How Social Media Can Help Travel Brands Arrive at More Bookings

When it comes to social media, travel brands should have no reservations in using it since it brings in more reservations. Travelers love to share their vacation experiences across social media platforms. They post photos on Instagram, share highlights on Facebook, put videos on YouTube, and give updates on Twitter. It’s a simple way to stay in touch and share their travel moments. Travelers also use social media to research destinations when planning future trips. It lets them contact properties personally and develop brand relationships. It’s easy to see that consumers use social media at every stage of the travel process. To help brands use social media platforms to increase their reach and results, mediapost.com explored these savvy travel marketing strategies.

Give a Response to Get a Response
Social media can be so beneficial for business, but many travel brands don’t realize that they need to be socially active to have steady social media activity. For instance, consumers asked U.S. travel companies almost eight million questions via tweets and Facebook posts during Q1 2015. Yet only an average of 18% responded on Twitter and 59% replied on Facebook. Travel brands must take social media seriously and invest the time and effort to engage on every platform. This gives travelers a great impression and builds brand loyalty.

Remarket to Raise Awareness with Social Ads
Since travelers hop and shop from travel brands to find the best deals, it’s important for brands to stay in front of their target market. They can achieve this through remarketing, which serves ads back to people who either visited their websites or showed interest online. Research has shown that placing native ads in prospects’ Facebook News Feeds can be extremely effective. In fact, many brands reported a higher conversion rate with this remarketing method than with other Facebook ad units. Plus, remarketing with social media ads tends to be less expensive than placing ads on search engines. This can increase the return on ad spend and provide more-personalized reach.

Look Local to Personalize Promotions
Travel is defined by the destination, so travel brands should leverage location to create compelling offers. Companies should get creative and structure personalized promotions around city-centric themes. A prime example is JetBlue, which ran a social summer promotion that offered special discounts based on the temperature in Central Park. Its creative, quirky nature generated buzz, press, and social sharing, which resulted in lots of bookings. The promotion was so successful because it tied a valuable discount to a local, real event. This shows that social media can take any form or format to capture consumers’ attention.

Stay aware of what’s happening in travel marketing. Contact MDG.

MDG, a full-service advertising agency with offices in Boca Raton and New York, NY, is one of Florida’s top hospitality marketing companies and branding firms. MDG’s core capabilities include advertising, branding, logo design, creative, infographic development, digital marketing, creative media planning and buying, radio and TV advertising, website design and development, email marketing, mobile marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, and SEO. To stay on top of the latest trends in travel marketing and advertising, contact MDG.