Marketing for travel agency

9 years ago

This would be a bit of a hard one in some respects. Targeting B2B for a website is kinda difficult in terms of SEO. I would be looking at reaching out with LinkedIn and the current mailing and e-mail list the agency has to "Introduce" the new product.

Originally Posted by John9586

Hello,
some travel agency asked me for help with online marketing, but I am not sure if I can help them.
They are starting online booking system but just for their island, so they are competing with local travel agents and also with agoda and booking.com
The advantage against Agoda is they offer not only hotels and cars, but everything, tours, events, etc. and the prices are not higher than Agoda. The customers get also support per phone and in person.
It is a booking system for B2B and later also B2C.
I am not sure how to help them, SEO is difficult, there are hundreds of optimized websites for hotel + the place, travel agent + the place, etc., also for PPC there is a lot of competition, and content also doesnt help, there are thousands of websites with photos and articles about their place.
Do you have some ideas how to make their website visible? Some keywords for B2B travel agencies, not interesting for consumers? Or maybe direct mail?
Thanks

Thanks

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John9586

9 years ago

Thank you, I mean some keywords and headlines for PPC not SEO, not interesting for consumers, so they wouldnt click on it, like "booking system for travel agencies". There would be only few clicks per month, but within 1 or 2 years they could get some new agencies, some of them bringing them maybe tens of thousands USD recurring revenues.

Thanks

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SalesGod

9 years ago

They just need to spend the money and get in the game. tell them if they want to play in such a competitive industry and want to market online theirs not going to be any cheap way to do it. spend the big money or remain in the same position as you are now. thats what id tell this company.

Thanks

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ewenmack

9 years ago

Originally Posted by John9586

Do you have some ideas how to make their website visible? Some keywords for B2B travel agencies, not interesting for consumers? Or maybe direct mail?
Thanks

First must is mine existing customer data.

This will throw out repeat buyers,
biggest spenders, what locations they like,
time of year they like, their location, group travel or solo travel,
adventure seekers, cruise and entertainment packages and on and on.

Then they can go back to past customers and make custom offers
that are similar to past buying behaviour.

Second step is to go to the cold market and find those which
have the same buying habits as the existing customers.

You don't do it with Facebook.

I don't give out publicly on how this is done.
And no I don't make any money out of it
by contacting me.

If you don't follow these steps, you are playing the game of expensive luck.

Best,
Doctor E. Vile

[ 1 ] Thanks
1 reply

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John9586

9 years ago

They can take care of their existing customers and upsell them, they dont need me for this.
They want to get new customers and more visitors to their website and booking system. The problem is they cannot tell me who their ideal customer is, so I could find similar customers for them overseas, because they never did marketing really, it was growing slowly during the last 20 years and now they have many B2B customers with recurring revenue.
So they think they have a good business and good profits, but they have no idea about marketing and how to get new customers.

Thanks
2 replies

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Doug McIsaac 9 years ago

If I was working with them I would tell them to focus on a niche. They can be the go to experts for one type of traveler. I like one type of traveler better than for one location because a traveler can go on multiple trips to multiple locations.

Review their customer data with the, Look at where they make their highest margins. Where they do the most business, what type of traveler spends the most with them etc..

Then build your buyer profile(s) based on that data tied to a niche and build your marketing around it.

Doug
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bizgrower

9 years ago

Originally Posted by John9586

They can take care of their existing customers and upsell them, they dont need me for this.
They want to get new customers and more visitors to their website and booking system. The problem is they cannot tell me who their ideal customer is, so I could find similar customers for them overseas, because they never did marketing really, it was growing slowly during the last 20 years and now they have many B2B customers with recurring revenue.
So they think they have a good business and good profits, but they have no idea about marketing and how to get new customers.

Will they let you mine the data from their b2b customers so you can create the ideal customer profile?
Also, so you can repeat the processes they used to get these customers? Who are the contact people
with these customers? If it's Nancy in Human Resources who arranged an executive retreat, for example, then you find professional associations Nancy belongs to and target them.

I manage a small hotel. The majority of our business is vacationers. We do get some business travelers and I have noticed that small to medium size corporations do use the Online Travel Agencies, such as Expedia.com, to arrange travel. These days, it seems that they give the task of arranging travel to an office manager or administrative assistant. Larger corps perhaps have an in house travel department. Probably, a lot of these people belong to professional associations or social media groups and Google + circles...

So, on Facebook and LinkedIn, etc., I would target groups or professional associations of likely in house "travel arrangers" and travel agencies. If the client does not have them already, create profiles on FB and LinkedIn, and interact with the relevant groups and advertise to those groups.

LinkedIn, and probably FB (I'm just not a Facebooker), have a ton of different groups in the travel and hospitality category. And about every type of group imaginable, some who might, surprisingly, be pertinent to your situation. Maybe there is a fairly unique attraction on the island, or an awesome executive retreat, or close proximity to a business hub you can use, or they can create, that will help you and the client target the right people or groups.

Thanks
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John9586

9 years ago

I think I would try Facebook, because the PPC is not very expensive there yet and its also good for sharing photos about interesting places with their friends, because the travel agency wants to make more also for consumers later. There are not many business people comming to the island.

Thanks
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bizgrower

9 years ago

Originally Posted by John9586

I think I would try Facebook, because the PPC is not very expensive there yet and its also good for sharing photos about interesting places with their friends, because the travel agency wants to make more also for consumers later. There are not many business people comming to the island.

But they want to develop b2b as well so they should at least network for free on LinkedIn.
You or they should look at all the related groups.

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Oziboomer

9 years ago

Hi John,

I have a client who works in this niche and it isn't so much about trying to get new business to notice your website or offering as it is about building on the existing relationships and focussing on building new relationships with businesses who will book and continue to book with your client.

One of the techniques...

...and it may be out of your client's budget

...is to take management and staff from selected agencies that do serve your client's ideal customer base to the island and give them the "full experience" that their customer's will experience when they sell them packages that your client offers.

You can facilitate the various junkets and set up a reward system for competing agents to provide them with regular rewards for delivering results.

When this is done right you don't have to discount the packages and you are going to build a big group of promoters that continue to sell your client's packages.

You need to provide the tools so that the travel agents can showcase the clients business to their customer base and you need to ensure that the booking system ensures referring agents not only get paid but also get rewarded with future junkets.

Oh...if you think a client will wait 2 years for results....

Storms...exchange rates....popularity....

...they don't wait.

Thanks

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John9586

9 years ago

Thanks for the ideas, I will ask them which one they like at most, but I am not sure if they would risk 2000 USD for every manager to bring to the island without seeing any results.
This is about building relationships with agents, but first they must get foot in the door with new agents and having some specialized niche services and content could be the foot in the door, they could sell them all the other services later.

Thanks

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AlexTee

9 years ago

The level of targeting in Facebook is amazing!

For example, the audiences you can target in Facebook

Travel:
business travels - US & International
Leisure travelers, frequent flyers, cruises and too many more to list here

Planning to travel:
Planning to travel to - Australia, Beach or Brazil and too many more to list here

In addition...

Timeshares

Purchase Types:
Upscale travel and services
Travel supplies

Setup a pixel for retargeting/remarketing to track conversions

Relevancy Score regarding your ad(s)

Click Through Ratios (CTR)

Split testing via dark posts/unpublished posts

Be advised...some of these are advance marketing techniques

You: Do you have some ideas how to make their website visible?

You can run page post engagement ads w/video that target people who travel (see above) and get real time data that can be used to dial in your future marketing campaigns and point them toward the website.No need to worry about SEO, the cost is much lower and the result more predictable.

You: They want to get new customers and more visitors to their website and booking system. The problem is they cannot tell me who their ideal customer is...

Insights (in Facebook) will provide demographic information like , gender, age ranges of each gender, cities of those respondents and more.

You: So they think they have a good business and good profits, but they have no idea about marketing and how to get new customers. (see above)

All this data is provided real time and is easy to analyze so you can advise your client(s).

Hope this helps.

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Marketing for travel agency

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