Travel Agency Tribes Email Marketing

Travel consumers are getting smarter and thus traditional marketing strategies such as advertising and public relations may not work in 2018 as well as they used to work before.

The modern traveler does not attach a lot of weight to information coming from the internet unless it comes from somebody they consider an authority. These ‘authorities’ are referred to as social influencers and have become an integral part of modern travel marketing.

You will use the social influencers to get your travel products and services to your targeted audiences thereby benefiting from their established authority and expansive customer reach.

Influencer marketing leverages the trust the target audience has in the influencer to establish a long lasting business relationship.

Identify the Influencers in Your Niche

Use platforms such as tapInfluence, Musefind, and Tomoson to find the top influencers in your travel niche. Some of the best influencers are pricey, but various studies have suggested that for every $1 you spend on an influencer, you get $20 worth of value.

When you are researching an influencer, you will need to consider these two major factors:

Relevance

Is the influencer’s sphere of influence properly matched to your travel niche and business needs? How well did the previous campaigns done on behalf of other travel agents perform?

Does the influencer sound authentic enough to be believable to your targeted audiences? You are better off not using an influencer than using one with phony messaging.

Reach

How big is the influencer’s sphere of influence? Is it big enough to warrant spending money on the influencer instead of traditional advertising?

Customize Your Outreach Programs for Your Social Channels

Different social channels require different messaging. For example, influencers on Facebook prefer using a mixture of videos and text while those on Pinterest prefer images, and those on twitter prefer hashtags. You need to work with the influencer to come up with the messaging that bests work within their community.

Target Customers that Have the Budget for Your Travel Products

Again, you will need to establish if the followers on your influencer social media channel are worth spending money on. If, for example, you are targeting cruise customers who spend more than $20,000 on a single trip, you are better off getting a cruising veteran as an influencer instead of someone that only blogs about cruise vacations.

Whichever the way you chose to go about your influencer marketing, you need to know about the following truths about the field;

#1 Travel markets are becoming more sophisticated

Do not be excited by the hype around an influencer. Your relationship should always be premised on a measurable ROI.

#2 Influencer marketing works best for the young people

Just ask yourself this question: When was the last time your parents updated their Facebook status? Influencer marketing only works if your targeted audience spends considerable time on the internet.

#3 More than half of influencer marketing campaigns fail

These statistics are so bad that you will wonder why travel agents ever use influencer marketing. You have to find the underlying reasons why so many fail before writing it off.

Most travel agents pick influencers just because they have a huge following. Picking an influencer is more complicated than this. Allow the Travel Agency Tribes consultants to help you with this task by clicking here.

#4 Influencers are expensive but worth it

This statement only holds true if you do your due diligence before you hire an influencer. If an influencer has consistently delivered results for other marketers, then he may be worth spending money on to get your travel products/services out there.

Pro Tip: Take the content that’s already performing well on your website and have your influencer amplify it.

#5 Influencer marketing is the best experiential marketing

For your marketing campaigns to work, get an influencer who actually believes in your products and/or services. If he can buy your travel products, he will be able to sell them convincingly to his followers.

#6 The channels update their algorithms regularly

Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter and all the other social channels update their algorithms regularly and thus what worked yesterday may become obsolete today. For you to succeed in influencer marketing, you need to keep updating your content too.

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