Innovative Travel Marketing Channels

After you’ve built the core of your marketing strategy with authentic organic content, SEO, and social postings, there are some additional channels you can leverage to promote your brand, build leads and grow revenue.

In fact, the great content we’ll create is amplified significantly through them. These channels discussed below open your business up to a targeted group of travel prospects, bloggers/influencers, and brand boosters.

Get Your Marketing Content Ready First

Travel companies are already spending massive amounts of money in these channels, however when your content is low quality, you have to spend extra to get the sales results you want.  Before you pull out your wallet and spend big, your brand boosting content needs to be ready. You can’t spend hard on paid channels if your content and brand are awful. Spend first on creating authentic, helpful, engaging and impactful content because this is what is used in paid channels such as YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and others.

These elite paid channels can inspire your marketing and help you commit more to the power of travel marketing services. to get exceptional sales results.  My position on them is that they are a powerful layer on top of your foundational layer of authentic, engaging content and search engine optimization.  As an extra reward for you, they can boost your SEO, content and social media performance.

From greater reach to branding to richer promotions, today’s paid channels are essential to travel business growth and big revenue gains.

Insider Intelligence estimates digital travel sales revenues should increase 20% to $296.77 billion, up from $208.44 billion in 2019. And expenditures may climb above $350 billion by the end of 2027. They forecasted $4.57 billion growth in 2024 on advertising. Those ads will appear on desktop and laptop computers, as well as mobile phones, tablets and other internet-connected devices. They will appear as contextual text links, interstitial ads, paid inclusions, paid listings, and search engine optimization.

If your effort in this paid advertising arena isn’t strategic, you could waste a fortune.

You could rely on your travel management software platform to achieve your marketing and promotion goals. The best approach is with a customized, comprehensive program that supercharges your organic strategy (which is timeless and cost-effective).

Augmented Paid Marketing Channels

Connected TV

Connected TV (CTV) advertising uses video ads delivered through internet-connected smart television sets, laptops, smartphones and other smart devices (airports, subways, transit, malls, restaurants). Given the rising use of digital streaming entertainment services such as Apple TV, Roku, Hulu, Peacock, Tubi, Pluto TV, and even some ad-supported tiers of Netflix and Disney+, travel companies can reach more travelers who are actively immersed in travel content.

Augmenting CTV with your organic SEO/Content/Social strategy lets you get more impressions and access a more visual medium where prospects are in a different mood, and could be more open to your value proposition and travel experiences.
CTV advertising reaches those who have disconnected from satellite or Cable TV, and given it’s a digital channel, it offers much better targeting than broadcast TV.

TV is still an engaging format and many travelers watch YouTube on their televisions. Any format that connects to those viewers is gaining a special opportunity ahead of competitors. Find out more about connected TV campaigns at Simulmedia.com)

Mobile App Marketing

Developing a mobile app is a popular way to connect directly to your audience on their smartphone, a powerful place to be for travel agencies and tour management companies.

Not having a customer mobile app allows your competitors to get their app placed on their smartphone which in turn increases their bookings and makes your company invisible. It’s expensive but having a white-label solution from the major platforms is a great way to ensure you’ve created a presence on traveler’s smartphones. For them, they’re quick, updated, reliable and communications are direct — no email, phone calls or SMS messages needed. Check out the full features of the best travel management software.

You could decide to rely on Expedia’s mobile app, or Travefy’s, Hotels.com’s, TravelPerk, Routespring, Travelworks, Booking.com, VRBO, or ViaTour, etc.

See Moonstride’s or Travefy’s traveler itinerary mobile apps. The functionality on the mobile apps is limited, but then most travelers do prefer to manage bookings via their desktop or laptop computers.

The mobile apps offer a travel companion to help inform or reassure them while traveling, a great time to promote your brand and services overall. Customers can be offered upgrades and be transported to the web-based interface to buy.

So a mobile app doesn’t need to do everything a traveler might need. Instead, it’s a branded companion — dedicated to fulfilling your customer services and marketing communications needs.

SMS Text Marketing

On the important theme of connecting via the ubiquitous consumer smartphone is using it’s SMS text app. Texting seems intrusive, yet there are many who are okay about engaging with your brand and accepting marketing offers on it.

You can manage text messages via your travel management software. Texting solutions can determine the geolocation of the customer and help you send the most relevant and timely ads.

Stats show a third of smartphone users read their text messages within five minutes of recdving them and SMS generates a 40+% response rate. 90+% of people clam they would opt-in to receive SMS messages from their favorite brands.

YouTube Advertising

YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine and its usage is growing. Not only do they serve users from the YouTube.com website but also through the widely accessible YouTube via Google Play.

According to Hannah Macready of HootSuite, YouTube enjoys 106 billion annual visits, 2 Billion users and collects about $10 billion in revenues annually.

While travel agencies, tour operators and travel software companies can advertise directly with YouTube, the channel offers tens of thousands of travel-related sites and influencers. It’s the nature of YouTube’s search and content presentation algorithm that a core set of travel channels get the most exposure. Creating and promoting your own YouTube channel with compelling videos can still capture quite a vast global audience. And given the possibility of going viral on the channel exists, big successes are possible for any creator.

YouTube creators must build content that is impactful, engaging and useful and it is a visual and animated medium requiring some skill in video production. Advertisers can access some analytics insights into their users viewing habits and whether they liked the video.

You can get quite creative with video too, having influencers or your marketing specialist create a video just for your business, including music travel videos which are very popular.

DMO Partnerships

Destination business parterships can be a powerful asset in your travel marketing strategy. They can strengthen your value proposition and open doors to new benefits.

Being seen, associated with, and promoted by a credible local business in the countries/cities you operate in brings greater credibility and trust to customer prospects.

Partnering/sponsorships with local tourism boards, hotels, venues, travel influencers, tour operators, and so on can give you an edge over other agencies or tour companies. It signals a real, actual presence in that country with real local and respected members of their travel and tourism community.

These organizations can provide you with video, photos, interviews, comments, testimonials, traveler tips and insights, and perhaps travel deal packages that include your products. All of these benefits give your company a lift in relevance, credibility, trustworthiness, and an emotional level connection to the destinations your customers want to travel to. You might call this business development and these companies will want to associate with agencies/companies that have a strong, clear, credible brand with a good, proven audience.

And newer travel management software platforms have such supplier/partner connectivity built in, allowing you access to some active and successful businesses. Of course, actually visiting the country (e.g., costa rica or Italy) allows you to find and negotiate with many local businesses, and even some who aren’t looking for commissions or fees!

Once you have your digital marketing empire set up, which best-supporting partners to pursue becomes a little clearer and it’s easier to arrange deals.

Influencer Partnerships

It’s a fact that some individual travel enthusiasts, YouTube/Instagram/TikTok/Facebook personalities, and others have generated quite a throng of devoted followers.

It seems they’ve connected with their travel network in a way that’s excited, impacted and engaged them so well, or with such frequency that they’re a going concern. In fact, it might be wise to create this kind of influential personality yourself to drive leads just to your business.

While there are thousands of influencers out there, you will need one that fits your business brand and travel package array. They’ll want a lot of money, but in studying these influencers, you may learn the secrets of their success. Initially, they can generate a good level of exposure to their defined audience. You’ll want to ensure (let them present detailed stats) they have the right audience, otherwise you might waste a lot of money (which many companies are).

Influencers are heard, often respected, and have a high level of repeat visitors, and those connections often want good, interesting content to share with their social channels. That paints a picture of marketing bliss for those with the assets to share.

There are macroinfluencers (most popular in views/connections) and microinfluencers (less popular but perhaps more well-targeted for your goals). A well-known travel macroinfluencer is Brian Kelly the Points Guy in the Cruises category. Traveling Robert who is well known for his RV travels across North America, Rick Steeves, still popular on YouTube, and Malini Angelica who specializes in warm weather destinations.

Check out Grin.co for creator partnerships and Aspire for its travel influencer marketplace.

Boost Your Fantastic, Authentic Content

Whatever fantastic content you might develop, it’s got a place in these paid digital marketing channels.

If you’re struggling with your free, organic marketing, it’s not surprising as the monopolies are squeezing sites out.  And with the glut of generative AI spam deluging Google, Bing, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, and YouTube, it’s tougher now.

Focus on researching and producing valuable content for audiences in articles, videos, and graphics, establishing your brand messaging clearly, and then using paid media to reach all these targeted users we discussed above.

Find out more about the full offerings of travel management software platforms, and use my travel marketing services to the fullest for growth and higher revenues.