In the past few years, digital advertisement investments have relatively been increased, including influencer marketing. The travel ads of Facebook and Instagram attract more and more people to book and explore new places. As a result, travel marketers have enhanced the user engagement rate on their travel business by 5.7%. It is a great tool that can be used by the marketer to boost their bookings and increase their business sales.
People these days look for good reviews and real experiences. You can make most of the influencer marketing by raising brand awareness regarding your services. On the other hand, people are more likely to ignore ads these days, even if they are popping up on their screens. Hence, the best antidote to get potential clients for your hospitality business is influencer marketing. This article reveals the ideas about how travel marketers can leverage influencer marketing to increase their bookings.
Micro and Macro Influencers
Businesses must focus on content quality these people produce along with the engagement rate, reach, and authenticity before you look for influencers for travel marketing. Now the question comes up, which will work the best for your travel business while keeping in mind the ultimate aim to get more customer engagement and boost bookings at peak times? Micro-influencer or Macro-influencer?
Macro influencers have more followers than micro-influencers, but the engagement ratio of micro-influencers is seven times greater. Although micro-influencers have fewer followers, the people who follow them are much more involved in their posts even if they are posting sponsored content.
Micro-influencers have a higher number of shares and likes on their content and are easily reachable. Thus, for travel marketers, the best option is to opt for micro-influencers to drive their influencer marketing goals. Learn more about micro vs. macro-influencers here.
7 Strategies to Boost User Engagement Through Influencer Marketing
Travel booking businesses are bustling usually from March through September as most people plan and book for traveling in January and February. Being a travel marketer, you need to come up with effective digital marketing campaigns.
One of the most effective channels to get a more significant number of potential clients is influence marketing because of its expansive reachability. Here are a few ways through which travel marketers can boost bookings.
1. Setting Goals for Influencer Marketing Campaigns
One of the most significant ways to pull a higher number of customers is to set the right goals. Decide the kind of customers you are hoping for and share these goals with the influencers. This will help them in creating the right type of content to attract active clients towards your service. The quality and effectiveness of the influencer’s post will help you deliver your message to the right people.
Once you find an influencer, the next step is to get brand mentions, shares, and followers. Influencers can vitally help in encouraging followers to share your brand and travel content using appropriate hashtags.
2. Building your Brand Identity
After brand awareness, the next strategy for travel marketers is to reach more travel clients and getting individuals to see their brand values and personalities. The better you are able to convey your goals to the influencers, the more they can help you promote your services.
Influencers reflect your brand identity. The most effective influencer marketing strategy is the Venn diagram that is used by most of the influencers. This campaign can start several chains of interconnected circles to grow and reach the maximum number of people who share the same interests.
3. Offering Discounts
Another effective way by which travel marketers can attract a higher number of travelers is by using influencer marketing to offer discount codes. What you can do is share unique codes with each influencer and ask them to post their code on the sponsored posts and share them through their stories.
This is a great way to tap the followers of your influencers and inspire them to try your services. Offering discounts will create a win-win situation for you as well as your influencers as they get a chance to get a commission and give something to their followers as well. This, in turn, will boost your bookings and increase your sales.
4. Trusted Reviews from Influencers
Currently, people trust influencers more than ever before—the chance of using a brand or a product increases when an influencer promotes it. When an influencer reviews your service or brand, many of their followers will favor your service over another because the influencer’s audience trusts what they are recommending. Being a travel marketer, you can leverage this trust dynamically even though the peak season has ended.
You can share the influencer’s reviews on your site and social media pages to make your travel business more trustworthy. Amanda, a reputed buy assignment service provider, shares her ideas about reviews, “Reviews by influencers or clients can be a great source for increasing your sales and building people’s trust.”
5. Identifying Places to Boost Sales
If the influencers you have chosen for your brand have explored many places, then together, you can create related and compelling content to increase the bookings of those places. For example, if you know a good hotel in Paris that has more openings in August, using influencer marketing will promote those places and convert their followers into your clients.
6. Giving Out Affiliate Links via Influencer Marketing
This strategy works similarly, like offering discounted codes. Travel marketers can ask the influencers to promote their services through affiliate links. When their followers make the booking through these links, they are given discounts.
On the other hand, influencers can receive a commission too. Your business will gain more visibility through these links. You can even increase user engagement and followers on Instagram or other social media pages. Testimonials with affiliate links are a great marketing strategy that works most of the time.
7. Influencers Handling Your Accounts
Handover your page or social media accounts to the influencers to draft effective content that would help drive more traffic and boost your bookings. Influencers know how to get leads through their creative content and encourage the followers to try your services.
In summary, the strategies listed above can open up new opportunities and drive more traffic to your travel business. Rather than investing in ads, consider influencer marketing to make your campaigns successful.
Freelance contribution especially written for Find Your Influence by Melissa Calvert.