Selling Your Tours more Effectively

 

After you’ve built a massive source of traffic and presented a compelling, significant trusted brand, and perked up tourists’ interest, you have the final challenge of selling your tours.

If your tour involves riding camels in 120-degree desert heat, you’re going to need to be really good at tour page sales psychology :).

Let’s take it for granted that your blog or YouTube account is generating lots of intrigued newcomers. They have the intent to buy, but how good is your sales closing rate?

It’s About a Complete Conversion Strategy

Who has the perfect tours? No one. So, it’s not about having the perfect tours, it’s about making yours the most inviting, compelling, promising and exciting, such that they’re ready to click that booking button.

 

Your tour pages have to impact, build desire, inform, and create commitment to the purchase. There’s no one thing that gets anyone to push that buy button. Instead, as you’ll see, it’s a collection of cues that produce the green light to click.

 

Cheap Tricks Aren’t Worth It

I have to snicker at some of the tips offered by other tour marketers on this topic. They speak of pop-ups, offering price discounts and incentives, pushing buy now buttons before they’re prepared to commit, and time-sensitive booking alerts. I know for a fact, that those aggressive in-your-face profit-losing tactics fail. They send visitors away. One company I worked for saw customers leave in droves.

One tour reseller site (not named) lists their tours in a plain, uninspiring menu/catalog style, that just says “here’s our stuff.” The descriptions on the tour pages are generalized, with “price starting at $15,000” text, and airfare-excluded messaging.

There’s one photograph, no buy buttons and no promise to the customer, just an “agency terms and conditions” link and a contact form (okay, it does capture contact info from serious shoppers). If a customer is paying $15,000, I suspect they’d want some assurances before progressing.

If that company can generate sales with these tour pages, consider what they might sell by converting to a customer-oriented approach.

Dressing up your Tour Pages with Powerful Buy Signals

It’s likely that your tours are fine. They just need to be packaged and expanded on expertly to give travelers all they want. When they’re offering thousands of dollars, they deserve a thorough, respectful presentation.  And as Tauck Tours website shows, a lot of thought should be put into your product pages, so they support the buy signals customers must have. Tauck Tours is excellent.

Here are a few helpers that might help you convert better:

1. exquisite descriptions (in the customer’s preferred wording) of the enjoyment they’ll experience
2. a flowing description from the tourist’s point of view as a kaleidoscope of visuals of their dream tour tauck tour description
3. descriptions of the tour’s key features

   

4. an emotion-generating tour name
5. an impactful, informative page headline (remind them of the value of your branded tours) that ties this tour to your brand quality
6. at top of tour page: a short list of the most compelling benefits of the tour (top emotional drivers)
7. use a reserve now and pay later button (no pressure to begin committing)
8. book online or call: 1-800 number (urgency speak to someone right away)
9. chat now (online urgency with no phone delays)
10. great interesting visuals — unique high-resolution photographs of tour features (visual feasting)
11. customer testimonial of that specific tour (trust, social proof)
12. info on what to expect at the tour (anticipation)

    

13. a physical map of the tour

    

14. info on cancellation and confirmation (confidence building, orientation)
15. emit items that aren’t that compelling to many tour-goers (e.g., leather tanning factory visit)

CRO pros know that there’s more to it. In fact, there might be a certain mix of these that produces the most sales. This is where good analytics and testing pay off.

Tauck Tours Gets it Right

You might like the approach used by Tauck and other major tour marketplaces. They’re definitely pros at tour marketing. Their copy, layout, and visuals are dreamy, professionally-presented with everything displayed in a timely way, and with a few unexpected surprises.

On their tour pages, they sell the sizzle, freedom, mystique, and confidence that tourists want to see. They’re impeccably designed, and the tours are pleasantly displayed with beautiful visuals, and the visitor doesn’t get disoriented. They provide a nice context that lends strength to each and every tour offered, supporting them fully.

Because no tour can stand on its own. Customers don’t buy in a void. Context is powerful! The booking results via the worldly traveler context which means tourists get that feeling of relevance and esteem no matter which tour they’re interested in.

They fulfill almost all of the checklist that a tour buyer might have from why to what to where to how and when with who.
They cap it off with a strong statement of customer care and support.

The only thing missing was the words promise and guarantee. Before a person clicks, in their moment of decision, it’s the promise/guarantee thing that’s on their minds.

Of course, we always subtly imply a brand promise in the copy and visuals, but in the booking page, that should be more explicit and obvious. They need that push across the finish line.

Learn more about the potential of the best travel management software for your business journey in the years ahead along with travel marketing software you might consider as well.

Contact me at 416 998 6246 and discuss how I might help.