Online Marketing strategy can be one of the most important marketing and business strategies to grow and build your tour and travel agency business. For a small and new tour and travel agency, it’s important to sell a minimum of 10 to 20 travel packages each month to survive.
Along with that, it’s also important to work on long-term and short marketing strategies. And one of the best and trending methods is online marketing or digital marketing. Online marketing platforms and tools, you can generate 10 to 20 leads per day by focusing on building and implementing unique and useful marketing strategies.
I have worked with many tour and agency clients’ web development or website projects as a freelance consultant. The work included Branding, Website creation, management or maintenance, and SEO.
While working with tour and travel agency clients, I learned various things related to travel business marketing and promotion. And I also suggested and implemented many ideas. Many failed but some got great results.
So, with that experience and learning, I am sharing the top 10 online marketing strategies in this article that I think will be great for a new and small tour and travel agencies to implement and build a consistent flow to generate 10 to 20 travel leads per day at minimum cost.
10 ways you can follow to generate leads for your travel business:
1. Be the brand ambassador of your own business:
Travel More and Inspire the world.
Tour and Travel agency business is a very competitive industry. There are many big players in this industry. And this creates challenges for new tour agents and tour agencies to compete, survive and run the business.
But to win in the competition, you have to implement unique strategies and methods. And becoming the brand ambassador of on your own for your business will be one of the unique strategies, that I think you can follow.
In simple words, you have to travel more on your own and inspire the world through social media, YouTube, blogs, and Instagram posts. People will identify you and your services through content. And they will contact you.
You don’t have to sit in the office to get bookings and pay companies to give you inquiries.
You have to connect with people in reality through your traveling content.
And I saw not many tours and travel agencies are doing it. They are spending hundreds of dollars/rupees to buy travel queries/inquiries.
But that is not a good and long-term marketing strategy. Due to that the travel package become costly for the customers. And those who have more resources get those customers.
So, leading the business through your own travel content is the best marketing strategy that you can implement.
Even if you can’t travel solo, then travel with customers or guests as a driver or tourist guide on your own.
2. Create your travel agency, Facebook Page and Group:
While traveling you have created videos, captured photographs, written stories, and many other things. To make them in the use you have to use social media marketing platforms. There are people, and many of them want to travel to the places that you have already visited or included in your travel packages, plans and itineraries.
So, create your travel agency Facebook page and group and invite your friends to like that page. Post-travel images, stories on that page, and group. And also share your agency and booking contact details.
And within a few months, you will start generating leads from your social media groups and pages.
You can use Facebook and Pinterest for this.
Not only you can share your own travel adventures and experiences but you can also share other people’s travel memories there on your group and Facebook page. It will help you to get more likes and group members.
And also try to get customer reviews with photographs and then published them on the group and page. And also invited those customers or guests to like that page and join the group.
Learn More: Importance of social media marketing in business success
3. List your business on Free Travel Directories:
Business listing directories are one of the oldest methods to generate website traffic and travel inquiries. That’s why almost all the business listed their travel businesses. But many travel directories have paid plans for travel agencies.
Travel directories have a simple business plan, they sell the leads package to all the travel agencies. After that, they advertise their own portal on search engine ads, YouTube videos, social media, and TV advertisings.
They have business deals with hotels, airlines, bus, and taxi operators.
That’s why they get more traffic to their website and are able to generate travel queries. And after that, they sell or forward those queries directly to the listed paid travel agencies on monthly basis.
As per the sources one travel directory or portal charge 20000 to 30000 for 100 queries per month. Now, these portals sell and forward those same queries to 10 to 20 tour and travel agencies.
Now the conversion depends on the tour and travel agencies and negotiation skills. And out of 100, an average tour agency is able to generate only 5 to 6 tour packages per month.
So personally, I will not suggest you list your business on paid directories or pay anyone to generate leads.
I believe in organic growth and traffic to your own tour and travel agency. It’s not a quick method, but it’s a method to grow the tour and travel agency slowly but surely.
I have seen travel agents or agencies who paid more than $1000 dollars to travel portals. But currently, they are out of the business. And they have left no amount to spend on marketing and advertising.
That’s why only take the advantage of free directories sites just to get backlinks to the website and to create awareness. For example, you can take the advantage of Google Business listing services by listing your tour agency and services.
4. Create your tour agency website:
Having a website for your tour and travel agency business is one of the most important things to do after registering the agency. On the website, you list the travel packages, taxi service, hotel details, and day-wise itinerary of the tour.
You can also share your contact details, agency registration number, about yourself/agency, and many other things. And you can also run a blog on your agency website.
Your tour and travel agency website is the online presence or representation of your business. Almost all travelers search on Google before booking the package. They read and visit various tour agency websites. They analyze the packages, day-wise itinerary, contact support, and testimonials.
Even if they compare or think, it’s enough. After comparison, they will book the package with you or someone. If booked with you great, if not analyze that page, understand the user’s behaviors on that page, bounce rate, session time, average time spent etc. It will help you to optimize that page or package for the next visitor.
That’s why you and your travel business website have to be there in search results when people search on google for a tour package.
Learn everything in detail here:
7 Most powerful benefits of having a website for your business
Building a small business website with WordPress online courses
5. List 5 to 10 Tour Packages keywords categories:
Keywords are the most important parts of online marketing. Keywords are the tour-related words or packages searched by people on the search engine. Such as Shimla Manali Tour Package for family, Goa tour package for honeymoon couples etc.
You can use Google keyword planner or any other keyword research tool to find out, what people are searching on Google.
So, select your 4 to 5 or 5 to 10 tour package and optimized those pages with relevant keywords effectively. So that you will have the chance to get displayed on the search engine.
If you don’t know about keyword research or SEO then please find out the best SEO courses in this post: Learn SEO Skills: The best Search engine optimization online courses
Learn more:
On-Page SEO best practices: Website On-Page SEO Essentials
Website Technical SEO Audit Essentials for Beginners
What is SEO? How does SEO grow your business day by day?
6. Publish new blog post regularly on your Travel Agency Website for a minimum of 1 year:
Having a blog on your tour and travel agency website is not only important but mandatory if you want organic traffic and direct customers without paying for any travel portal.
Blogging is a way to connect on a personal level with travelers and potential customers. When you share your travel info, knowledge, memories through a blog on your tour agency website then it will create trust, engage visitors and increase search engine traffic.
People will read your posts and if they liked then they will share that with friends on social media.
Many likes and pins the images on Pinterest. And overall, it will help you to increase the traffic to your tour agency website.
I highly recommend blogging regularly and posting useful travel-related content on your business website. And especially for those who want to generate 10 to 20 leads per day without paying any travel portal or digital agency.
There are many other benefits of having a blog on your business website, following are the posts to read more about that:
Online blogging courses for Beginners – Learn the Basics of Blogging
Smart Small Business owners do not ignore these 6 benefits of blogging
What is Blog used for? Uses of the blog in our daily life
7. Start YouTube Channel and Upload Travel Content:
When traveling on your own individual and with family to a new travel location then create a video. Capture memorable moments with nature, landscape, river, waterfalls, and local people.
After that upload the videos with SEO-friendly titles on YouTube.
The goal here is to lead and inspire people to travel and explore the beauty of nature and different parts of your country and overseas.
When you will be able to inspire people to like and subscribe to your channels, then within a few months or weeks you will start generating travel leads automatically from YouTube.
8. Advertise on Social Media and Search Engine:
While you can pay an agency or freelancer to advertise your travel business. Still, it’s important for you to do it on your own in the beginning.
In the beginning, your friends and known will like your page and visit your tour and travel agency website. But they are not enough. You have to get more likes on your social media page. It will not cost much. But once you will have 1000+ likes it will help you automatically to generate the next 2000 likes. You have to pay for 1st 1000 likes. And then you have to grow it organically. Those 1000 people will generate the next 1000 likes.
Similarly, to this, to get your tour package keywords ranked higher on Google, you can advertise on Google search results to generate more leads.
If you, do it on your own, you will learn how to advertise, how to save money, and how to outsource it later. It’s not mandatory, but it’s better to advertise on your own on the web than paying for the travel portal or agencies.
9. Analysis of user behavior through Google Analytics data and build next marketing strategy:
On your tour and travel agency website, you must add Google Analytics Tracking Code in your footer. So that it will track website visitors and their behavior.
It means you will get information and data about; what keywords people have searched on Google to visit your website. Where are you ranking for those travel-related keywords?
Not only that, but you will also get information and data about where people are searching for a certain tour package.
Overall having data will help you to create targeted marketing and SEO campaigns for your tour and travel agency business. You will be able to communicate correctly and able to engage visitors on your website.
Everything of this and more will be helpful for you to generate 10 to 20 leads per day.
Learn more:
How to make your website more popular with these 15 ways
How can email marketing help your business to grow
10. Connect with Travel Bloggers and partner with them:
Build the community around your travel brand. Connect and communicate with travel bloggers and YouTubers. Also share their content and also give them offers to promote your tour agency. You can also build partnerships with them to generate more travel leads.
Create proper execution and process to implement the above strategies.
Implementing the above tips to generate 10 to 20 leads per day can look like lots of work. But you do have not to do everything in one week or two.
You can build a small but effective process to implement everything one by one on a daily basis. If you follow the proper execution process to promote and market your travel agency online, then obviously the results will be great.
If you need any help or support services in this work and strategy development, please let me know. I will try to suggest you best possible methods as per your needs and demands.