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You created amazing experiences in a fantastic destination, but you don't have travelers fully booking them the year round. That's where digital marketing can help, by reaching customers that love your products anywhere on the world.
Travelers interested in your destination or experiences, are bombarded with a constant stream of marketing messages. Its not easy to be noticed to people who are exposed to thousands of commercial messages a day.
To cut through the clutter and make an impact, you need to have a clear message and extraordinary visuals. To be able to do this a strategy that guides potential travelers from the discovery of their experiences and destinations to bookings, ensuring that every digital interaction moves them closer to their next adventure with your brand is a must.
Having a strategy is more important then having an perfect strategy, in our 25+ years of experience, we’ve found companies struggling making a whole strategy and then execute it. By keeping your strategy simple, you increase the change you finish one and they are easier to implement. A focused strategy that reflects your unique strengths and passion for creating exceptional travel experiences. By staying true to your core values and telling your story authentically. we help you build connections that resonate with travelers, ensuring your brand stands out and thrives."
To create a well-crafted digital marketing strategy, we share our 25 years+ knowledge of digital marketing and working with tourism organizations. In this article, we will show you which components of a digital marketing strategy to define. From re-assessing your strategy, setting your messages, with compelling narratives and powerful visuals to leveraging the right digital channels for maximum reach. Discover how to create a cohesive plan that not only attracts your ideal customers but helps to converts them into loyal travelers who love to share about you and choose your brand again.
Define Your Strategic Direction for Digital Success.
Because clear and consistent messaging is so important, the foundation of any successful business lies in its strategic direction; your company's niche, mission, vision, values, and unique selling propositions (USPs) and your ability to turn that with the help of Digital Marketing Channel into content that reaches and resonates with your target audience.
Within this broader framework, your digital marketing strategy focuses on achieving your sales objectives through digital means. You plot a coherent plan to consistently communicate your core messages to your target audience while guiding them through their customer journey. A well-defined digital marketing strategy prevents confusion and ensures a seamless experience for potential travelers.
Key Components of a Digital Marketing Strategy
In your digital marketing strategy you define how you communicate your strategic direction;
In your strategic direction you declared your;
- Vision
- Goal
- Niche
- Target Market & Audience
- Experiences and products
- Unique Selling Points
- Key Messages
In your digital marketing strategy you define your different digital channels and what kind and type of messages and content you need to guide a traveler to a sale. Also known as distributing the right content, to the right persona, at the right time.
Customers first need to discover you, than get enough confidence to try and experience your offerings, after which you love to capture their experiences and share them with family and friends.
Choosing the appropriate channels is crucial, don't use more then you can handle. Make sure your channels complement each other, and are set in support of your website with is your digital shop, see Facebook and socials as newspapers to advertise in, your website is really yours and should be the core of everything.
Don't forget to think about email marketing too, another channel that is really yours.
Where in your overall strategy you set the direction of your company. In your digital marketing strategy you set what you will do digitally to achieve your sales goals.
You plot an aligned plan to consistently share, your vision, values usp's, key products, and messages to your target audience and guide them through their customers journey.
It's important to plan this based on your strategy, to avoid that you confuse travelers
The main goal of your digital marketing strategy is to design an integrated digital marketing framework that shows your travel products to your ideal customers who will like your services and then guide them to a sale.
In short; create the right content and distribute this to the right persona on the right time.
Setting your channels right is important because you have so many of them to choose from and they only benefit from each other when you use them in the right way.
Content Creation
Content is the backbone of digital marketing. Your strategy should outline the topics and types of content you will create to assist a customer through their journey towards a sale. You want a persona to learn about your experience or destination with the best you have on offer, guide them further with tips and helpful resources to confirm your destination is the best next holiday destination, and then you offer them the right offer at the right timing. Each peace of content should inspire, assist, validate, and sell to your audience. This includes content that:
- Highlights the unique aspects of your destinations and experiences, making them must-visit choices for your personas.
- Demonstrates your reliability and the satisfaction of your past customers.
- Show for who your experiences are great by showing your personas in your content, and make sure they are diverse if they come from different countries or age groups.
Your content should support the core message of your vision, values, USPs, and key messages, seamlessly integrating into your overall strategy.
It a good idea to make a small content marketing year plan in which you define what content will be made when. What topics to focus on, what keywords you want your website to be found on. Think long-term, maybe you can make winter pictures that you will start using in your promotions only after the summer.
Please note that travel content for a B2B marketing is very different from B2C. Here you shouldn't convince a traveler why your destination is worth visiting, but explain in detail how a company can make money and happy customers by sending travelers to your destination or company.
Content Distribution
Of the classical marketing 4 P, maybe place was the big winner in tourism marketing. Having your tour operator office in the the crowded tourism center with attractive visual on the glasses and a board before your shop works excellent. And so it does online. You need to have your content there where the crowd is. But online it's more specific, crowds hang around topics and or algorithms, keep driving them back to content they are interested in. Understanding and planning around this will help your company making more money.
Your target audience will use different platforms for entertainment, shopping, learning, information etc. To be able to assist a potential buyer smoothly to a sale you need to be present on those platforms that are important for your target audience. You design the way to present your content and stories in a distribution strategy that defines how you will spread your content across various channels to move your target personas from awareness to planning, and finally, to booking. Doing this helps in delivering the right content and that the right time to the right person. This involves a detailed plan for each channel, including:
- Website Optimization: Strategies to enhance visibility in search engines and improve user experience. This includes creating a flow on each page that inspires, helps, proves, and sells, as well as updating content, such as repurposing blogs.
- Email Marketing: Determining the type of content to send, frequency, and tactics for increasing subscriber numbers.
- Social Media: Identifying which platforms align with your personas and detailing your approach for each, including content calendars and hashtags.
- Online Travel Agencies (OTAs): Strategies for distributing your trips and experiences through platforms like Trovatrip.
- Sharing by Customers: The most powerful distribution, is the distribution of your content by your customers, make sure your content is easy to share, and encourage them to share your content, and reward those who do.
Channel Strategy
It's essential to recognize that email and your website are owned assets. Investments in these areas remain under your control. Conversely, social media platforms are borrowed spaces where you distribute content with the hope of driving traffic back to your website, your primary conversion channel. Each channel's strategy should reflect this understanding, emphasizing the creation of content that engages and redirects to your owned platforms.
Website as a Central Hub
The website serves as the central hub for your digital presence. It should be designed to be user-friendly, incorporating elements that inspire, assist, validate, and sell across all pages. Detailing what specific improvements will be made and what new content will be added is crucial for a comprehensive strategy.
Email: Engaging Your Audience
Email marketing remains a powerful tool for direct engagement. Your strategy should outline the content you'll share, how often you'll send emails, and methods for growing your subscriber base.
Social Media: Building Communities
Social media strategies should be tailored to each platform, focusing on creating a community around your brand. This involves sourcing and posting content that resonates with your audience, using the right type of posts, and engaging with your community.
Lead / Contact Follow Up;
You have been successful, people go to your channels and start inquiring. Now what ? How do you automate these follow ups and how do you chose to put extra attention in those prospects you think have the highest change of becoming a customer. Standard templates, procedures and scripts to call back can help to increase your conversions drastically.
Realizing the Integrated Approach
An integrated digital marketing strategy ensures that all your digital efforts - from your website to social media, emails, and OTAs - work in harmony. This cohesive approach not only amplifies your reach but also enhances the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, ultimately guiding your ideal customers through their journey from awareness to booking.
Measuring
The great thing about digital marketing is that you can measure the results of your actions, instantly and build a very short learning curve. Break your numbers down per target market and try to make buckets of your target audiences to learn which experiences and destinations work best with which travelers.
Does my target group find me ? (Discovery Phase)
The first thing to measure is if people are able to find and consume your content, by measuring the amount of views, time spent on a channel.
Does my target group interacts with my content ? (Planning Phase)
Do they click on links, view videos, download files, register for newsletters. How many pages are opened per session on my website, percentage of users that clicks certain number of pages to make buckets of not much engaged, engaged, heavy users.
Does my target group buy my experiences ? (Buying Phase)
Total number of sales and conversion rates (how many views / visitors do i need to get a sale. For a destination marketing organization tracking if people are doing experiences can be done by letting people do actions with a mobile. Can you let a visitor download an app that gives value and or maybe discounts that are location based ? You can also let visitors scan qr codes that provide data. Real data of purchases in a destination can come from financial services providers like Mastercard that sell data.
Can i turn my customers in brand ambassadors ?
Number of repeat sales, sharing of your social media posts, number of reviews and the quality of reviews.
In brand ambassadors you also have top fans that share your experiences on their socials or mention you, you can measure this by checking mentions and used hashtags. You might have also people who mention your company in a blog or create other User Generated Content. Especially if you are managing a destination, these are very good metrics to measure the success of your destination.
