It is not difficult to understand that tourism will be one of the sectors most affected by the situation that has arisen in this particular 2020, to say the least.

Accommodation facilities, airlines, and tour operators are among the first to have felt the pinch at the beginning of the pandemic and, most likely, will also be the last to breathe a sigh of relief.

However, communication cannot and must not stop now: this is the right time to invest in your online presence, prepare for a return to normalcy, and be competitive again.

Now more than ever it is necessary that destinations, hotels, travel agencies, and other companies in the sector work to plan a correct tourism marketing strategy.

If used consistently and criterion, the tools of Content Marketing can help businesses get found more easily on the Web by sharing valuable content with which to reach the audience you want, provide information on time, solve problems. Faced with more limited costs than traditional means, promoting a company online puts it in a position to win the battle of attention, meet its users by communicating, and make itself recognizable compared to its competitors. Finally, to transmit the values and promote its services.

We, therefore, enter into the merits of the concrete advantages that a Content Marketing strategy for tourism entails and, above all, because companies operating in this sector can no longer wait time.

Marketing and tourism: the current scenario

Lowered shutters, empty squares, desolate and silent streets. The lockdown had accustomed us to surreal scenarios worthy of any science fiction work. On social media and television, we have seen unpublished images of tourist destinations and cities that we would never have thought could be so empty. At the same time, however, there was no shortage of voices of hope and attempts to revive the spirits by dint of encouraging hashtags and slogans, such as those disseminated by the Tourist Board of Greece.

One thing is certain: every dark age sooner or later ends. Tourism will restart, although almost certainly not as before and not in the same way. Or rather: the pandemic has brought new needs to the attention of hoteliers and travel organizers that must be met to ensure the safety of tourists and, at the same time, a pleasant travel experience.

For example, Refine identifies 13 new trends that characterize the world of tourism and which, in the post-pandemic, could represent excellent opportunities to restart. Think for example of the boom in solo travel, eco holidays, or activities that aim to offer the traveler a truly local experience in contact with the most authentic reality of the place he is visiting.

Not only that: we think in fact of the considerable contribution coming from technology. The ‘ artificial intelligence, the robot, and the Internet of things will provide the user more and more autonomy in planning and booking trips, activities, and services, in customizing their vacation and assistance before and during the journey. The virtual reality will visit, from the sofa of their home, places, and points of interest too fragile or inappropriate for receiving large flows of tourists. Or, again, augmented reality will allow the traveler to receive more details and information on his favorite attractions in real-time.

INTEGRATED, DIGITAL, CREATIVE, AND DATA-DRIVEN: THESE ARE THE CHARACTERISTICS 

How Content Marketing can help tourism businesses

I have already written about the close relationship between Copywriting and the tourism sector. But there’s more: the constant and reasoned production of quality content allows you to make yourself known among an interested audience and improve the perception of your brand. People who find content interesting begin to consider our digital channels as an authoritative source of information that provides timely answers to real needs.

This happens when readers trust us and consider us industry experts: and this, for example, is one of the great advantages guaranteed by a blog.

A good Content Marketing strategy for tourism helps accommodation facilities, destinations, and operators in the sector to be more easily visible on the Web. For example, thanks to a content plan optimized for search engines it is possible to attract more and more visitors interested in our products and services and, from that moment on, to incentivize purchases through personalized messages or promotions. Sharing the same content on social media is the logical consequence of having provided what our potential interlocutors need.

The planning of Content Marketing activities presupposes the preliminary identification of a specific audience of users to whom to convey a message through increasingly targeted actions that will therefore have greater chances of success compared to traditional promotion strategies and generic messages shared with general or non-general audiences. profiled properly.

Working on such a precise target has a further advantage: the possibility of building an equal dialogue, made up of relevant information and not advertising messages. As the principles of the Content Strategy teach us, the former has a much longer life cycle than an advertisement, as well as a much wider potential in terms of emotion and persuasiveness. Not only that: combined with appropriate Storytelling strategies for the tourism sector, digital content can gain a lot in terms of pervasive strength.

Strategy means understanding what you have to say and what your interlocutors need. Study the strategy and the editorial line. Designing the most suitable content to help you create valuable relationships, grow, sell. This is my job; I certainly have the solution for you.

The 5 advantages of Content Marketing applied to the tourism sector

There seems to be enough reason why an accommodation facility, destination, or tour operator should invest in planning a marketing strategy based on digital content. The advantages of communicating directly with your interlocutors are so important and numerous that you might even be tempted to abandon any other more traditional form of Marketing.

In particular, what are the advantages of Content Marketing for the tourism sector?

Place your content on GoogleAs already mentioned, Google loves well-packaged, therefore comprehensive, content. When it notices that content fully responds to a certain user search extension, it rewards them and ranks them high in the SERPs, bringing quality traffic to a particular website.

1. Structure the demand of potential customers

The process that leads a user to purchase (in this case, to book a holiday) is not immediate but passes through different stages of awareness, reasoning, and decision. Content Marketing can represent a support for the still undecided user, acting on the construction of the need. After all, Marketing is also about generating needs: a good Content Marketing Strategy or a Digital Storytelling plan do it intelligently.

1. To intervene in all phases of the purchasing process

Marketing using Web content is a great way to oversee all phases of the purchasing process. Unlike other contents – I am thinking for example of advertising, which inevitably is aimed at a more generic target – contents can be studied upstream to be addressed to different types of customers, including:

• Who does not know the product or service yet
• Those who know the product or service but have not yet established a relationship with the company or brand
• Who knows the product or service quite well
• Who is considering buying it
• Who has already bought the product or has used the service
• Who has made the most purchases over time

In this way, it is possible to further personalize the relationship with customers and make it increasingly significant, also in terms of economic results. Today consumers ask for timely information and to feel close to brands and companies.

1. Support those in charge of sales

Content Marketing aims at the production and distribution of content which, by providing precise information, a clear message, and a point of view, increase the propensity to buy. But more can be done: it is sufficient to involve those who deal with the relationship with customers which are the most frequent questions that potential customers ask about the territory, the tourist destination, and the accommodation facility.

Using websites and blogs as intelligent containers of related responses will be an immediate way to serve your customers and ensure lasting visibility to information that the public proves they need.   

1. Promote retargeting and remarketing operations

One of the main advantages related to Content Marketing concerns the link between content and user profiling. Without going into too many technicalities that would now lead us astray, contents studied around the ultra-specific needs of the target audience allow us to obtain very precise data on the so-called Buyer Persona and, consequently, process them to obtain high-quality personalized audiences. This translates, downstream, into the possibility of programming more effective, “surgical” Display Advertising campaigns in intercepting audiences interested in specific products or services and characterized by a significantly lower cost per click.

How to create a strategy to promote a tourism business

Every self-respecting strategy requires in-depth planning, also because the best way to control the Web is certainly to identify messages, contents, and channels in an integrated and sustainable way.

How to do it? There isn’t a one-size-fits-all path, but there are some milestones that can help anyone who feels the need to start promoting themselves on the web. Let’s see what are the steps to do it better.

Define your goals

The Marketing objectives that we set ourselves are the starting point and the arrival point of every Content Marketing initiative. Therefore, they must be clear, precise, well defined, and sustainable. Our communication strategy, and consequently all the promotional activities that we will carry out, including the communication plan, must always have them in mind. The objectives of the communication strategy must therefore be aligned with the business objectives and must go hand in hand.

Identify the right consultants and suppliers

Promoting a hotel or a destination needs professionals capable of guaranteeing sustainable strategies and certain results.

The problem, if you like, is that in web professionals capable of moving at ease between websites, blogs, content, copywriting, storytelling and content strategies can be counted on the fingers of one hand.   

Alternatively, it is possible to choose to contact more specialized professionals, but at that point, another problem arises: how to coordinate them?

Precisely for this reason, given the need to guarantee the customer agile teams composed of highly specialized professionals, for several years SegnaleZero has no longer been just the name of my blog, but a brand that brings together highly qualified professionals of Copywriting, writing for social media, content marketing, capital one website development, advertising for Facebook and Google, and even video marketing.    

Identify the correct target and interlocutors

At this point, together with the professional chosen as a Content Marketing consultant, it is possible to define the target users and the interlocutors on which to do Marketing.

The definition of the target is very important because it allows you to develop precise Marketing actions aimed at a specific type of user. It is very unlikely that regular guests of a five-star hotel on vacation will also prefer hostels and campsites. Based on these due differences, it is necessary to set up the communication strategy, the actions to be implemented and the tools to be used to achieve each goal.

Identify the channels through which to communicate

It is a very important node in planning a Content Marketing strategy. As I have said many times, it is not always necessary to be present on all channels and platforms available: however, it is necessary to know how to choose those in line with your business objectives and with your target.

The choice of channels will then depend on the planning of the contents, the actions to be taken, the identification of one’s tone of voice, and the language to be adopted.

It is important to keep in mind that when you decide to be present on a certain channel you must then continue to manage it with patience, passion, a great desire to learn and get involved, and, above all, consistency.

Define the initial investment and optimize the budget

We can also plan the most effective communication strategies and season it with succulent content and delicious actions to undertake, but if we have not defined the budget to invest in our promotional activities first, we will not go anywhere.

Unlike what we hear about social media from time to time, promoting yourself online can cost you. The costs of Google Ads or Facebook Ads campaigns are indeed very different from those of the classic offline advertising of the past, but they must still be taken into account in the budget. Just as it is necessary to take into account the management costs of the various channels we decide to oversee, the suppliers we ask for support, and the Marketing activities we want to focus on.

In short, the promotion has a price. The important thing is to establish immediately how much you are willing to spend and, based on this, we will then decide the actions to plan and who to involve. Not only that: it is also essential to identify the way to optimize one’s resources and obtain the highest possible results. Fortunately, the Web offers numerous opportunities from this point of view.

The tools to promote a tourist facility

The tools of Content Marketing are many but we don’t necessarily have to use them all and not all at once. It depends, in fact, on the agreed strategy, on the objectives set, and on the target, we are interested in hitting.

Whatever tool you decide to adopt to promote yourself on the Web, however, it must be carefully managed by expert hands who know its dynamics and know how to identify the most suitable solutions for each situation.

Let’s see what are the main tools for Content Marketing in tourism.

The website and the blog

They are both two essential tools for the realities of the tourism sector that intend to promote themselves.

The website represents the showcase in which a hotel, an accommodation facility, or a territory describe themselves, referring to their history, the services they offer, the rates, and anything else that can help the user to make the final decision. ‘purchase. The blog, on the other hand, represents a fundamental Content Marketing tool for the tourism sector.

On the blog, the narration continues and stops being purely self-referential, to focus on a series of themes related to the reality that you want to promote. A hotel blog, for example, will explain which are the most important events in its territory, as well as the typical dishes of the local cuisine or why it is worth booking a holiday in your destination. The goal, of course, is always to inform the user and attract him.

To make sure that the pages of the site and the blog are visible, however, it is necessary to rely on an expert SEO Copywriter, who will be able to produce interesting and captivating texts able to position themselves organically on search engines and thus obtain as many visits as possible.

I Social media

In a Content Marketing strategy for tourism, the use of social networks is fundamental. In particular, to those who focus on audiovisual content, first of all, Facebook and Instagram, but in recent years Pinterest has also been gaining ground, especially abroad.

The advice, however, is always to choose to monitor only the platforms in line with the objectives of your strategy. And, above all, never leave anything to chance and improvisation: the management of a company’s social profiles, whatever sector it is presupposes adequate and timely planning of the contents to be published and those to be sponsored. . videos, photos, and texts to be shared must be functional to the medium and above all to the target you intend to hit. And it is important to know how to stimulate the community by encouraging dialogue with users and their participation, just as it is important to know how to manage any critical situations.

The newsletter and email marketing

In a Content Marketing strategy for tourism, the loyalty of the already acquired customer cannot be missing. And how to get it if not reserving special offers and promotions for those who have already taken advantage of our holiday packages or have already stayed in our structure?

In doing this, newsletters and email marketing are really useful. They are also excellent tools to promote news or, again, to strengthen the relationship with the user who has not yet tested our services but simply visited our site and provided his email address to receive more information.

Public Relations e Influencer Marketing

In recent years, more and more accommodation facilities, tour operators, and destinations have taken advantage of the visibility of travel bloggers and influencers to promote themselves. Usually, the collaboration is based on an exchange: the blogger is invited to try a series of activities or to stay in a structure, and, in return, he tells the experience to his followers and his readers on social channels or his blog.

Public Relations also includes the involvement of journalists and traditional offline newspapers, as well as participation in trade fairs or the organization of events open to the public to promote one’s destination or services.

Some tips for good Content Marketing in the tourism sector

What is your experience with the online promotion of an accommodation facility? Do you have a website or blog that needs to rank on Google? Or maybe you need specific advice to promote a destination thanks to Copywriting?

In some cases, however, a broader intervention may be necessary, to make Web Marketing and Tourism go hand in hand and obtain measurable and significant economic results as soon as possible.

I also think of the accommodation facilities that are already widely active on the Web but struggle to tell about themselves distinctively. Storytelling and Marketing can make a significant qualitative leap in the promotion of a tourism reality. For this reason, the advice is to deepen the potential of these tools, possibly with a chat that will clarify every aspect.