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How To Use Content Marketing To Grow Your Travel Business
- lottie89joynes
- Oct 14, 2022
- 5 min read
Updated: Nov 16, 2022
What is content marketing and why is it important?
Content marketing is a form of inbound marketing which offers potential and existing customers value via a piece of online content (e.g a blog, vlog or podcast). It does not explicitly promote the brand or product, but is designed to stimulate interest and eventually acquire custom.
Many internet users, searching for holidays, are fed up with being bombarded by ads, and increasingly use search engines to look for recommendations. They want holiday providers to consider their wants and needs. If your content can feature in their search results, you are onto a winner!
So What makes Good Content?
The three main aims of any piece of content are to: Attract new customers, Engage their interest and Acquire their custom. Hubspot (2022) recommends that content should aim to build a relationship with your customers, showing how your product or service can solve their problems. By creating a sense of community around your brand, you can also increase customer loyalty and secure repeat bookers.
What type of content should I create?
It is vital you research your audience BEFORE you start to make your content. Create your buyer personas. Are you targeting young backpackers who search for most of their information via video on TikTok and recommendations on Instagram? Or are you targeting wealthy older travellers who prefer long form blogs, clear infographics and demand expertise from their provider? Once you know who your audience are and where they consume their information, you can design your content to suit them.
Check out these three great ways to create good content for your travel business!
Blogging
Creating and regularly updating a blog on your travel website is one of the best ways to attract new customers. Mailchimp suggests that travel businesses with blogs receive 67% more leads than companies which don't. Research what key words and questions your target audience are searching for, and write blogs that incorporate those phrases.
Let's take a look at Green World Adventure’s blog. They are a company which offers family adventure holidays in Croatia. Their target audience are British young families looking for a fun way to spend their breaks.
What's great about their blog? Green World Adventures have clearly defined their buyer personas and researched what questions they might be searching in relation to their family holiday. They demonstrate how their holidays and their local expertise and knowledge can be part of the solutions to those problems. Most importantly they offer value to the customer and stimulate interest in their company and what it offers.
In comparison, we have Macs Adventure, a company offering all inclusive adventure holidays with a broad target audience.
What Could Improve Here?
The blog is clearly presented with engaging images. It is also regularly updated, which is really important to help the search engine crawlers to find your site. However, the blog does not solve the problems of its potential or current customers. The title 'Travel is Back' does not drive people effectively to the webpage. Instead, a better title would be 'How to travel post Covid' or 'Where to travel post Covid'.
Highlights of an area are good topics for travel blogs. BUT think about what questions your potential readers are asking to find out about those highlights. Create a list o key words and phrases and design your highlights blog around them. E.g 'What are the top 5 Almalfi Coast Experiences?'
Infographics
The second awesome piece of content that is super good for customers at the consideration stage of their buyer journey, are infographics. After their initial research, buyers will have a short list of holiday options which they will compare. By displaying key information about your holiday in an easy ‘at a glance’ way, you can save them time trawling through your website to find information such as prices, length of trip, and difficulty of any included activities.
Much Better Adventures is a company that offers sustainable, all inclusive adventure holidays worldwide. Their target audience is busy young professionals, who want adventure but don’t have the time to organise it themselves. They use infographics to quickly describe each of their holiday offers. Each of their holidays is introduced with an infographic.
What's great about it?
Engaging trip description
Concise set of information
Uncluttered layout
Clear images
Maintains a clear style
In comparison here is a less successful infographic:
What's bad about it?
Cluttered layout
Images not clear or subscribing to one style
Too much text
Map too large
Videos and Vlogs
Finally, one of the best ways you can showcase your awesome travel products is to create videos that inspire, and engage customers with your brand or travel product. Whether these are videos showcasing the incredible things they will see on their trip with you, or a ‘how to get a Schengen visa’ explanation video, they are the perfect way to capture an audience.
Take care that your video does not become an advertisement. Remember, it should always serve the consumer, offering them value and inspiring them to investigate your brand further.
Exodus is a world renowned travel company. Their target audience is wealthy middle aged and older travellers looking for all inclusive, well planned trips, led by experts. They have introduced a new product ‘Exodus expeditions’ - Unique trips led by industry experts. Their video is a great example of successful video content marketing.
Lets take a look!
What's great about it?
Beautiful and inspiring filmography engages the viewer.
Introduction to industry experts demonstrates the company’s competency.
Gives clear reasons why you should choose this company.
Internationally renowned partners showcased, demonstrates credibility.
Educates about the wealth of products they offer and inspires you to research more.
In comparison, lets take a look at Much Better Adventure's promotional video:
What could be better?
Beautiful and inspiring filmography. Good use of clips.
BUT Not clear that these are adventures you can have with this company.
Poor audio quality
No call to Action directing me to their product
The words inspire the viewer to go on an adventure, but not necessarily with this company.
Summary
These are just a few of the many types of content you could consider. Podcasts, Ebooks, Newsletters are amongst many others.
Remember, before you create any content:
Set your goals: what do you want to achieve and how will you measure it?
Define your audience-who are you trying to attract, engage and delight and where do they consume content?
To be successful content has to be unique, distinguish you from the crowd and most importantly give VALUE to your customers!
View this as a Vlog: https://youtu.be/75E3wR5KbDo
References
Baker. K for HubSpot (2022) ‘Content Markeitng in 2022’ https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/content-marketing?tstamp=38760ae7bf7f1a1d0233c5b26eb15012452b146b [accessed 12.10. 2022]
Expedia (2022) Out Travel The System Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/out-travel-the-system/id1477909314 [Accessd 12.10 2022]
Green World Holidays (2022) ‘Blog’ https://www.greenworldholidays.com/blog/ [Accessed 12.10.2022]
Mac’s Adventure (2022) ‘The Macs Adventure Blog’ https://www.macsadventure.com/walking-holidays/ [Accessed 13.10.2022]
MailChimp (2022) ‘Content Marketing’ https://mailchimp.com/en-gb/marketing-glossary/content-marketing/ [Accessed 12.10.2022]
Holmes Kirsty (2022) https://www.muchbetteradventures.com/magazine/features/ [Accessed 12.10.2022]
Much Better Adventures (2022) ‘Climb Mont Blanc’ https://www.muchbetteradventures.com/products/10527-adventures-climb-mont-blanc-4810m/ [Accessed 12.10.2022]
Todorov Georgi (2022) ‘Guide: How to use Podcasting in your content marketing campaign’ https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2020/06/25/how-to-use-podcasting-in-your-content-marketing-campaign/ [Accessed 12.10.2022]
Wild Frontiers Travel (2022) ‘Albania Walking Tours’ https://www.wildfrontierstravel.com/en_CA/destination/albania/group-tours/walking-in-northern-albania-into-the-accursed-mountains/NALB [Accessed 12.10.2022]
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