Category: Marketing

A Guide to Landing Pages That Convert

With so many pages to manage on your website, it is easy to overlook the difference that carefully planned landing pages can make to your conversion rates.

With the right strategy behind it, a well-structured landing page can boost your bookings ten-fold.

How do you structure a landing page to boost bookings and sales?

It involves more than just great landing page design or appealing landing page copy.

To reap a solid return on investment you need your landing page to form the core of a complete strategy that boosts conversions, bookings, rankings and cultivates long term customers.

Here’s how to create landing pages that convert:

What is a Landing Page?

A landing page enable your visitors to find exactly what they want on your website straight-away.

It is a dedicated page for a single campaign, product or purpose.

about one campaign or product, making it easy for the prospect to learn more and make the next step in their journey.

Magnolia’s landing page for their holiday rentals provides a wealth of practical information, so practical in fact, that you imagine yourself there within seconds of landing on the page.

Filled with enticing photos, bitesize but really useful information, a clear message and call to action at the top of the fold, plus some really clever use of language, this is a compelling and brilliant example of a targeted landing page.

Therefore, an effective landing page is a powerful part of your sales funnel that should be linked to a well-planned promotional campaign if you want to achieve a high ROI.

When it is executed well, a landing page can a rich opportunity to secure your prospect at the discovery stage.

It can both capture your target audience for your campaign and give them the precise information that they desire so that they can learn more about the product or campaign quickly.

A landing page also provides a place that prospects can return to easily if they want to evaluate the offer again.

Therefore, a landing page helps to speed up the customer journey whilst creating a positive experience for your visitors that aids their decision-making.

Why Landing Pages Work

Here are some of the top reasons why landing pages increase conversions:

Tailor your campaign to your niche target audience

From the strategies that you use to build initial awareness to the copy on the page and the call to action; everything can be specifically created for the ultimate goal of securing bookings for one targeted campaign.

The importance of reaching the right people, with the right message, cannot be overlooked.

Masterclass have turned their landing pages into a rich source of information.

A clear indication that they know their market well, this is an evidence-filled landing page, which delivers the evidence, facts and visuals that so many sports fans enjoy.

From reviews to vids of your sports hero in action, this is a great example of a landing page that plays to its audience.

They appeal to our need for speed and our short attention span

We know that we have seconds to keep prospects on a website.

When you use landing pages, there are no distractions.

With the freedom to only include small amounts of specific information on the, when your visitors arrive they are able to find exactly what they need easily and quickly.

Focus on conversions

With your prospects attention in hand, you can seamlessly guide them to the next stage in the sales funnel, giving you lots of power to support them and keep them on your site to complete their customer journey at a quicker pace.

Develop an audience

As your prospect’s awareness is already raised through targeted promotions, your landing page now provides a valuable opportunity for you to collect significant data about your target audience.

From capturing email addresses to understanding their preferences this is potent information that you won’t want to miss.

Improve your page and website rankings

The wide range of targeted strategies that you will use in relation to your landing page niche, will also serve to aid your page and website ranking.

Yet as great as all of that is, a well-designed landing page alone is not enough to produce high conversion rates.

A landing page is not a single entity. For a landing page to deliver the level of bookings that you want, it needs to be one link in a chain that creates a solid marketing strategy for your campaign.

How to Build a Landing Page Which Converts

To create a complete strategy for your landing page you will need to think about it as a central part of an overall strategy for a single campaign.

Whether that is an offer, an event or a specific destination, the ultimate goal of your landing page is to convert that visitor into a customer.

According to Blog.Hubspot.com ‘79% of marketing leads never convert into sales’. ¹

Therefore you need to look at the sales funnel in its entirety.

How will the visitor find the landing page? What information do they need to gather from the landing page to help them to make a decision? Where should the page take them next so that they can make that booking?

Targeted Campaigns

Your customer’s journey to your page is as important as the information that is on the page when they get there.

That first step is one of the biggest differences between a page that converts and one that under performs.

If your initial strategy to build awareness of your page is not carefully planned to target the right customer, you will end up with traffic that doesn’t convert or no traffic at all.

Therefore, the promotion of your landing page should be carefully targeted to attract the right customer for your campaign.

How do you do that? Research and targeting.

Research your customer, test your campaigns and hone your content until it appeals to the right audience.

Without the right customer visiting your landing pages, you cannot make those bookings.

But that is not all there is to do.

SEO Keywords

Keywords are the rocket fuel of digital marketing and it is no different for your landing page.

Your landing page needs to be optimised for your core keywords, but to boost bookings through a complete strategy you need to take things further.

We just identified the high value of the first stage of your funnel, so it is here that your keyword optimisation should begin.

From your Google Adwords campaign to your social marketing, page snippets and more, you want to have a solid promotion around your landing page that is fully linked with your single goal of harnessing your niche customer.

It is here that it is easy to see why so many landing pages under perform.

It is not just as simple as creating an attractive landing page design, adding a snappy call-to-action button and some enticing copy – this is a full, structured campaign for each individual landing page.

Don’t dismiss this as too much to manage. We can do this and so much more for you. Conversions take work, time and much persistence as you test, analyse and re-test.

We have extensive experience in helping ambitious brands to generate more bookings.

Learn more about help with your website’s SEO.

Strong Promotional Content

SEO-optimisation alone is not enough.

Bolster your SEO optimisation with rich, carefully targeted promotional content that builds awareness of your page and captures the interest of your target audience.

From ads to emails, social media and more, we have a wealth of promotional tools at our disposal that can provide powerful, fun and exciting ways to capture your target market.

Together, strong SEO and appealing promotional content will create a rock-solid first stage in your sales funnel that places you in a strong position once the buyer arrives on your landing page.

With the right promotional content your prospects will arrive having already begun to form a connection to your campaign.

From this advantageous position, when your target audience land on your page you can provide the next level of information that they need to make an informed decision then guide them on to the next stage in your sales funnel with the ultimate purpose of obtaining that final booking.

Plated.com have made this look so easy with cleverly designed, highly visual landing pages that drip-feed all of the information that their customer needs whilst signing them up to their meal plans along the way.

Therefore, the quality of your promotional content is key.

Again, for so many companies this is where the strategy begins to weaken because there isn’t the time or expertise to devote to a quality promotional campaign on a range of fronts.

Find out more about how we can help you with your promotional Facebook campaigns, or read our guide to Facebook advertising.

Page Rankings

For any solid digital marketing strategy, page rankings need some thought.

The most important factor is that the landing page is optimised for a specific target keyword.

Beyond that SEO entails building authority links through natural (white-hat) techniques, optimising your website speeds and utilising the power of video.

It is crucial that everything works together to enhance the performance of your campaign.

Capture Customer Data

Not effectively gathering customer data from targeted visitors to your landing pages is a massive wasted opportunity.

Lots of us like to shop around.

In fact, according to Marketo.com 96% of visitors that come to your website are not ready to buy’ ².

What prospects will do, is sign up to a mailing list or an offer as they continue to chew over their decision.

By building email sign up or an offer into the design of your page, all of your hard-won visits won’t go to waste and you are then gifted further opportunities to provide more information to aid your prospect in their decision-making.

Web Page Design

Here too, all of the other aspects of your landing page design come into play.

Your landing page design should have all of the necessary elements in place to encourage your customer’s journey to the next stage!

Including…but not limited to…

• Making sure that your call-to-action button is in the right place
• Using an uncluttered and clear website design
• Including relevant information that your visitors need
• Making the information easy to find
• Ensuring that you landing page is fast-loading

For more about web design read our 10 design tips for your website.

Test and Analyse

Anything worthwhile takes some time.

There are so many tools and techniques that we can use to test and improve the performance of a landing page.

It is vital that you keep testing and analysing the results of your page to see what is working well and where improvements can be made.

No time to do that sort of thing? We have and we can help you.

We are a friendly and dedicated team of creative online and search marketing specialists. We can help you to boost your bookings with powerful landing pages and much more.

We have a proven track record for increasing the bookings for some of the biggest brands in travel.

From paid search marketing to SEO, social media, website development and more, we are ready to put fresh strategies in place to deliver the optimum return on your investment.

Give us a call on: 01730 239858 or contact us to have a chat about your website.

We would be happy to give some honest recommendations.

Get in touch, it might just be the best decision you make all year!

Sources:

¹ https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/30901/30-thought-provoking-lead-nurturing-stats-you-can-t-ignore.aspx

² https://www.marketo.com/ebooks/website-and-seo-for-lead-generation/

Image : https://www.epsilontheory.com/the-funnel/sales-funnel/

Online marketing has dramatically shortened the distance between you and your customer, yet it comes with a new set of challenges.

Today it is easier than ever before to pour money into direct marketing which can deliver little in return.

The onus is now on us, as business owners and marketing strategists, to decide which are the best digital marketing strategies to use – a decision that is far more complex than it first appears.

Particularly when the list of options is so extensive.

Yet, with 83% of adults now choosing to book online, we all know that digital marketing is something that none of us can afford to ignore.¹

In fact, in 2018 82% of all travel bookings were made online via a mobile app or website.

With figures set to rise to over 700 million online bookings by 2023, understanding how to use digital marketing to increase bookings is of growing importance ².

To make the decision easier, we have compiled a list of the top online marketing strategies to increase bookings because having an online presence doesn’t automatically deliver a return on investment.

Here is your practical guide to effective digital marketing strategies for travel and leisure brands:

ROI is the key issue when it comes to digital marketing. With such easy access to a vast array on online marketing, whether it is Facebook ads, video marketing, Instagram promos or Google ads it is easy to feel that you are achieving much, when in reality your ROI is little to none.

Use this guide to ensure that you choose solid marketing strategies that will deliver a strong ROI and increase your bookings long term.

How to use internet marketing to boost bookings

How will you best reach your target audience and convert them into paying customers long term?

The difficulty with internet marketing is that for marketing to be effective it needs to reach your target market and convert.

This entails effective segmentation.

To market with purpose it is crucial to understand how your target market use the internet, including their digital marketing tools of choice.

Hone your brand voice and consider how it will connect with your target audience.

Identify your marketing goals and purposes to ensure that your budget is spent wisely on the right tools for your target audience, leaving room to test, evaluate and adapt your approach over time.

Image credit: medium.com

With focused planning, monitored implementation and the right marketing strategies it is possible to harness all of the brilliant opportunities that digital marketing brings.

Let’s take a look at the best online marketing strategies to boost bookings.

Social Media

Social media is one of the fastest growing digital marketing tools for the travel and leisure industry.

Social platforms provide a rich variety of exciting and fresh ways to reach your target audience and build a better understanding of your brand.

According to Khoros.com 37% of the world’s population, that is 2.8 billion people, use social media.

However, the first step is to understanding how to gain a ROI is to understand the differing potential that each social media platform holds.

The five biggest social media platforms, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and Snapchat each attract a different audience and offer varying marketing capabilities.

Attempting to target all of the biggest platforms is a waste of resources, instead, identify the platforms that are favoured by your target market and assess which of those offer the best marketing tools for your brand.

Sproutsocial.com have an excellent overview of the differing ways that the global market use each of the top social media platforms:

Instagram

Facebook

Twitter

SnapChat

Pinterest

Image credit: sproutsocial.com

As these statistics and more show, from gender to age, income and interests, the social media platform that you choose to use is integral to your success in connecting with your target market.

Facebook retains the largest spread of users and an exhaustive range of marketing tools for businesses, although Pinterest, Instagram and Snapchat offer highly competitive features as well as large market shares for their niche users.

Once you have the right platforms secured, the main areas of focus are creating high-quality, targeted content that:

• builds a clear and enticing picture of your brand
• attracts and connects with your target market on an emotional level
• sets you apart as an industry leader/ authority
• gives your target market a reason to keep coming back to your page long-term by using a mixture of inspirational, informative and entertaining content
• draws your target market on to your website to eventually make those bookings (or for some platforms the bookings can be made directly on the platform itself).

Secondly, actively find and engage with your target audience using likes, follows, hashtags, exciting competitions centred around your customer base (see example below), exclusive offers, personalised comments and more.

Image credit: Shortstack.com

The next tier of social media use for businesses is to use paid advertising. The market leader by huge strides when it comes to paid social media advertising is Facebook.

According to Hootsuite.com Facebook is the third most visited website in the world.⁴  With the largest spread of users and biggest chunk of the social media market, Facebook is the obvious place to start for paid social media marketing.

Let’s take a look at how to use Facebook ads to increase your bookings.

Facebook Ads

Facebook ads enable anyone to turn Facebook into a powerful marketing tool at what appears is a click of a button.

Image credit: blog.hootsuite.com

Yet in reality, to obtain effective ROI, your Facebook ads need to be as carefully targeted and well-planned as any other ad campaign.

A point of growing realisation to many. Facebook ads require a budget, solid strategy and marketing expertise.

Sending Facebook ads across the globe with the potential to reach millions feels great, until your insights show that a wide reach does not translate into more website traffic or bookings.

To increase your bookings with Facebook ads you will need to first allocate a realistic budget with a planned daily spend that can deliver results.

Secondly, you will need to harness a range of tools to identify and reach your target market, using criteria such as location, interests, previous website visits and more to locate potential buyers.

Next you will need to create, launch, evaluate and re-test a range of targeted ads to find the ones that work best.

Additionally, there are a range of marketing tools on Facebook that you can use in conjunction with Facebook ads.

For example, you can speed up the customer journey with direct booking from Facebook your Facebook page as demonstrated below by Fareharbour.com:

Image credit: Fareharbour.com

Meanwhile, paid Instagram marketing comes as a free add on to your Facebook ad campaigns.

Instagram is a highly visual and aspirational lifestyle social media platform that is a perfect fit for the travel and leisure industry. Owned by Facebook, Instagram is another great marketing tool that you will want to exploit.

Instagram and Facebook are the two biggest players when it comes to paid social, providing a wealth of marketing opportunities at a low cost that you won’t want to miss.

Video Marketing

For the travel and leisure industry video marketing remains a relatively untapped area of online marketing that it is well worth exploring.

With video marketing rapidly growing in use, it is a digital marketing tool that you won’t want to ignore.

According to Smartinsights.com 83% of marketers believe that video is growing in importance. 53% of consumers and 66% of millennials, engage with a brand after viewing a video on social media. ⁵

Thus, any solid marketing strategy should make use of the rich potential that video creates, particularly when used in conjunction with social media.

Like Instagram, YouTube is a highly visual, aspirational and informative lifestyle medium that is perfectly suited to the travel and leisure industry.

From ad campaigns to guided tours, testimonials, snapshots, tutorials and more, video marketing provides an ideal space to bring to life a multi-sensory experience that connects with your target audience on every level – crucial factors for any travel or leisure brand.

When creating your video marketing strategy it is essential to build in the following elements:

• Choose the right the type of targeted ads for your purpose.

There are a wealth of different types of video ads available so review the best match for each ad campaign according to your campaign goals.

YouTube enables you to target things like location, interests, lifestyle and more to launch targeted ads that reach your target market specifically. Don’t forget too, to take advantage of the opportunity to optimise your videos for SEO.

• High-quality content

Use a clear brand message that is easy for your audience to understand and a brand story connects with them on an emotional level. F

or example, take a look at Artifact Uprising’s brilliant use of a brand story for their custom photo gifts ad campaign.

• Embed persuasive call to actions

At the beginning of your videos and make use of the YouTube’ Join Now button to capture your target audience quickly.

• Face of your brand.

Understand who will be the face of your brand. You may even decide to use a influencer to really capture your audience’s attention.

Google Ads and SEO

Google Ads (PPC) and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) are the last, and arguably most important, pieces of your online marketing toolkit.

SEO is an extensive digital marketing strategy with many elements that all hold enormous potential to significantly boost your potential to be found online by your target market.

Google Ads too, provide an unmissable opportunity to build a more profitable online presence.

Using techniques such as keyword optimisation, targeted Google Ads, Google Business, reviews, Google Analytics and more it is possible to stand out in the sea of competition that search listings create.

With a mobile-ready website and structured use of well-planned email marketing to ensure that your customers and website visitors remain with your brand long-term, you have a concrete set of marketing strategies that are specifically suited to the travel and leisure industry and guaranteed to increase your bookings.

As we begin to fully uncover the potential that digital marketing brings for travel and leisure companies to boost their bookings and build their brand, it is increasingly clear that a ROI requires a significant amount of time and expertise.

 

At Apollo , we deliver a complete range of digital marketing services to increase your bookings. Working solely for the travel and leisure industry, we have a deep knowledge of how to utilise online marketing for travel and leisure brands.

Whether you need social media marketing support, video marketing, SEO, online advertising or something else, give us a call on: 01730 239858 or contact us to have a chat about how we can help you.

Our guide to Facebook advertising

About us

Contact us

 

Sources:

¹ https://www.condorferries.co.uk/online-travel-booking-statistics

² https://www.condorferries.co.uk/online-travel-booking-statistics

³ https://khoros.com/resources/social-media-demographics-guide

⁴ https://blog.hootsuite.com/facebook-statistics/

⁵   https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-platforms/video-marketing/video-marketing-statistics-to-know/

 

Search Engine Marketing (typically abbreviated to SEM) is the process of gaining website traffic by purchasing ads on search engines.

Previously the term encompassed SEO and paid search activities but more recently there is a key distinction between the two areas.

The Difference Between SEM and SEO

There are two major categories within search marketing:

• SEM uses PAID strategies to appear in search
• SEO uses ORGANIC strategies to appear in search

SEO involves optimising your website in various ways with the aim of boosting free/organic traffic from search engines.

An optimised site is more quickly understood by Search Engine crawlers and has keywords and content relevant to the user, thereby increasing its chances of ranking higher.

SEM is a much faster process, in terms of choosing keywords that you want to be found for and paying money to appear on the page.

Sounds good?

The only catch is that the most popular search terms will come with the highest price tag.

‘Paid search’ or ‘paid listings’ pretty much means paying to have your website show up at the top or side of the page when someone searches for a specific term in Google.

Some of the most common terms used in reference to SEM activities include:

• Paid search ads
• PPC (pay-per-click)
• CPC (cost-per-click)
• CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions)

The majority of search ads are sold on a PPC or CPC basis, with very few advertising options being sold on a CPM basis.

You can get PPC ads on the major search marketing platforms:

• Google Adwords
• Bing Ads
• Yahoo Search Ads

Each platform offers its own guides to use and CPC prices vary (and change regularly).

There are several types of ads you can create depending on your budget, goals, audience, etc.

These include:

• AdWords (Google’s online PPC) and Bing (Microsoft’s online PPC)
• Display Ads – Banners at the top, side or footer of search results
• Re-targeting Ads – Which are ads displayed on other websites based on a user’s recent searches
• Call Tracking – Ads targeted at those who have called a specific number, generally displayed on a search ad. This is mostly relevant to mobile searches.

Google is responsible for just under 90% of all internet searches and gets an estimated two trillion searches per day.

Over 50% of which is coming from mobile devices.

Have you ever looked up a holiday, trip or adventure on the miserable commute to work? Well, so has everyone else!

Why is SEM Important for Travel Companies?

The primary reason is that ads appear first in search engine results.

Having paid search ads gives you a good chance of being at the top of the search engine results page (SERPs) as long as your keyword bid and quality score are both high enough.

If you’ve got an online presence and/or have done any work around SEO, you’ll know that if you’re not on the first page of search results, the chances of anyone clicking through to your page are virtually zero.

In fact, any lower than position five or six and the click-through rate drops below five percent.

Valuable Traffic

Regardless of your industry, product or service, SEM traffic is considered the most valuable source of traffic because it is targeted.

Users that arrive at your page via SEM haven’t got there by mistake, they were searching for what you’re selling (as long as you’re not bidding on irrelevant words and phrases – It’s important to check there isn’t wastage).

SEM allows you to create a custom audience refined by specific demographics – for example gender, age, location and hundreds more.

Because the traffic is targeted, the chances of these users converting once they get to your site is significantly higher.

If visitors have clicked on your web page from search results when Googling a destination, or clicking on an ad for one of your excursions, they are more likely to undertake a required action – whether that’s booking a trip, signing up for your deals or calling your team.

Worthwhile Investment

You’ve heard the phrase “You have to spend money to make money”.

This rings true for SEM.

Businesses make an average of £2 in revenue for every £1 they spend on AdWords.

Anyone who has ever run a marketing campaign will know that whilst possible, this level of return is not a given, and you need to know what you’re doing to achieve these results.

Equally, the site/content that the users reach at the end of the ad journey needs to be high quality and relevant.

SEM will offer your business the potential to make more money from your marketing campaigns and amplify your efforts, but won’t guarantee sales.

However, it is also a great way to start conversations. 52% of online shoppers who interact with PPC Ads follow their browsing with a call to the company whose advert was displayed.

The good news is that it won’t break the bank and needn’t cost you the world. It doesn’t take much to advertise on search engines as there is no minimum amount.

As little as £5 will get you up and running with ads if you’re on a tight budget.

Exposure and Sales

Google display campaigns reach 78% of global internet users.

This level of outreach and audience penetration has the ability to increase sign ups and sales exponentially.

The travel market is relatively saturated, with more independent travel sites springing up every day and search comparisons bringing others to the foreground.

SEM is a great way to cut through the noise and at the very least get your name heard.

According to Google, search ads can increase brand awareness:

Even if your ad doesn’t get clicked on, your brand will still be visible on the top of the fold and users will likely still read and later recognise the brand name or URL.

When setting up your SEM campaign, it’s important to decide what the desired outcome is – whether it’s to boost sales on a particular trip or just to gain brand recognition and awareness.

Money-making will typically be the primary focus of marketing campaigns but other types of conversions shouldn’t be ignored.

Website subscriptions, newsletter signups or even just regular readers are all valuable and will likely lead to a sale further down the marketing funnel and timeline.

Footfall

Its’ not just about getting your travel brand out there on a national scale though.

If you’ve got a physical store then SEM can be the perfect support mechanism.

Localised SEM ads give businesses a great head start in terms of generating actual footfall to local stores.

Local marketing connects regional businesses with the surrounding community by serving up relevant ads when individuals type in things like ‘tour operator near me’ or ‘best travel agency in Town X’.

Google released an advertising package called Local 3-Pack gives local ads the top three positions in search results for location-based search terms like those mentioned earlier.

Three quarters of those who find local business information online will follow up with a physical store visit within 24 to 48 hours.

SEM vs. SEO

SEO is a long-game marketing strategy and can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months to start seeing the results of your efforts.

The results generated by SEM are almost immediate and also tend to fluctuate less than other SEO tactics, meaning consistent traffic until your ads are removed.

SEM search placements include an ‘Ad’ designation. SEO does not.

Once you’ve identified your goals and keywords to target, ads only take a few minutes to create.

Once they’ve gone through the required approval process, they appear in the SERPs within one day and traffic will start rolling in soon after.

There are a wide range of differences in the two mediums:

The other issue with using only SEO is that you have no way of knowing what other competitors are doing.

So you can do all the optimisation you want, but if they’re making valuable changes, they might still come in above you on search rankings.

SEM delivers insights into your competitors by allowing you to check your competition’s ads and comparing their targeted keywords with your own.

Using this, you can tweak your own efforts and increase the effectiveness of your marketing campaign. If executed effectively, you could actually rank higher than your competitors for the same terms.

The abundance of competitive analysis tools can help you track the use and movement of keywords and then use this analysis and insight to improve your wider marketing campaigns and drive even more traffic.

Top Tips for Your SEM Campaigns

Explosion in mobile search

Just like you will need a mobile-responsive website to make sure people can browse and book trips and tours on the go, consider what keywords and targeting criteria you are bidding on.

Nearly 80% of people prefer to self-serve to get the information that they need in terms of travel.

According to Google Consumer Insights 2018, 47% of users in the UK, USA and Australia/NZ are comfortable researching, booking and planning their entire trip on a mobile device. This is not just for hotels and flights either.

Travelers frequently use their mobile devices to research activities or attractions, and locate nearby areas of interest including shopping destinations and restaurants.

Do your research and make the most of Google’s Keyword Tool

In the travel sphere, long-tail keywords (three or more search words) are less competitive to rank for and also move up higher in search rankings.

Almost 60% of searches are long-tail keywords, so bear this in mind when bidding on keywords and phrases. If you’ve got a sale going on, use SEM to get the word out.

Recent research showed that more than 60% of U.S. travellers would consider an impulse trip based on a good hotel or flight deal.

Analyse and refine

On-going maintenance and optimistion is a key part of running SEM campaigns.

From the second your ads are launched the potential to continually boost clicks and sales is very real. SEM campaigns should be constantly re-visited and optimised for long-term results.

By analysing the data and results from your PPC search campaigns, you’ll notice patterns in search terms, conversions, which ads received the most clicks, and the you can run A/B testing on what type of ad works best with your target travel audience.

Unlike in times gone by, where you paid thousands of pounds to print an advert in a magazine or on a billboard in the city, SEM gives you the flexibility to chop and change your ad as many times as you like.

Apply your findings to your wider marketing techniques

Understanding location and industry keywords provides unique insight about what your customer is looking for and this knowledge can help inform your other marketing channels.

By analysing traffic data, you can discover users’ search intent.

What Should You be Aiming For?

Whether you’re doing PPC for the first time or you’ve been running ads for a while, it can be hard to know whether your results are matching up to your competitors and the wider industry.

So what numbers should you be looking to ensure you’re on par with other travel agencies and operators?

Below are some benchmark averages, using data harvested from across the web in 2018.

	Travel industry	Across all industries
Average click-through-rate	4.68%	3.17%
Average cost-per-click	$1.53	$2.69
Average conversion rate	3.55%	3.75%
Average cost-per-action	$44.73	$48.96

It’s reassuring to see that the click through rate is higher an cost per click lower for travel than most other industries, most likely because people searching for a particular trip or tour have a genuine intent related to that term or keyword.

To find out more about the click through and conversion rates and bidding averages, take a look at the Google Adwords Industry Benchmarks report here.

As you can see, SEM can play a major part in the success of any website, and thus any business and its sales. However, it shouldn’t become a siloed marketing technique – creating good content with quality keywords, social media outreach and interaction and a great user experience online are equally important.

Although the relevancy of displayed we sites and ads makes SEM traffic more valuable than other sources, SEM should be used as a complimentary technique but not a fix-it solution.

Generally speaking, organic search results are more trusted than paid ads and consumers still want great deals, differentiation and a compelling narrative.

At least 39% of traffic to travel websites comes from organic Google searches, so always make sure you’re using a mix of SEO and SEM and you can’t go too far wrong!

Travel businesses are one of the few service-based sectors which have been disrupted by the rise of the internet and new media platforms such as social media.

The process of travel planning and booking a holiday has become primarily internet driven, as more and more customers use the web to research destinations, hotels, resorts, and even book packages.

Customers seek out travel businesses with good reviews over the ones with no reviews at all or with poor customer feedback.

According to several studies, 70% of the customers look at up to 20 reviews in their holiday planning process, while 33% will change their plans or choice based on reviews and almost 53% won’t book a hotel without any reviews.

These stats show us how important online reputation is to a modern-day travel business as the perception of a travel brand directly affects its sales and profits.

Online Reputation management is a learn-able skill and managing your travel businesses’ reputation will help you in a number of ways

Improve Trust and Credibility

Almost 84% of consumers today don’t trust advertising and other forms of paid marketing.

User generated reviews, on the other hand, are considered genuine and trustworthy by consumers.

TripAdvisor has revolutionised the whole process of reviewing a travel-based business, and most people visit this website multiple times during their holiday research process to learn more about hotels, resorts, and other travel businesses.

Your business doesn’t even need to be listed on TripAdvisor by you, as your customers can list it and then post a review.

But it’s not just Trip Advisor. There are range of potential review sites for disgruntled customers to choose from:

 

A few bad reviews on such platforms which are used by millions of users is enough to damage your reputation and may seriously affect your business.

While excellent and positive reviews will help you gain the trust and credibility of your future customers and will increase your revenue and profit.

Many travel businesses wrongly assume that they don’t have any option if a person has left them a bad review. You must reply to such reviews and address the issues raised by unsatisfied customers.

A positive reply to a negative review can have more impact than a positive review would.

Your reply will have a positive impact and will show to potential customers that you care about your reputation.

It may also change the opinion of the user who has left the bad review as negative reviews are often a result of minor issues which are often blown out of proportion by customers, looking for a platform to air grievances.

Often they just want to be listened to.

Have a read of ‘Your Business Needs More Negative Reviews. Here’s Why‘ by Neil Patel

Attract New Customers

Managing your online reputation will help you in attracting new customers as users are naturally attracted to businesses with a positive image on the internet.

Reputation management entails dealing with bad reviews and focuses on positive information about a business.

Gain valuable insights

Monitoring your brand’s online reputation will lead you to better insights and will give you an idea of how consumers and competitors perceive your brand.

You can use the insights gained to create an effective marketing strategy after considering all the information gained through the process.

Tips for managing your online reputation

Monitoring

Monitoring your online reputation is the first step of any good reputation management strategy as you can’t improve what you can’t measure.

Often businesses will need to do an in-depth audit of all the information online about their businesses and then set up automatic alerts to monitor each time their brand is mentioned on the internet.

You can easily set up Google Alerts for your brand or use automatic monitoring tools such as Mention or Cision to track each time your brand is mentioned over the Internet.

There are also numerous tools available for monitoring mention of your brand on social media sites and some social media tools such as Hootsuite has this feature inbuilt within them.

Claim your listings

As mentioned above, anyone can list your travel business on travel comparison sites, review sites, and social media platforms.

It’s a good idea to claim these listings as your own as it will allow you to control the process and reply to reviews.

Some sites such as Facebook have made the process of claiming a listing easier, but with others, you may have to wait for days or even weeks.

Respond to Reviews

The only thing worse than a bad review is not responding to it.

A lack of response shows to readers that you don’t care about the complaints of your customers.

It also portrays you as insensitive and careless about your online reputation. So, always respond to bad reviews and try to address the issues raised by your customers.

Don’t act defensively

Many travel businesses make the mistake of defending themselves or their employees for unsatisfactory service.

This further harm their image in the eyes of potential customers who often read responses to bad reviews carefully while making a purchase decision.

Defend your actions only if it’s crystal clear that the customer is wrongly accusing you of something which you didn’t do.

Be quick

You need to reply to any bad review promptly as a slow response may further complicate the issue and may lead to bad publicity.

If the review requires a detailed response or some time to sort out the issue, then acknowledge the review and provide a timeframe for the complete answer.

Create Valuable Content

Content has become an integral part of modern online marketing, and most consumers make their purchase decisions based on valuable content created by the seller.

This is especially true for travel-based businesses as travel businesses are primarily selling experiences, and most travel businesses use content to provide a glimpse of these experiences to potential customers.

Rich and valuable content, also called Evergreen Content, can help you stand out from the competition and will also enhance your reputation in the eyes of your customers.

Make sure that you include images and videos in your content marketing strategy as these are the most appealing form of content for potential travellers.

There is no one size fits all approach when it comes to content creation as each business is inherently different and needs a custom content strategy to succeed.

Ideally, you must develop content which entertains and educates the potential customers at the same time and arouses a desire in them for your services.

You can test several content styles, formats, media channels and make a detailed plan to promote your content after studying the data.

With some testing and tweaking, you will be able to find the right combination of elements.

Read more about ‘The True Power of Evergreen Content – A Case Study‘ from Moz

Have a social media strategy in place

Social media is often the first place where customers look for travel inspiration, and several studies suggest that almost 87% of millennials use Facebook for travel inspiration.

The same study suggests that 97% will post on social media while travelling.

These stats show the importance of social media marketing for travel businesses. No travel business can afford not to have a social media presence, and this is also important from the point of reputation management.

It’s a well-known fact that most people post about bad experiences with a travel brand on their social media profiles and often the effect is compounded due to the viral nature of social media.

A single bad review will be instantly seen in the news feeds of all the people who are associated with the unhappy customer.

Tips mentioned above for managing bad reviews on review sites such as TripAdvisor can also be applied on social media. It’s important to promptly address a bad review on social media and thank the customers who’ve left you a positive review.

This will show others that you care about your reputation and are actively monitoring each time someone mentions you on social networking sites.

Social media is also a prime example of word of mouth marketing as people tend to trust recommendations and reviews from their friends and acquaintances.

This fact can be used to your advantage as a single positive review will help you in enhancing your reputation in front of hundreds of potential customers.

Conclusion

We hope that you have now realised the importance of managing your online reputation.

Perhaps we can never overestimate the importance of reputation management in today’s digital world where a single Facebook post or tweet can destroy a brand’s reputation.

By following the tips mentioned above, you can monitor your online reputation and increase your sales.

You may also contact us for help with reputation management, as we have helped hundreds of travel businesses in the past to create a positive digital identity.