With all the information we could possibly ever need at our fingertips, being able to successfully market your brand and cut through a saturated online space is critical to driving digital traffic. To help teach those skills to the travel industry, the United States Tour Operators Association (USTOA) recently hosted a digital marketing webinar, highlighting key insights about the evolving approach to online advertising. Read on to discover four marketing trends advisors and organizations can use to leverage their brands.
Organic Socials Are the New SEO
As the clever brains behind mass marketing strategies began to crack the algorithm code, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was the newest buzzword on the block. Knowing how to tag your content, when to post and the backend tricks that get your website to rank higher on Google was the way to drive online traffic. However, social platforms are beginning to replace traditional search engines, with digital consumers instead using apps like Instagram, Facebook or TikTok for research purposes. Brands may have noticed a steady decline in their website traffic, and this could potentially be a reason why.
Pivoting away from those standard marketing practices, organic socials are one way advisors and other travel pros can utilize their online presence. Organic social media refers to the free, non-paid content shared voluntarily by other users, and it works because as more audiences interact with your content, the more likely it is to appear at the top of a relevant search on the platform.
For a hypothetical example, think about an advisor who posted a video on TikTok about the top 10 things visitors have to do when in Cancun, Mexico. Some of the advisor’s followers reposted the video, and now that content is on their audience’s feed. The likes, comments and shares pour in, and it goes viral. The goal is that when a random user hops onto TikTok and types into the search bar “things to do in Cancun,” your video is one of the first to show up.
The advisor never paid for their followers to interact or repost their content; it was simply appealing enough to them that they did it for free. Admittedly, getting content shared organically is one of the hardest marketing strategies because it requires the creator to generate quality posts that followers want to interact with. On the flip side, due to the evolution of SEO to social media platforms, it may be an investment to consider making.
Reaping the Benefits of Creative Targeting
Hand in hand with social media, tailoring online content, or, in other words, creative targeting, is a key way to ensure that advisors’ posts are reaching and are appealing to the correct audience. As noted in a USTOA webinar presentation, creatives are driving roughly 75% of social advertising performance, meaning that brands can monetarily reap the benefits of online content.
Creative targeting should not be confused with traditional targeting. Traditional methods rely on audience demographics such as age, location or gender, while creative targeting emphasizes the ad creative itself in attracting the right audience. For instance, that same USTOA presentation shared that brochure-style graphics do well with audiences over the age of 65, while vertical videos resonate better with the 35-50 age range.
Find social media content inspiration with VAX's Travel Inspo Tool Kit
By using this broad targeting approach coupled with different types of creatives for varying groups, advisors and industry brands can more closely align their content to the audience and the algorithm. This can help boost advisors’ content to appear more organically in front of digital users, ultimately encouraging higher conversion rates.
Short-Form Video Content Is King
With the prominent use of social media platforms for researching, a new approach to creating content is surpassing all of the rest: short-form videos. Hannah Bennett, head of travel at TikTok, spoke at the USTOA webinar, emphasizing that short-form videos are growing in popularity because the information is presented in bite-sized pieces and in an entertaining manner.
These implications are great for travel advisors because short-form videos allow them to add a visual component to their work. Since consumers are using apps like TikTok for travel inspiration and research, video posts allow them to see the destination for themselves, discover new activities and curate personalized itineraries based on other people’s recommendations. As an expert in the space, advisors have the unique advantage of being able to create content that aligns with what users are looking for, ideally helping to turn those consumers into loyal customers.
It's no different than when we scour online shopping reviews before purchasing a product. We don’t know the people who are posting them, but there’s an inherent sense of trust generated simply because the product has real feedback and images associated with it. Digital users are going to trust advisors who show the good, the bad and the ugly about a trip, especially if they do it in an entertaining manner.
Leveraging Industry Podcasts
It may feel like the resurgence of podcasts came and went, but digital consumers are still engaging with this type of multimedia. This isn’t necessarily a call to start your own industry podcast, but appearing on a handful of episodes can help to cut through the clutter. Think about it: If an advisor joins a podcast that already has an audience with similar demographics or interests as their own, it streamlines the marketing process by targeting the relevant audience more directly.
Guest episodes are not only a great way to boost traffic for that featured advisor, but these appearances also display them as a thought leader and industry expert, helping to build a strong reputation for the future. Additionally, podcasts have been shown to engage audiences for longer, meaning that advisors have more of an opportunity to reach prospective clients and make a complete “sales pitch” before getting tuned out.
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