Online marketing for travel agency

John,

You may want to start this same question in the Offline Forum.

They'll be more inclined toward answering your question.

Sincerely,
Charles

Hi John,
I am a Travel Agent based in Florida.

The first thing is to ascertain the list of "outcomes" they want from your services.
That's part of the reason even I have no clarity as to exactly what they want you to do.

I assume they are a travel agency dedicated solely to travel to their island (promoting their destination spot globally).

I guess they can arrange for hotels, cars and tours on their island.

Basically, they want a piece of the tourist pie that comes to the island yearly.

What they need is a marketing and business development approach. This you can do for them and folks like me can be the ones you approach and "connect" to your client. This will expand their customer base, referral traffic and exposure on the Internet through "partners" who already have traffic and traction in the industry.

Your role is consultative and you become the authority "go to" person for similar firms who seek market share. This can be viewed like a form of arbitrage but is really nothing new or different than what consultants have traditionally done from their origination. It can also lead to a full time BD position, if you were so inclined. There are numerous ways in this industry to handle this client and your situation / opportunity.

Hi,
do you know which kind of agencies would be interested in their services?
I tried to find out who is their ideal customer, but they have no clear answer.
I think the most agencies overseas will book some package from wholesalers for their customers, they will not go to the booking system of the travel agent and put together everything, they just take the package from big companies.
So I am not sure how they can compete with the big companies, their USP is they can make it customized for every customer, but who cares?

If you don't know how to help them, then it's highly unethical to take their money and then ask for advice on a forum.

I'm certainly biased, but with a travel agency especially, they need content marketing. Even if there is a lot of competition, they can still establish themselves as an authority. This isn't just about producing great content that reads well. They need to have superior knowledge than their competitors, and they need to be able to convey that knowledge to their writer/s in an efficient manner.

Then use Outbrain or similar to jump start things.

I wouldn't recommend PPC like AdWords directly to the site without content on it. But again, I'm biased.

I am not sure which content could help them, because there could be find everything about the island on internet. Maybe there are some small beaches only on Google, but not on Youtube, Instagram, etc., so it could be one possibility. But what about B2B content, how could they be authority, if they are selling the same tours and events like every other local travel agent there. Should they organize their own tour which could be bought only from them which would differentiate them from the other travel agents?

I think the dead industry are the agents selling packages, hotels and flights, because everybody can buy them from internet. But the travel agents selling tours and services in their location are not dead. The more customers the internet booking services bring to their place, the more business they get.

I have started another thread in offline marketing, but then I got some answers here, so I continue also this one.

I believe targeting market can help your travel agents. I , myself, helped different companies. I used to give lots of suggestion about to promote their sites effectively and then slowly, I tried to find their target clients and finally I approach according and never think that market can go above sky In one day. Also, many suggested about share with other travel agents which are still in good. HOTEL Booking or air tickets also sell via agents because agents take care about every tourists spending and time personally. Any help welcome.

I had a job interview with an online travel agent recently. The way that they were getting traffic in this tough niche is to upload lots of user generated content from their staff in the field (i.e. the people who work in their hotels and resorts).

Dear Sir,

to work on the keywords, try to hyper link on the keyword you want on top searches.And also use that keyword as 2 to 3 percent of the content.

I believe here's a lot to do. You can work with people in the similar niche to exchange links/articles. You could also try socialbaker tool to find biggest facebook pages in your region. Then you could ask them to promote your costumer (prepare to pay some $). Try to build an email database, use guerilla marketing to gain those emails (it's always good to go outside and collect some or you pay some $ for a wise kid to do so). Leave some brochures at local traveling institutions.

I would suggest a FB ad campaign. It´s all about selecting the right audience for the campaign both in location and demographics. Ask them i) Who are your potential customers? and ii) Where are they? Also a compelling special intro offer would help attract attention.