Niche travel marketers are moving up
There is a lot of competition for online travel sites, the industry is huge and turns over billions in annual revenue. There are literally thousands of travel sites all using keywords, links, hashtags and SEO practices in an attempt to stand out against the myriad choices for travel opportunities. If you’re a small business your best way to stand out in the crowd is by using simple marketing tools, that can have a powerful impact when used together correctly.
The first is finding your niche. The second is using this niche to get past all the other travel sites and onto the first page of a search engine.
Don’t panic. There is a niche for everyone.
To some this might sound like you have to get extreme with your services and start offering cooking classes that teach people to make the favourite dishes of 18th century poets. While that would definitely be of interest to a select few, successful niche marketing does not require this level of out-of-the-box thinking.
It just means choosing one main focus and using a little imagination to customise it to serve as a central point to all your online marketing. Finding and choosing something is not difficult. There are so many different types of travellers traversing the globe at any given moment, you should find something you can or may even already offer that is particularly appealing to a certain group.
Host a company brainstorming session to come up with some interesting ideas. Discuss all the different angles of each idea and its potential to appeal to new business whilst retaining the business of your existing clientele. This doesn’t mean cutting out aspects of your business, it just means finding something interesting and unique about your business, your location or an experience you can create that you think can be highlighted and used to get people interested in you, and the value only your business can add to their travel experience.
If necessary look outside of your own business and network with other businesses in the area. Consider the potential to partner with others in order to draw clients to the area, using the combined skills and services to create one marketing campaign.
Keyword Focus
Once you have got a clear idea of what your niche will be, you will need to decide what your marketing strategy will be in order to optimise your website and launch it through each of your social media platforms.
This is where the clever use of keywords comes in. Offering a niche tourism service, you are not having to compete with other travel companies generally, you have narrowed down your competition and by carefully selecting a list of keywords that describe your niche service to add to your existing list, you will already be on your way up the search engine ladder.
However, Google has some pretty strict rules when it comes to the use of keywords to get to the top of a search list, so create a list as long as possible of relevant key words, then insert them very strategically throughout your site. Remember don’t offer something that you can’t deliver on and link only to other relevant sites that enhance the message, and do so sparingly. Remember that the best way to get in Google’s good graces is to get people following and engaging with you on social media as well as linking back to your website, so create content that is easy to read, interesting and fun.
All of the above should be very carefully thought out, preferably enlist the help of an online marketing professional to help create a clear and uniform marketing plan that will spark interest from across all social media platforms and convert into new, paying customers.
