Tour, Travel, and Hospitality

Successful Brands, Content Creators, and Marketers Use More Than Just Expensive Advertising and OTA's

FACT -

You Probably Could Do A Lot More To Maximize Marketing Opportunities;

CASE -

The Big OTA's, Social Networks, and Search Engines Really Don't Care If You Succeed, and You Need to Diversify How People Find Out About You;

CONCEPT -

Small Operators Can Apply the Same Strategies Used Successfully by Large Conglomerates Without Needing The Huge Budgets.

IDEA -

How To Better Manage Your Target Customer Decision-Making Process Using Content and Relationship Marketing

Think About Your Target Customer "Sales Cycle" and the "Stages of Travel" -

• Discovery, Research, Decision
• Dreaming, Planning, Booking, Experiencing, Sharing

CONSIDERATION -

Keep in mind that few people make a purchase decision the first time they discover something. You need to be seen in more than one place. Ideally, you want to convert "micro-commitments" and stay in touch with people as they make decisions. Prospective customers will probably do some research before committing; what do they see when they search your brand?

Previous customers are a valuable resource you cannot afford to neglect for reviews, referrals, content, and lifetime monetization value.

People and search engines (Google, Bing, etc.) seek answers to questions & solutions to problems. Focusing on this intent earns better results. To grow success requires constant effort to build Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness.

Why Consolidate & Connect All Profiles and Content 

The Local Knowledge Advantage - Location & Expertise

No matter the size of the organization it's no secret that in order to get discovered and convince people to trust you it is important to build brand recognition across multiple channels (video, social, reviews, search, maps, blogs, OTA's, advertising, directories, etc.).

When it comes to showing up in search results one thing that is often overlooked is the need to not just promote a business, but to also establish the authority of content creators; i.e. "author rank" or "authorship". 

Google publishes a 165-page guide for it's team of quality rating staffers (10,000+ people that evaluate search results for accuracy); it refers to the importance of expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (E-A-T) more than 150 times and instructs raters to judge the writers and not just the websites. 

This idea shows up in the evolution of "guest posting" - Google will penalize PBN guest post content unless there is clear evidence of relevancy. It's why creating content in a community niche that focuses on brand identity is the right approach. The old days of trying to fool Google are over; give them what they want.

Consider Less Sales Pitch and more Solution to a Question

Small operators should try to demonstrate their expertise. Create and post relevant content consistently. It does not have to be complicated. Simple is good. Mention location and properly formatted images at every opportunity. Don't obsess about keywords, differentiate yourself with uniquely useful information that your target audience is looking for and wants to read and share.

Start by optimizing Google My Business (GMB), which is good for verifiable trustworthiness, but expertise and authority requires more work. It's why the community network connects social profiles to relevant content using data relationships (links between citations, content, and multiple profiles).

It should be noted that Google will probably reinvent/reengineer Google My Business before too long, so the sooner we use known methods for establishing identity and authority the better.

Googlebot is hungry for information. Note that network profiles and activity streams are crawled and get indexed quickly by Google. If they consider it important, maybe you should too. (BTW: FAQ often gets crawled and indexed before other content)

Invest in creating useful information and get more value from existing marketing channels by making sure they are connected to your profile(s) and relevant quality content. Here's One Way To Do It