxury hotel in Santorini, Greece. They have an impressive 267K followers which have been gained through outstanding content and imagery. So what is the secret? The hotel relies on travel influencers who feature it in great posts and stories. All services provided in the hotel like Spa procedures, world-class cuisine, sunset view, pool beds, and more, are beautifully presented by hundreds of influencers who visit the destination.

While Instagram is amazing for hotels, restaurants, and luxury resorts,  when it comes to experiences and tours nothing works better than a good YouTube video.

Funk Bros 

Funk Bros are 2 brothers with over 6 million followers on YouTube. They are doing various challenges, experiments, tricks, and crazy adventures. These often involve visiting theme parks, water attractions, trampoline parks, and other challenging activities.

In their YouTube collabs playlist, you can explore the wide variety of places and activities they visit and feature. This is definitely among the best ways to show people out there the exciting things you offer and of course attract more visitors to try them out.

Conclusion

We believe influencer marketing is among the most authentic and engaging ways of promoting your tours and activities online. It will give people an actual glimpse into the experience and help you genuinely attract them to try out what you offer.

But what we love most about influencer marketing is that you get out of it even more than you expect. At the end of the collaboration, you usually have some fascinating photos, videos, and copy that you can repost and feature in other promotional materials.

So if you’re looking for that extra push in your recovery, maybe it’s time to consider influencer marketing as your next big channel?

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 Influencer Marketing for Travel and Tourism Companies appeared first on Regiondo.

Image courtesy of Neil Patel

What is email marketing?

So, what exactly is email marketing? It’s a form of marketing that uses emails to promote business’ services to prospects and communicate with existing customers.

Why is email marketing for tourism so important?

As a tour and activity company, you’re selling an experience. Your prospect needs to have a pleasant experience from when you make initial contact to the end of their tour. Email marketing gives you a direct channel to your prospects and existing customers. You can then customize it to give everyone a personalized experience depending on how you want to engage with them. 

Now, let’s look at some helpful email marketing tips you can use to boost your tours and activities business:

1. Use a behavior-based email marketing strategy

Email marketing gives you a lot of personalization options, so why not take advantage of that? You can use a behavior-based email marketing strategy to send personalized emails to your prospects, depending on the actions they take on your website. And you can do it all on autopilot using specific triggers! So what are some of these behaviors that’d give you the opportunity to email your prospects?

Registration or subscription

A welcome email is critical in setting the pace for future emails. When setting up your emails, you can set up a subscription/registration to trigger a welcome email. That way, whenever anyone subscribes to your newsletter or subscribes to your email list, they immediately receive a welcome email. Not only does that show your thoughtfulness, but it also allows you to ask prospects to whitelist your emails early on.

Abandoned browse

Sometimes, a prospect will land on your website and abandon their browsing. Human concentration isn’t what it used to be. According to a 2015 research, the average human attention span declined from 12 seconds in the year 2000, to 8.25 seconds in 2015. It’s official, we have a shorter attention span than a goldfish! 

With so many distractions around us, it’s not uncommon for someone to get sidetracked when they’re browsing. Now, an email can be beneficial in reeling an abandoned browse back to your website. You can set up your website to detect abandoned browses and email those people a message that entices them to resume browsing your site.

Booking confirmation

Congrats, you’ve converted a prospect into a customer. But, marketing shouldn’t end with the sale. You’ll need to keep them feeling like the purchase was worth it. Sending out an email to a customer when they book with you shows appreciation and readiness to assist when necessary. The email can be a standard Thank You email with any other details you might need to communicate to them about the activity they’ve booked with you. 

Booking cancellation

So, someone canceled their booking. No problem, they had their reasons. What you do after a prospect cancels determines whether they’ll return to you when they’re ready to book again or go to your competitor. If someone cancels their booking, you can email them if there’s anything you can do to change their minds and urge them to reach out to you. If they say there’s nothing you can do, you can email them details about your company’s cancellation procedure.

2. Segment your audience

As a tour and activity business, you already have the advantage of possessing more customer information than other industries. You can tap into that to personalize your customers’ and prospects’ emails through segmentation. Let’s look at some of the audience segmentation options you can use:

Email preference

One of the ways to segment your audience is by asking them the kind of emails they’d like to receive. Do they want to be notified when you have an offer? Do they want to learn about new locations they should tour? Do they want personalized offers? You can create a list of preferences that work for your business and ask your audience to choose the emails they’d like to receive.

Frequency preference

Some people don’t mind getting frequent emails from companies they’ve interacted with. Yet, others can’t stand it and unsubscribe when they notice that a business is sending them numerous emails. So, to prevent this from happening to you, why not ask the audience how frequently they want the emails? Whether someone wants one email per month, or an email every day, they can state their preference to you, and you can email them according to their preferred frequency.

Activity preference

If you’re a business with many activities and tours in its catalog, there’s a high chance that most people will not be interested in all of them. Instead, you’ll find that people only have a few favorite ones. So, what do you do to avoid sending your audience emails about activities that don’t interest them? Simple, you let them choose the activities that interest them and send them those emails instead. It’s a great way to increase your emails’ relevance to the recipients and boost your open and conversion rates.

3. Help your audience celebrate their special events

Everyone likes to feel appreciated on their special days, and your audience is no different. Help your audience celebrate milestones such as birthdays and anniversaries by sending them a thoughtful email on their special day.

Image courtesy of Sendpulse

You can even go further and offer them a can’t-miss deal on their special day. A simple email and personalized celebratory offer can help boost your customer retention rate.

4. Inspire them to travel

Sometimes, the best marketing strategy is where your prospect doesn’t know they’re being marketed to. Instead of pushing your services to your prospects, you can entice them and reel them in with some inspiring emails. The idea here is to show them how awesome it is to book tours with you, instead of just telling them.

Image courtesy of Campaign Monitor

Of course, you’ll have to get visual with these kinds of emails, words alone won’t do justice to the experiences you offer. So, what should be in the emails? Awesome images! Most tour enthusiasts are always on the lookout for lesser-known exotic locales. Feed this need by sending them emails with pictures of places that are off the beaten path.

You want the person on the other end of that email to imagine themselves touring the area. That’s why you’ll need some awesome pictures in the emails. You can take this a step further by using prior purchases and customer preferences to personalize the emails and showcase destinations that interest them.

5. Personalize their experience

Personalization tells your customers that you took the time to understand what they like, and most of them appreciate it. A personalized email will be more relevant to the recipient, which means they’ll be more likely to open it and click through. This will drive your open rate through the roof.

But, personalization needs a solid foundation. You’ll need to gather as much information about your prospects and customers as possible. You might even need to use third parties to collect personal data. Remember, every piece of information gives you more insight into your prospect and helps you create a more personalized experience.

6. Hit them with the social media + email combo

Social media and email are excellent marketing channels when used separately. But when used together, they can deliver ground-shaking results. The first step should be placing a sign-up button on your social media business pages. When someone clicks on the sign-up button, they’re taken to a registration form to select the kind of emails they want. You can also gain social media followers from an existing mailing list by including social media CTAs in your newsletter.

Data is everything in marketing—the more information you have on your prospect, the higher your chance of converting them. Combining social media and email gives you two powerful data sources that you can use to gather much information about your prospects. You can then use this data to personalize emails, create customized tour suggestions, and discover prospects’ special celebrations. The information you gather will also make it easier for you to target the ideal audience if you decide to run ads.

7. Build a loyalty program

Brand loyalty can be a hard nut to crack in the tour and activities sector. Travelers tend to look for the best deals rather than favor a specific brand. But a loyalty program can change all that.

According to Accenture, loyalty programs members generate 13% to 15% more revenue annually than non-members. You’ll need to show your subscribers the benefits of your loyalty program if you want them to enroll. Send out an email explaining what the subscribers stand to gain from your loyalty program. Make sure to include a call-to-action encouraging them to sign up.

Conclusion

Email marketing for tourism doesn’t have to be complicated or tedious. Armed with our email marketing tips, you can start running campaigns and see results in no time. Just remember to keep your emails relevant and consistent.

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
• The Keys to Effective Video Marketing for Activity Providers

The post 7 Email Marketing Tips to Grow Your Tour and Activity Business appeared first on Regiondo.

So why aren’t we seeing many Travel Brands using YouTube Ads?

Well, the main reason we’ve come across is “…because video is too complicated/too expensive”

And, yes, there is a cost (or an investment) into producing YouTube Ads, but in order to ‘win’ in today’s crowded marketplace, Travel Brands need to “…speculate to accumulate.”

In other words, you need to invest in order to grow.

And with the competitive online marketing world and the fight for attention from travelers, diversification is the name of the game.

“88% of YouTube travel-related searches focus on destinations, attractions, points of interest or general travel ideas” (Google)

But advertising needs to be profitable too and you need to see an ROI as quickly as possible. Well, with the right strategy, approach and foundations, with YouTube Ads you can see huge ROI in as little as 1-3 months.

With so many travelers using mobile devices to research and plan their holidays and travels, and with attention spans becoming shorter, video is one, if not, the most engaging and powerful way to inspire your potential customers, turning them from ‘lookers into bookers’ in the moments that matter to them, on the devices that they’re using; desktop, mobile or tablet.

If you’re not using video as part of your advertising strategy, you’re missing out.

According to Cisco, in 2019, video will account for 80% of internet traffic throughout the year.

So, with all that being said, here’s What We’re Going To Cover In This YouTube Ads Ultimate Guide:

• Why YouTube Ads are an amazing opportunity for Travel Brands
• The incredible targeting options available with YouTube Ads and how to use them to reach travelers at the different ‘Micro-Moments’ along their ‘Path To Purchase’
• The different YouTube Ads formats, when to use them, specs and requirement
• How To Setup Your First YouTube Ads Campaign
• The ‘Secret Sauce’ to running profitable YouTube Ads Campaigns

About the author

This is a guest contribution by Matt Holmes. Based in the UK, Matt is the founder of Visual8 Digital, a specialist YouTube Ads Agency for Travel Brands, producing and managing profitable, ROI-Focused YouTube Ads Campaigns, that tell inspirational stories and drive direct online bookings.

When he’s not filming, editing, running YouTube Ads Campaigns, you can find him in the gym, out walking with his wife and 2 whippets (dogs), or traveling around the UK, Europe or further afield – and yes, the camera goes with him on his travels!

Why YouTube Ads Are An Amazing Opportunity For Travel Brands

With a huge audience of travelers and holidaymakers using YouTube, and 88% of travel-related searches on the platform relating to destinations, attractions, points of interest and general travel ideas, the opportunity to position your Travel Brand in front of your ideal customers, has never been more exciting.

There are also over 2 billion monthly active users on YouTube, which is right on the heels of Facebook’s 2.3 billion. But the biggest difference between these 2 online giants, is that the average user stays on YouTube for over 40 minutes at a time (this is known as ‘session time’), compared to Facebook’s average of 20 minutes per day.

And with so many Travel Brands using Facebook Ads and Google Ads to advertise, why should you, as a Travel Brand, use YouTube Ads? Well, here’s 3 reasons (but trust me, there’s plenty more where these came from!):

1. Reach your ideal customers based on their intent
2. Incredible targeting opportunities
3. Unsaturated, cost-effective advertising platform

When people go to Facebook, they go there to catch up with friends and family, perhaps post a few pictures of their day and generally, just kill a bit of time. They don’t really go to Facebook for a specific purpose.

But with YouTube, it’s a whole different ball game.

The reason being, that people go to YouTube with an INTENT. They generally go to YouTube to:

• Learn Something
• Do Something
• Buy Something

And when you advertise on YouTube with YouTube Ads, you can target people based on their INTENT.

Google owns YouTube, so as an advertiser, you have access to the data that Google knows about its users.

Now, when I say Google has got data on its users, I don’t mean personal details like name and address (although they do know that sort of information for people who have a Google account of some sort; but this information isn’t accessible to advertisers).

No, what I mean about the data that Google has on its users that is available to us as advertisers, are details such as:

• Websites they’ve visited
• What they’ve searched for on Google and YouTube (keywords/search terms)
• Videos they’ve watched and engaged with on YouTube
• What they’re ‘in the market’ for – in other words, Google knows when someone is seriously considering making a purchase
• What sort of topics they’re interested in – for example, ‘hotels in Paris’, ‘car hire in Rome’, ‘holidays in Australia’
• Places they’ve visited (using Google Maps data)
• Apps they have installed on their Smartphones

And, as we’ll cover next in this Ultimate Guide, you can actually choose to show your YouTube Ads on specific YouTube videos and Channels, which is something unheard of in the realm of online advertising, to be able to be that granular with your targeting.

The Incredible Targeting Available With YouTube Ads

YouTube have really taken their advertising targeting to the extreme; particularly when combined with the data that Google (YouTube’s owners!) have on its users. This gives advertisers a huge advantage when creating YouTube Ads Campaigns, as we can pinpoint exactly who we want to show our YouTube Ads to and reduce our wasted ad spend by not showing our ads to people who are never going to become customers.

So let’s now take a look at some of these incredible targeting opportunities:

Target People Based on Their Location

Location can be a critical targeting option for Travel Brands, especially if you offer experiences or activities to people who are in or around your destination.

With YouTube Ads, there are 3 high-level location targeting options available to you:

• All Countries and Territories (targets every country on Earth!)
• The Country You’re Based (I’m in the UK, so it’s showing ‘United Kingdom)
• Enter Another Location

However, we can drill down much further than this…

If you click on ‘Advanced Search’ next to the ‘Enter a location to target or exclude’ box, you’ll see more options become available.

The first one is Location, which allows you to add multiple locations of where you want your YouTube Ads to show, for example, ‘London’.

But the option I love is Radius. As this allows you to add 1 or more locations (as a place name, address, postcode, or coordinates) and choose a radius around that specific point on the map.

So if you only want to target people in or around a 20-mile radius of your location, you can do that with the location targeting of YouTube Ads!

And you can Exclude people in certain locations from seeing your YouTube Ads if you need to, by just typing the location into the ‘Enter a location to target or exclude’ box and clicking ‘Exclude’.

Target Individual YouTube Videos and YouTube Channels

Yep, you can actually copy and paste the URL of specific YouTube videos or channels into your YouTube Ads Campaign, that you want to show your ads on. This is known as ‘Placement Targeting’.

IMPORTANT

Just make sure that the channels and videos you’re selecting for placements are ‘monetized’, which simply means that the YouTube Channel owner has agreed to allow ads to play before their videos. You can see which YouTube Channels are ‘monetized’ by looking for the little yellow spots in the play-bar on YouTube Videos, as shown in the image below.

Target People With Keywords

Another targeting option, which is similar to Placement targeting (above), is using Keywords.

These are the keywords that relate to particular content someone is watching on YouTube. When a YouTube Creator uploads a video to their Channel, they write a Title, Description and Tags, which essentially helps their videos be discovered organically on YouTube and Google.

So when you target your YouTube Ads using keywords, YouTube is looking at words within the Title, Description and Tags that the YouTube Creator has added to their video.

Now you might be thinking that this is almost exactly the same as placement targeting! And it is very similar!

But the difference with keyword targeting is that you add say 50 keywords, and the YouTube algorithm will go and find all the videos that have those keywords associated with them, rather than you individually copying and pasting individual video URLs, which can take a lot of time.

One thing to be aware of, however, with using Keywords targeting, is that you’re relying on the YouTube Creators to use words within their Title, Description and Tags, that are actually relevant to their video content. If they’re adding keywords that are completely irrelevant to their videos but are relevant to your YouTube Ads, then your ads could show on videos that don’t align with your brand or message.

Target People With Topics

Similar to Keyword Targeting, Topic Targeting uses topics that YouTube Creators have selected when they’re uploading their videos. But as with Keyword Targeting, Topic Targeting relies heavily on YouTube Creators selecting the right topics, from a predetermined list of topics for their Channel. But it’s definitely an option to test, even with just a small budget behind it initially.

Target People Based on Their Google Search History

This is unique in the online advertising space! Using Google’s data, you can show your YouTube Ads to people based on what they’ve searched for on Google’s Search Engine that we know and love. This is known as a ‘Custom Intent’ audience.

For example, if you own an activity center in the Lake District, you could show your YouTube Ad to people when they’re on YouTube who have recently searched for keywords such as “kids activities in the lake district” on Google! I’m sure you’ll agree, that that’s pretty powerful!

To create a Custom Intent audience, the best place to start is by looking at your Google Analytics and Google Search Console accounts to see the keywords that have been typed into Google that bring up your website in the Google Search Results.

And if you run Google Search Ads, you could even use the same keywords you use in these campaigns in your YouTube Ads Custom Intent Audiences.

For best results, try and build a list of at least 50 keywords for your Custom Intent Audiences. You might think this sounds like a lot, but with tools such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Google Ads Keyword Planner, you’ll soon blast past 50 keywords!

Target People Based on Their Purchase Intent (According to Google)

Google has an amazing targeting option known as ‘In-Market’. Using the incredible amount of data that Google knows about its users, based on an individual’s online behavior (Google search history, the intent behind the keywords they’ve searched for on Google and YouTube, websites they’ve visited, etc.) Google makes a great prediction as to whether someone is actively looking to make a purchase. And you as a Travel Brand can use these audiences to show your YouTube Ads to.

In-Market Audiences are similar to Custom-Intent Audiences (described above) but are grouped into predefined groups. For example, some of the In-Market Audiences available to you are:

• Air Travel
• Car Hire
• Trips By Destination
• Cruises
• Hotels and Accommodation

These are just a few of the many In-Market Audiences available; overtime, Google are constantly adding more and more to this list.

When thinking about whether to run Custom-Intent Targeting Campaigns or In-Market Targeting Campaigns, we always run both!

You don’t know what works unless you test! So by testing In-Market against Custom Intent, you’ll be able to see if one outperforms the other dramatically. And you can always turn the worse-performing targeting option off and scale the winning targeting option.

This is one of the many advantages of YouTube Ads! You can quickly and easily scrap the losers and scale the winners.

Target People Based on Their Demographics

Demographics is something that is common across all online advertising platforms; but it’s good to know that you’ve got access to demographic targeting with YouTube Ads, which includes:

• Gender
• Age
• Parental Status
• Household Income (only available in certain countries)

You can also target people using ‘Detailed Demographics’, which includes options such as:

• More detailed Parental Status (e.g. parents of infants, parents of toddlers, parents of teens, etc.)
• Marital Status (single, in a relationship, status)
• Education (e.g. current University students)
• Home Ownership Status (homeowners or renters)

Target People Based on Their Interests and Habits

Over time, Google builds up an accurate profile of its users. So from the websites that they visit, the keywords they search for and their overall online behavior, they often know more about their users than the users themselves do!

And you can show your YouTube Ads to people based on the data that Google knows about the interests and habits of its users.

This audience type is known as an ‘Affinity Audience’.

Typically, targeting interests and habits is more of an upper funnel strategy, than a lower funnel, because they aren’t currently showing signs of being in a position to make a booking.

The predefined Affinity Audiences available with YouTube Ads specifically for Travel Brands are pretty limited, as you can see from the screenshot below.

But all is not lost with Affinity Audiences…

We tend to use ‘Custom Affinity’ audiences, which allow for much more granular targeting, as you can target people based on:

• Interests (e.g. hobbies, products, activities, etc.)
• URL’s (the websites people visit)
• Places (using Google Maps data)
• Apps (installed on an individual’s phone)

For best results with Custom Affinity Audiences, try and add at least 5 items total. You don’t need to enter something for each of the 4 options (Interests, URL’s, Places, Apps).

For example, if you’re running YouTube Ads for a cruise line, you could create a Custom Affinity Audience if you know that your ideal customers look online for subjects such as:

• Different locations for cruises
• Reviews of different cruise lines
• Cruising holiday deals

Custom Affinity Audiences can perform really well, but they take some time to refine and get them delivering great results for you.

So we tend to create Custom Affinity Audiences once we’ve gathered some data from other types of targeting options about the type of websites, interests, etc. that are relevant to people who are resonating with our other YouTube Ads have.

Target People Who Are Already Aware of Your Travel Brand

As with other online advertising platforms, with YouTube Ads, you can create Ad Campaigns that only target a warm audience; meaning that they are already aware of your brand.

So, perhaps they’ve visited your website, made an inquiry, watched one or more of your YouTube videos, or they may have even been a customer of yours in the past.

This type of targeting is known as ‘Remarketing’. And it tends to be less expensive to run Remarketing Campaigns, because you’re not going after a cold audience.

Another powerful type of Remarketing Audience is ‘Similar Audiences’. These are audiences that Google build for you based on other Remarketing Audiences of yours.

For example, let’s say you had a Website Visitors Remarketing Audience, Google would create a Similar Audience of thousands, even tens of thousands or more, of people who have similar interests, online behavior, etc.

As you can see, these are very powerful audiences and can produce amazing results!

Google says that you need a minimum Remarketing Audience list size of 100 people to create a Similar Audience list from.

However, we find that a Remarketing Audience list size of 1000 people produces much better results. So, if you can build a Website Visitors Remarketing Audience list of 1000 people, for example, Google will be able to build a strong Similar Audience list from this. But the bigger the better!

Just bear in mind that it can take 48-72 hours for Google to create your Similar Audience list.

What Targeting to Use and When

So that’s an overview of the incredible targeting options available with YouTube Ads. But how and when should you use each of them to target travelers along their ‘Path To Purchase’? That’s what we’ll cover right now!

Rarely do we use one type of targeting for a client. To get the most out of YouTube Ads, I highly, highly recommend that you use multiple targeting strategies and test which ones deliver the best results for your Travel Brand.

Travelers go through their own ‘Path To Purchase’ when thinking about, booking and experiencing their holiday or trip. And within this journey, there are 4 main ‘Micro-Moments’:

So based on these Micro-Moments, let’s see how we would use the targeting available to us with YouTube Ads to reach travelers at each one.

Bear in mind that although we use some of the same targeting options at different Micro Moments, the YouTube Ads themselves (i.e. the video content within the ads) will be different.

To put some context into this, let’s use an example of a guided tours company in the Lake District who are running a YouTube Ads Campaign.

Micro-Moment 1 – I Want to Get Away – Dreaming Moments

YouTube Videos and Channels (Placements)

If travelers are in Micro Moment 1, they’re dreaming about getting away on holiday. So by showing your YouTube Ads on specific videos related to your destination is a great way to introduce travelers to your Travel Brand

Keywords

Similar to Placements targeting, now we’re giving YouTube a list of keywords related to the content that we want our YouTube Ads to show on. But rather than finding the videos manually ourselves, we’re letting YouTube do the hard work and go and find the videos that have specific keywords in the Titles, Descriptions and Tags of videos across YouTube.

Interests (Custom-Affinity)

As I mentioned earlier in this guide, we tend not to use Affinity Audiences because the options are pretty limited for Travel Brands. Instead, we use Custom Affinity Audiences. So, we create a Custom Affinity Audience with a collection of Interests, URLs and Places typically. We tend to leave the ‘Apps’ option alone – but we’re always testing!

Remarketing

If people have previously visited your website it’s worth keeping your Travel Brand front-of-mind as early as possible in their Path To Purchase.

It’s also a good idea to remind previous customers of your brand, so if you have a database of email addresses that you have permission to use, you can upload these email addresses to create a Remarketing Audience of past customers to show specific YouTube Ads to.

Lake District Guided Tours Example
I don’t want to make this guide too long, so I won’t list every single specific targeting option below! But I’ll show you a selection of where we’d start our targeting. Over time, we would, of course, refine this targeting as we start to see the winners and the losers.

YouTube Video and Channels (Placements)

• 3 Days in the Lake District | London to the Lake District Vlog!

• Lake District, The Complete Tour, England

• Living in a Converted Sprinter Van! The Lake District

Keywords

• Lake District
• North England
• Windermere
• Cumbria
• Things To Do In Lake District

Interests (Custom-Affinity)

• Interests:
  • Walking
  • Hiking
  • Dog Walking
  • Lake District
• URLs:
  • NationalTrust.org.uk
  • Lakedistrict.gov.uk
  • GoLakes.co.uk
  • VisitCumbria.com
• Places:
  • Hotels
  • Travel Accommodations

With this Custom Affinity Campaign, we would also use Location Targeting, as we don’t want to show our Guided Tours YouTube Ad to people outside of the UK who have an interest in ‘Walking, for example, as they may never have any intention to visit the UK!

Remarketing

• Website Visitors, broken down into separate audience lists:
  • Visited website in past 7 days
  • Visited website in past 14 days
  • Visited website in past 30 days
  • Visited website in past 60 days
  • Visited website in past 90 days
• Customer List (previous customers)

Micro-Moment 2 – I Want This Trip To Be Perfect – Planning Moments

Custom Intent Audience

When travelers are planning their holiday, they tend to search for particular things on Google relating to planning. So create a list of keywords that are relevant for the planning stages of a holiday that relate to your Travel Brand in some way, such as things to do in your local area, local landmarks, etc.

Affinity Audience

As I mentioned earlier, we don’t tend to use Affinity Audiences, but we do like to test it now and again just to see if their audiences have improved – we won’t know unless we test it out!

Remarketing

It’s always worth reminding travelers of your brand throughout their Path To Purchase, which why we include Remarketing Audiences in every Micro Moment. But we would show these audiences an alternative YouTube Ad.

Lake District Guided Tours Example

Custom Intent Audience Keywords

• Places to stay in Lake District
• Hotels in Lake District
• Things to do in Lake District
• Places to visit in Cumbria

The reason I’ve included keywords about hotels, is that people looking for hotels in the Lake District will at some point be looking for things to do whilst on holiday. So even though they might not necessarily be looking for things to do on holiday right now, introducing people to your Travel Brand this early on in the Path To Purchase can work really well.

Affinity Audience

• Lifestyles & Hobbies > Outdoor Enthusiasts

Remarketing

• Website Visitors, broken down into separate audience lists:
  • Visited website in past 7 days
  • Visited website in past 14 days
  • Visited website in past 30 days
  • Visited website in past 60 days
  • Visited website in past 90 days
• Customer List (previous customers)

Micro-Moment 3 – I’m Ready To Book It – Booking Moments

Custom Intent Audience

As in Micro Moment 2, we’ll use Custom Intent Audiences again, but this time using keywords that show someone is looking to book their holiday.

In-Market Audience

As I mentioned earlier in this guide, it’s worth testing Custom Intent Audiences against Google’s In-Market Audiences, choosing predefined audiences that relate to your Travel Brand.

Remarketing

Similar to remarketing in Micro Moment 1, we would show a different YouTube Ad to people who have previously visited our website, perhaps with a special offer, as well as another ad to previous customers.

Lake District Guided Tours Example

Custom Intent Audience Keywords

• Lake District Guided Tours Offers
• Lake District Guide Tours Prices
• Lake District Tours Special Offers
• Lake District Tours Deals

In-Market Audience

• Trips To The UK
• Hotels and Accommodation

Again, I’ve selected In-Market Audiences relating to Hotels, because these people are ready to book and will be looking for things to do on holiday very soon after booking.

Remarketing

• Website Visitors, broken down into separate audience lists:
  • Visited website in past 7 days
  • Visited website in past 14 days
  • Visited website in past 30 days
  • Visited website in past 60 days
  • Visited website in past 90 days
• Customer List (previous customers)

Micro-Moment 4 – I Want To Make The Most Of It – Experiencing Moments

Micro Moment 4 tends to be for Travel Brands who offer activities or experiences, such as whitewater rafting, helicopter rides, kayaking, restaurants, etc.

Location

As people are actually on holiday in this Micro Moment, we only want to target people who are within a reasonable distance from your location; people aren’t going to want to drive for hours for a day out! So, it’s best to use location targeting with a specific radius from your Travel Brands postcode.

Custom Intent

If there’s something specific that people search for whilst they’re on holiday that relates to your offering, then creating a Custom Intent Audience is a great way to target these travelers.

Remarketing

And as always, a Remarketing Campaign is always a good idea to run in Micro Moment 4, providing you offer an activity or experience. I wouldn’t recommend using Remarketing in this Micro Moment if your main offering is Accommodation such as hotels or self catering cottages for example.

Lake District Guided Tours Example

Location

• People within a 30-mile radius of the area(s) that the Guided Tours company cover

Custom Intent Keywords

• Guided Tours Lake District
• Lake District Tours
• [TOWN NAME] Guided Tours (e.g. Keswick Guided Tours)

Remarketing

• Website Visitors, broken down into separate audience lists:
  • Visited website in past 7 days
  • Visited website in past 14 days
  • Visited website in past 30 days
  • Visited website in past 60 days
  • Visited website in past 90 days
• Customer List (previous customers)
• People who have seen previous YouTube Ads from this Guided Tours Company

Keeping up?!?! Great stuff, well done! Let’s keep moving and move onto the next section of this YouTube Ads Ultimate Guide, which is…

The Different Ad Formats on Offer with YouTube Ads

So with YouTube Ads, you have 4 main Ad Formats to choose from:

• Skippable In-Stream Ads
• Unskippable In-Stream Ads
• Bumper Ads
• Video Discovery Ads

Each Ad Format has its own characteristics, benefits, strengths and weaknesses. So each come into their own at the different Micro Moments along the Path To Purchase.

So, let’s go through each of these 4 YouTube Ads Formats…

Skippable In-Stream Ads

These are the ads that play before monetized videos on YouTube that, as a viewer, you can skip after 5 seconds. These ads are also known as ‘TrueView’ Ads, because you, as the advertiser, only get charged when some watches the Ad for at least 30 seconds, or the full duration of the ad, if it’s shorter than 30 seconds.

This is very different than Facebook Ads, where you’re charged for every impression. Or Facebook Video Ads, when you’re charged when somebody watches just 3 seconds of your Ad.

And you can also add 1 or more ‘Calls-To-Action’ (CTA) to your ad, as highlighted in the image below.

As people can ‘skip’ these In-Stream Ads after the first 5 seconds, you really need to make these first 5 seconds of your ad extremely engaging and captivating, to encourage them to keep watching.

However, you also want to repel the wrong people from watching your ad, as you only want to pay for views of your ad by people who have got a good chance of becoming a customer further down the line.

But if you know your ideal customer well, you’ll be able to reduce wasted ad spend considerably when you set up your targeting.

Skippable In-Stream Ad Requirements

• Duration: 12secs (minimum) – 3 minutes (maximum)
• Where They Appear: Before, during and after ‘monetized’ YouTube videos
• Call-To-Action Button: 10 Characters (maximum)
• Companion Banner (displayed on right-hand side of video): Auto-Generated from video or Custom Design 300 x 60 (pixels)
• When You’re Charged: At 30 seconds (full duration if shorter than 30 seconds), or when Call-To-Action is clicked

Unskippable In-Stream Ads

Again, these are the ads that play before monetized videos on YouTube, but the difference is that they can’t be skipped after 5 seconds. Viewers have to watch the entire ad before they can watch the video that they came to watch in the first place.

So, understandably, these ads are the least liked by YouTube users. You also can’t add a Call-To-Action button. The only way that people can actually take action from the ad and visit your website, is to click on the small website address text in the bottom left hand corner of the video (shown in the image below), or through a Companion Banner, as with the ‘Skippable In-Stream Ads’.

Unskippable In-Stream Ad Requirements

• Duration: 7 secs (minimum) – 15secs (maximum)
• Where They Appear: Before, during and after ‘monetized’ YouTube videos
• Call-To-Action Button: None (apart from website URL in the bottom left of the video)
• Companion Banner (displayed on right hand side of video): Auto Generated from video or Custom Design 300 x 60 (pixels)
• When You’re Charged: Per 1000 impressions (CPM)

Bumper Ads

Best used for brand awareness, Bumper Ads are 6 second (maximum) video ads that play before monetized videos on YouTube. They don’t have any Call-To-Action aside from a Companion Banner and the on-screen website URL of the advertiser.

As I mentioned above, Bumper Ads perform best when used for Brand Awareness and keeping your Travel Brand front-of-mind for your potential customers. So we tend to use Bumper Ads as part of a larger YouTube Ads campaign strategy.

Bumper Ads Requirements

• Duration: Up to 6 secs (maximum)
• Where They Appear: Before, during and after ‘monetized’ YouTube videos
• Call-To-Action Button: None (apart from website URL in the bottom left of the video)
• Companion Banner (displayed on right hand side of video): Auto Generated from video or Custom Design 300 x 60 (pixels)
• When You’re Charged: Per 1000 impressions (CPM)

Video Discovery Ads

Video Discovery Ads are slightly different to all the other ad formats we’ve been through so far, because typically, these are more ‘Content’ videos (videos with titles such as, “how to market my tours company”, “how to generate more direct bookings”, etc.), that you put some money behind to ‘push’ them in front of your ideal customers, rather than wait for the YouTube algorithm to rank your videos based on various different factors, such as title, description, tags, engagement, etc., which is the route that the majority of YouTube Creators take.

When setting up a Video Discovery Ads campaign, you still have access to all the targeting tools that we’ve discussed in this guide.

So Video Discovery Ads can appear in a number of different places across the YouTube platform:

• YouTube App Feed (Mobile Only)
• YouTube Search Results (as highlighted in the image below)
• Suggested Videos (videos down the right hand side on a video watch page)

There are a few things to bear in mind with Video Discovery Ads, that make them slightly different from all the other Ad Formats that we’ve discussed in this guide so far, the main one being that you are charged when someone actually clicks on your Video Discovery Ad from any of the places listed above. You are NOT charged for impressions.

Video Discovery Ads Requirements:

• Duration: Minimum of 12 seconds (no maximum)
• Where They Appear: YouTube App Feed, Search Results and Suggested Videos
• Call-To-Action Button: None
• Companion Banner: None
• When You’re Charged: Per Click (CPC)

Wow! Got all that? Still here? Great! Let’s move onto actually setting up your first YouTube Ads Campaign. Exciting!

How To Setup Your First YouTube Ads Campaign

The first thing you’ll need to do to set up a YouTube Ads Campaign is to create a Google Ads Account if you don’t already have one.

If you do have one, cool, move on. If not, head on over to https://ads.google.com and just follow the on-screen instructions to get everything in place.

You’ll also need a YouTube Channel setup in order to run YouTube Ads. If you already have a Youtube Channel for your business, just double check that it’s setup as a ‘Brand Account‘, rather than a personal account, as this will allow you a few more options than a personal account, such as multiple managers, but you’ll still be able to access a Brand Account through your personal account/channel.

If you don’t have a YouTube Channel, just head on over to YouTube.com and because you’ve already setup a Google Ads Account, you’ll be able to use the same login details to create your new Youtube Channel.

All sorted? Great, let’s move on…

Linking Your Google Ads Account and Your YouTube Channel

This is a crucial step to really get the most out of YouTube Ads, as you’ll be able to access so many more targeting, measurement and analytics tools, than if you don’t link your Google Ads Account and YouTube Channel together.

To do this, once you’re inside your Google Ads Account, head on up to the spanner/wrench icon in the menu bar at the top right of your screen and click ‘Linked Accounts‘ (as shown in the image below).

On the next screen, scroll down till you see the ‘YouTube’ section and click on ‘Details’ (as shown below)

Now click on the ‘Add Channel’ button.

Then either type your YouTube Channel name into the box that pops up (as shown below), or copy and paste your Youtube Channel URL.

Once you’ve searched for your Channel or copy and pasted the URL, select from the appropriate channel ownership options and then click ‘Go To YouTube’, to finish off the linking process.

IMPORTANT

To finish the linking process between your Google Ads Account and YouTube Channel, you’ll need to be logged into the required YouTube Channel on the same internet browser.

When you see the box below, just give the link a name, make sure all 3 options are ticked from the selection of ‘View Counts’, ‘Remarketing’ and ‘Engagement’ and then click the ‘Link’ button.

And you’re all set; ready to launch your first YouTube Ads Campaign, which we’ll dive into right now!

Campaign Structure

Before we jump into the Google Ads platform again to build out your first YouTube Ads Campaign, I wanted to briefly cover the ‘Account Structure’ of your campaign. The diagram below gives you a high level, 30,000-foot view of how everything works and links together.

Based on the above diagram, the best advice I can give you when you’re thinking about your YouTube Ads Campaigns is this…

Use 1 Targeting Option Per Campaign

Don’t ‘layer’ lots of different targeting options on top of one another in one Campaign; especially when you’re just starting out.

When you set your YouTube Ads Account up this way, you’ll also be able to control the amount of budget per Campaign and therefore, per Targeting option, giving you a huge amount of control over how much you spend on your YouTube Ads, as you can see from the diagram below.

It can be tempting to add lots of targeting options into one Campaign. But if you do, then it’s very difficult to determine which targeting worked and which didn’t. Whereas, if you have just 1 targeting option per Campaign, you can quickly and easily see which targeting is working and which isn’t

Here’s a great quote/motto to remember when running YouTube Ads:

What gets measured, gets managed

Building Your Campaign in Google Ads

So, back on your Google Ads dashboard, to get started, click on the ‘Campaign’ option in the left hand menu, then click on the blue + button and choose ‘New Campaign’ from the menu that pops up.

Now choose an objective for your campaign by asking yourself, what do you want your campaign to achieve? You can choose from:

• Sales

• Leads
• Website Traffic
• Product and Brand Consideration
• Brand Awareness and Reach
• App Promotion
• Create a Campaign Without a Goal’s Guidance

Once you’ve chosen your goal, you’ll need to choose a ‘Campaign Type’, which, for YouTube Ads, will need to be ‘Video’.

After choosing your goal and campaign type, you’ll need to select a ‘Campaign Sub-Type’, which will differ depending on the overall goal that you select. I’ve chosen ‘Brand Awareness and Reach’ for this example, which gives the option of the following:

• Skippable In-Stream
• Bumper
• Non-Skippable In-Stream
• Outstream
• Ad Sequence

You’ll most likely recognize some of the sub-goals from the Ad Formats section earlier in this guide! So for now, I’ll go ahead and choose ‘Skippable In-Stream’ and then click the blue ‘Continue’ button at the bottom of the screen.

Campaign Name

The next screen you arrive on might seem a bit daunting, but don’t worry, I’m going to walk you through everything you need to know about setting up your YouTube Ads Campaign the right way.

So, the first thing you’ll want to do is name your Campaign. There are many different naming conventions you could use to name your campaign, but I typically use something along the lines of the following:

[PLATFORM] | [GOAL] | [DEVICE]

In practice, to add some context to this with an example, the above naming convention could be:

YT | Enquiries | Desktop

With ‘YT’ standing for ‘YouTube’, because within the Google Ads platform, you may also be running Google Search Ads and/or Google Display Ads. So by adding ‘YT’ to the beginning of the Campaign Name, easily differentiates between the different Campaigns you may have running at any one time.

There’s no right or wrong way to name your Campaigns; just make sure that it’s something that is recognizable to you and that you can quickly and easily determine the purpose, context and goal of each campaign.

As with any paid advertising, there is a certain amount of testing and optimization required, so once you have more than 10 campaigns on the go, it’s going to be hard to see the wood for the trees if all your campaigns are named something irrelevant or complicated!

Budget

Once you’ve decided on your Campaign Name, the next section to work on is ‘Budget’.

You can choose between:

• Campaign Total
• Daily Budget

So how do you know which option is right for you?

Here’s how we like to choose:

If you’re running a ‘burst campaign’ (a short term campaign that typically lasts no more than 4 weeks), then we always recommend using a ‘Campaign Total‘ budget.

If, however, you’re going to be running a campaign for the foreseeable future, almost like an evergreen campaign, then we recommend choosing the ‘Daily Budget‘ option.

You’ll also see a section just below the budget options, where you can select a start and end date.

Again, what you choose here will depend on the type of campaign that you’re running:

• Burst Campaign – set a start and end date
• Ongoing/Evergreen Campaign – DON’T select a start and end date

Bidding Strategy

I could go very deep on this topic! But for the purposes of this guide, a bidding strategy is essentially how you want Google/YouTube to optimize your ads for maximum impact and how you pay.

I’ve chosen to run a Brand Awareness and Reach Campaign, so the only Bidding Strategy available to me in this example is Target CPM, which means that I’ll set a target cost for Google/YouTube to optimize my campaign for, in order to receive 1000 impressions of my ad.

If, however, you chose a different campaign goal, you’d have access to different bidding strategies, such as Maximum CPV (Cost Per View), where you decide how much you’re prepared to pay for 1 person to watch your ad.

Networks

Now it’s time to decide where you want your ads to show on the YouTube platform.

Depending on the objective of your campaign and your campaign subtype, some of these options may be unavailable to you. So, typically, here’s how to choose which Networks to show your YouTube Ads on:

• YouTube Search Results – Video Discovery Ads
• YouTube Videos – In-Stream Ads (Skippable and Unskippable), Bumper Ads
• Video Partners on the Display Network – NEVER USE! (Selecting this option will use up the majority of your budget very quickly!)

Languages

This is pretty straightforward! Just choose the language that your ideal customers speak! Yep, it’s that simple!

Content Exclusions

Now you need to choose an Inventory Type, which is essentially a filter that lets your ads show on certain types of video content that YouTube Creators upload. The option you choose here is going to depend on how you want your brand to be perceived, as you might be ok with your ads showing on videos of an ‘evocative nature’, in which case, choose ‘Expanded Inventory‘.

Typically though, we choose ‘Standard Inventory‘, just to be on the safe side. And, to give credit to YouTube, they are getting much better at blocking ‘risque’ content on the platform.

But if you want to be really safe, just choose ‘Limited Inventory‘ from the options. Just bear in mind that the more you limit your inventory, the slightly more expensive it’s going to be to run your ads.

The next 2 options to define are ‘Excluded Content‘ and ‘Excluded Types and Labels‘.

The ‘Inventory Type‘ in the previous section tends to cover a lot of this. So we tend to leave ‘Excluded Content‘ as default. Also bear in mind that, at the time of writing this guide, the ‘Excluded Content’ options will soon be removed.

With the ‘Excluded Types and Labels‘ options, we tend to just tick the following options where we don’t want our ads to show:

• Embedded Videos
• Live Streaming Videos
• Games

Additional Settings

There are some additional settings you can play around with, but when just starting a campaign, it’s best to cast a wide net, so we tend to leave these options alone with a first campaign.

Once we have some data after running campaigns for a few weeks, then we’ll come back into these additional settings and make some changes. But for now, you can leave these settings as default, unless you really feel that you need to male some adjustments to them.

Ad Group Name

Now it’s time to set up your Ad Group. So, as we covered a little earlier in this guide, the Ad Group is where you define your targeting. And when you’re naming your Ad Group’s, it’s best to include the targeting within the Ad Group name, to make things easier to manage; which is particularly important once you’ve got a good number of Ad Groups up and running.

Again, there’s no right or wrong Ad Group naming conventions, but here’s the format we like to use:

[OFFER] | [TARGETING TYPE] | [TARGETING DETAIL]

For example:

2 For 1 Offer Nov 2019 | In-Market | Hotels & Accommodation

Whatever naming convention you use, just make sure you name your Ad Groups in a way that means something to you.

People Targeting – Who You Want To Reach With Your Ads

The next step is to set up your ‘People’ targeting, which includes:

• Demographics
• Audience

Demographics
The Demographics section allows you to filter the targeting of who sees your ads, based on your ideal customers. With Demographics, you are able to define:

• Gender
• Age
• Parental Status
• Household Income (select countries only)

Audiences

The Audiences targeting allows you to choose from a number of different audience types, based on Google’s data of its users. We covered this a little earlier in this guide, but to give you a refresher, here’s what you’re able to define with Audience targeting:

• Detailed Demographics (such as marital status, home ownership status and education)
• Affinity (interests and habits)
• In-Market and Life Events (people who are ready to make a purchase and life events such as graduation, marriage, etc.)
• Remarketing (people who have interacted with your business)

As I mentioned earlier in this guide, I’d recommend NOT ‘layering’ People targeting (Demographics and Audiences) when you’re first getting started, because it’s really going to limit the potential of your YouTube Ads, as well as the data that you’re able to pull in, if you were to cast a wider net.

So, if you’re using People Targeting, you’re defining the people who you want to see your ads, no matter what content they’re watching.

But, with Content Targeting (the next targeting option), you’re actually targeting the content where your ads will show, no matter who the people are that are watching.

This does make it sound a bit like the Content Targeting is a waste of time! But, if you think about it, the people who are watching, for example, a video about ‘best places to visit in the Lake District’, you can be pretty sure that they’re going on holiday to the Lake District at some point in the near future. People who are going to China are unlikely going to be watching a video about places to visit in the Lake District!

So let’s now take another look at the Content Targeting options quickly, as we covered these earlier on in this guide. Content Targeting allows you to define where your ads show based on:

• Keywords
• Topics
• Placements

If you do decide to use Content Targeting, then we recommend just choosing ONE of these options per Campaign (Keywords, Topics or Placements), so as to give your ads the best possible chance of success. You can then refine the targeting later on once you’ve got some data.

Bidding

Setting the bid for your Ad Group will differ depending on the goal of your Campaign, as well as the Campaign subtype that you’ve selected. For the example in this guide, I’m using a Brand Awareness and Reach Campaign, so the only bidding option I’m able to use is Target CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions).

Regarding how much you should set your bids for, whichever type of Campaign you’re running, will very much depend on several factors, such as your ACV (Average Cart Value), your LTV (Lifetime Value), CR (Conversion Rate – how many people you convert from a lead/enquirer into a paying customer).

If you’re running a different Campaign Type and Subtype, you might be able to set your bidding based on how much you’re prepared to pay for a single view of your YouTube Ad.

Once you know these sorts of metrics, and you know how much you’re able to pay to acquire a new customer/booking (and still be profitable), then you can input this data into your Campaign and the algorithm will optimize your Campaign to meet these figures so that you stay profitable.

To give you some figures to get you started though, if you’re running a Campaign that allows you to set a Maximum CPV, then I’d recommend setting this CPV bid to somewhere between £0.10 – £0.20 to begin with. Then once you have some data and analytics after the Campaign has been running for a few days, you can adjust this CPV bid down to better match the results you’re getting. We tend to see CPV’s of between £0.02 and £0.10.

Create Your Video Ad

Here comes the exciting part – creating your YouTube Ad itself!

So the first thing you want to do is make sure your video ad is uploaded onto your YouTube Channel as ‘Unlisted’. Then simply copy and paste the URL of the video into the search bar under the ‘Create Your Ad’ section.

The options you see when you’re setting up your Campaign may differ to screenshot above, because, again, it will depend on your Campaign and Campaign Subtype settings.

But let’s go through the options in the above screenshot, which are available for most Campaigns and Campaign Subtypes, to give you a better idea of how to set your first YouTube Ad up:

• Video Ad Format – the options you see here will depend on the type of Campaign you’re setting up
• Final URL – this is the actual URL people will arrive on when they click on a CTA (Call-To-Action) in your YouTube Ad
• Display URL – this is the URL that viewers of your YouTube Ad will actually see, so make your Display URL look as pretty as you can!
• Call-To-Action – this is optional on some campaigns. You have 10 characters to use, such as BOOK NOW or LEARN MORE
• Headline – this should promote your offer; it appears below your YouTube Ad on mobiles and within the ad itself on desktop computers
• Companion Banner – this is a graphic with a CTA and again, promotes your offer, but stays visible to the viewers even if they skip your ad. You can choose to have an auto-generated Companion Banner, or if there’s something specific that you want to show in your banner, then you can create your own; just make sure that its dimensions are 300 x 60 pixels.

As you build out your YouTube Ad, you’ll see a preview of what it’s looking like on the right hand side of your screen, both on mobile and desktop devices, so you can be confident that you’re happy with how your ad looks before you launch it.

The final thing you need to do is name your Ad. As with all the naming conventions we’ve gone through in this guide, there are no hard and fast rules; just make it clear to you, so that you understand the content of the Campaign, Ad Group and Ad.

For your Ads, I recommend using the following naming convention, but feel free to name it in a way that works for you:

[OFFER IN AD] | [VERSION] | [ANGLE/DESCRIPTION]

So, for example:

2 For 1 Nov 2019 Offer | Ver1 | With Voiceover

And you’re done! Just give all the settings of your Campaign a check over to make sure you’re happy with everything. Then click on the blue ‘Save and Continue‘ button at the bottom of the screen.

The “Secret Sauce” to Running Profitable YouTube Ads Campaigns

Phew! So, you’ve got your first YouTube Ad up and running. Now for something super important about running profitable YouTube Ads Campaigns…

I call this the Secret Sauce…

When you’re running YouTube Ads, the ‘Secret Sauce’ to success isn’t some fancy targeting strategy, or campaign objective, although, as you’ve witnessed throughout this Ultimate Guide, these things do make a massive difference to your results.

The ‘Secret Sauce’ to successful running profitable YouTube Ads is actually MINDSET.

I call it the ‘Always Win, Never Lose Mindset’.

Whenever you run YouTube Ads, you either SUCCEED by reaching your ideal customers with a message that resonates with them and turns them into either a lead or a customer…

OR

You gain AD INTELLIGENCE, which will help you WIN more going forwards.

You need to ‘miss the mark’ a few times to see what works and what doesn’t work. If you win, GREAT. if you lose, GREAT – you’ve still won, because you’ve gained AD INTELLIGENCE.

And once you can see what’s working, you can dial in on this targeting, creative, messaging, etc. and start to scale up your Campaigns.

To really drive this Secret Sauce home for you, let’s use an analogy of firing arrows at a target.

The reason some YouTube Ads don’t work is because they throw one huge, gigantic arrow at a target. And unfortunately, 9 times out of 10, this doesn’t produce profitable or meaningful results. And definitely no ROI.

Losing Campaigns

Winning Campaigns

Instead, if you want to win with YouTube Ads, you need to use the ‘Always Win, Never Lose Mindset’, throw lots of precision arrows at the target and not be afraid of missing a few times. When you have this mindset, you know that you’ll hit the bullseye.

As Thomas Jefferson once said:

“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.“ – Thomas Jefferson

Conclusion

And there you have it! That’s complete the YouTube Ads Ultimate Guide For Travel Marketers.

As with any paid advertising campaign, you can very easily waste a lot of money if you don’t know what you’re doing, targeting the wrong audience, setting the wrong objectives and most importantly, not knowing your metrics and your numbers.

You’ll also need to bear in mind that YouTube Ads requires on-going testing and optimization. You can’t just create one YouTube Ad, launch it and expect to hit a home run right out of the gate.

When you launch your first YouTube Ads Campaign, let it run for at least 7-14 days before you make any amendments to it. Allow your Campaign to collect some data, then analyze the data, and optimize targeting, bidding, etc. based on your results.

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 YouTube Ads: The Ultimate Guide For Travel Marketers appeared first on Regiondo.

To start with, traditional approaches like generating positive online reviews and social media will not be enough to stand out.

Even focusing on video is old news.

To make it big in 2021, you’ll need a comprehensive approach with multiple marketing activities that work together well.

Today, we’ll cover some of the best tour marketing tactics that are often neglected due to focusing on the large (and overcrowded) channels that everyone else is using.

By giving these underrated concepts more consideration, you’ll have the basis to form a comprehensive marketing strategy for the new year with multiple elements that work together like magic.

So without further ado, let’s look at 8 underestimated tactics for successful tour marketing.

1. Optimize your pricing

Pricing is a sensitive subject.

It’s hard to make changes because it’s risky.

What if your sales drop substantially? What if people get annoyed and don’t buy from you anymore?

Here, it’s important to put your experimenter hat on.

One of the most effective ways to determine the optimal price is by surveying your customers.

You can create a free and beautiful survey with tools like Typeform.

In addition, you can use discounts to test how demand changes at lower points. You can also do special premium offers (by adding extra value) and see how that affects demand.

You can also introduce different tiers of service and then see which one is most profitable so you can focus on it. The important thing is to have a good reason for making any price changes.

Be wary of showing different prices to different customers (known as A/B testing). In many cases, this will lead to more problems than advantages.

If you’re just starting out and you don’t know how much you should charge, talk to potential customers and look at how your competition is priced.

Click to learn more about creating a successful marketing mix.

2. Email is still big

Despite the rapid growth of social media, chatbots, and search engine ads, email is still one of the most effective channels out there.

Source: NeilPatel.com

For tours and activities, email is a way to reduce reliance on new customers.

Once you have a visitor’s email address, you can reach them later with targeted offers and promotions that add value so they come back and purchase from you again.

It’s also a great way to boost referrals.

You can run more effective referral programs using email so more people know about your service and ultimately buy from you.

Learn more about email marketing for leisure companies in our dedicated article on the topic.

3. Define the right add-ons

Marketing a tour company is hard.

Getting someone to your offers pages is a big win so you should maximize the opportunity.

This is when add-ons come in (also known as cross-selling).

Customers are most receptive while they are buying so this is a great time to offer complementary products and services that provide more value.

But make sure you don’t confuse cross-selling with up-selling. The former relates to selling an additional product or service while the latter means you’re upgrading the customer to a higher tiered offer.

Source: TechTarget

Amazon is the biggest example here – you can often see a “Frequently bought together” highlight on the product page (see below).

So, what do you do about it? Define the right add-ons for your products and include them on your offers pages. You’re sure to bag some extra sales and get a higher ROI from your promotional efforts.

4. Partner with influencers

In recent years, influencer marketing has exploded.

This is especially true in the travel industry where people turn to real reviews and experiences of other folks before they make a buying decision.

Therefore, it can make a big difference when you partner with an influencer and offer them your tour or activity for free in exchange for a review.

Of course, you’ll have to provide an amazing experience for them so it can be risky. After all, if you fail to make a good impression, they could seriously harm your reputation.

So only use this tactic if you’re 100% confident you can deliver.

5. Get SEO right

Getting people to your website is a big part of tour marketing.

And one of the highest leverage, long-term approaches is Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Getting found on search engines is crucial because that’s how people acquire information these days. If they are in the consideration stage and you show up during their search, you increase the likelihood of getting a booking tremendously.

So how do you get SEO right?

There are 2 main components: your content and how you promote it.

1) Your content

It’s not enough to create your offer pages and your website description if you want good results from SEO (although these elements are important).

You also need helpful information to educate customers about your city and how they can have a great time.

2) Your promotion

Next, it’s time to promote your content.

You might ask – aren’t people supposed to find my content using search engines?

Well, yes, but they won’t until you rank on page one (which gets almost 90% of all clicks).

And how do you rank there? Promote your content.

The crucial thing here is acquiring backlinks from other websites that signal your site is an authority on the subject.

By combining these two elements, you will climb up Google’s rankings faster.

6. Review your toolset

Most of these tips are easy to implement on their own but as the list grows larger, you might wonder “How do I get all this done when I have only 24 hours in the day?”

Well, this is where the right tools come in.

There is a variety of free and premium tools you can use to automate and speed up your promotional efforts. That’s the real leverage that can help you promote your tour company like a pro.

You can find our pick of the best marketing tools for tours and activities here.

7. Get your share of mobile bookings

Almost half of the global internet users browse on their phones.

In addition, our data shows that over a third of tour and activity bookings are made on mobile.

In 2021, it’s going to be more important than ever to establish and maintain a strong mobile experience.

But isn’t that expensive?

The truth is you don’t need a full-blown app – but you do need a mobile-responsive website at the very least.

Find out if your website is mobile-friendly here.

You should also pay attention to the partners and Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) you work with – how good are they with mobile? This will have a big impact on your success rate from partnerships.

8. Master multi-channel management

Okay, we went through a bunch of underused tactics that can complement your existing initiatives.

But how do you manage all of this?

What happens when someone makes a booking over the phone, another one comes in from your website and then you have a third from an OTA?

Now, you could track everything meticulously in a spreadsheet, always staying close to your email, phone, and other channels.

But a better way is to use a dedicated online booking system to track all of your sales in one place. This way, you’ll save time for improving your products, doing more marketing, managing your resources, or lying on the beach – it’s really up to you!

Read more about creating an effective multi-channel strategy here.

Conclusion

As competition for people’s attention increases, marketing channels lose their effectiveness.

This is why you should look towards underused tactics to supplement your primary efforts.

Today, we looked at a variety of approaches to help you build successful tour marketing campaigns in 2021.

As we touched on multiple topics, here’s a brief summary:

• Start by considering your price and overall position in the market.
• Use email marketing to reduce reliance on new customers and stop grinding 24/7.
• Introduce add-ons to your offers to maximize the impact of your promotional efforts.
• Leverage the power of influencers that share the same audience with you.
• Review your website to see if it’s mobile-friendly.
• Create educational content and promote it heavily to get long-term visitors from search engines.
• Make sure you track bookings in a single place so you don’t go crazy.
• Finally, tie everything together with the right tools to help you build and optimize your online presence.

With that, we hope you found at least one helpful tip to boost your marketing efforts in 2021 and we wish you an amazing year ahead!

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
• Marketing Mix for Tour and Activity Operators

The post 8 Underestimated Tactics for Successful Tour Marketing appeared first on Regiondo.

In this article, we’ll look at free marketing tools that help you gain traffic to your site, convert that traffic to sales, and drive repeat business.

We’ll also show you tools to analyze who your visitors are and what they do on your website – all in the context of the tour and activity business. Ready? Let’s go.

WordPress

A working website with all the relevant information is crucial for your business. WordPress allows you to create your own homepage or your personal blog without any HTML-knowledge. You can also add different plug-ins for additional functions and features. All in all, it helps you build the base for your online business.

Google Analytics

We analyzed dozens of activity provider sites to find which technology they used the most. The answer?

From Segway tours to Escape rooms, Google Analytics was a permanent tool in the activity industry’s marketing arsenal.

And why wouldn’t it be? It’s free and gives deep insight into who visits your site and what they do on it.

Knowing this information, you have a way to tailor your online experience and offers based on who your ideal audience is.

Hotjar

Speaking of improving the online experience for your visitors, we can’t miss Hotjar.

Hotjar offers a free starter plan that lets you see how website visitors use your site. From the most common places, they click to how far along they scroll and where they move their mouse.

Not only is this super cool, but it also lets you gradually improve your site’s performance and conversion rate.

For example, seeing that most people scroll through only 50% of your page, you know it’s a good idea to include your best deals near the top of the screen.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. With Hotjar, you’ll be able to benchmark your website’s performance and continually improve it. This way, both you and your customers get a better experience on the web.

MailChimp

MailChimp is a pioneering online tool when it comes to email marketing.

For years, MailChimp has helped large and small companies communicate with their customers and leads via email. They developed a particular strength when it comes to online selling so the platform is widely used in the eCommerce space.

With MailChimp’s free plan, you can create beautiful email templates and run automated email campaigns. It’s a great way to offer promotions that entice your leads and customers to try out your activity or come back again over time.

Gmass

If you like keeping things simple, Gmass is another email automation service that’s free of charge for up to 50 recipients a day. All you need is a Gmail account and a spreadsheet with email contacts to get started.

Gmass is a Gmail extension and it uses Google Sheets to pull out your list of contacts. This means it’s especially loved by Google fans.

As long as you include a name and/or other details in the spreadsheet, Gmass can personalize each email without you having to do it manually.

So if you’re a Google fan looking for a quick and easy way to send personalized emails in bulk, Gmass is a great free option.

Google Search Console

See a pattern here? Some of the best free ways to market your activity business come from Google.

The Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools) helps you optimize your website’s visibility online.

Among other things, you can analyze Google search clicks and test how visible your online content is (i.e. how easy it is to understand for search engines).

This helps you learn more about your target audience and how they find you online. Knowing this information, you’ll be well-equipped to fix issues and make sure people can easily find you and buy your activity online.

Ryte (free SEO analysis)

To make sure your potential customers find and visit your website it has to be optimized for Google. Most of the online traffic is generated via search engines so playing by their rules is essential for your online success.

The business tools provided by Ryte show you all factors that have to be optimized to get good ranking results on Google. Ryte crawls your website in order to deliver suggestions for improvement. It pays attention to all relevant factors for Google like page speed, alt tags, headings, duplicate content, and many others. After the crawl, you just have to evaluate the suggestions and change your website accordingly and you are all set up to be found on Google.

Ahrefs

Now that we’re going in the SEO realm, we can’t miss Ahrefs. Boasting “the best and most complete data in the industry”, they help you research competitors and grow your online search traffic.

Among other things, Ahref’s free version lets you see the top search results for a given keyword (let’s say “segway berlin”). Then it shows you the estimated traffic to top-ranking pages. You also get a “difficulty score” which indicates how hard it is to beat the top results.

That’s a small part of Ahref’s full capabilities but even that’s enough to start improving your online presence. Once you know the keywords to rank for and the traffic you can expect, it’s much easier to predict your return on investment from content marketing.

Buffer

If social media is a central part of your marketing strategy, you’ve likely heard of Buffer.

Instead of posting on each of your social accounts manually, Buffer lets you do it once and then works its magic. Your content will automatically get pushed to all your social accounts like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

The free plan lets you connect up to 3 accounts and comes with other nice features like scheduling and reviewing basic stats.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is another tool that lets you manage multiple social media accounts at once.

While the free plan is similar to Buffer’s (above), Hootsuite is a more comprehensive platform suited for heavy social media use.

So if you run a large and popular activity, Hootsuite will give you the extra capabilities that a social media team needs.

Canva

If you design images, icons, and edit photos often, Canva is a great free alternative to software like Photoshop.

You can choose from a ton of templates, free images, and icons to use anywhere across your marketing. From logos to social media and blog posts.

So if your design needs are not super heavy, try out Canva and see if it makes things easier for you.

Typeform

If you want to provide a great customer experience, getting regular feedback is crucial.

Typeform is a popular tool that lets you create beautiful forms and surveys. Their focus is on making data collection a breeze for you and a delight to your customers.

So when someone books your activity online, it’s a great way to use their email and send them a quick Typeform about their experience. The best and most powerful insights will always come from your customers.

Bonus: Google Ads

Well, not really free but you do get a credit when you sign up (use this link). By using Google Ads (formerly Adwords) you can place your ads for selected keywords. These ads will be presented to your customers as soon as they search for these terms. You only get charged for actual clicks on your ad, so even with a small budget, you can be successful using Google Ads.

Conclusion

Today we looked at a comprehensive suite of free tools to help you market your activity.

We covered attracting more traffic with SEO tools like Ahrefs and social media services like Buffer. We also looked at how you can drive more sales and repeat business with email tools like Gmass. To top it all off, we explored how to analyze your website performance with tools like Google Analytics and Hotjar.

We hope at least one of these services will become part of your marketing tools arsenal and change your business for the better.

You might also like:

• SaaS vs On-Premise: Which Solution is Cheaper in the Long Run?
• 13 Online Tools Every Tour Operator Should Know About
• SaaS Booking System vs In-House Development: Which is Right for You?

The post 12 Free Marketing Tools To Boost Your Online Sales appeared first on Regiondo.