Social media is one of the best channels you can use to promote your travel business.
This is because holidaymakers use it to research great holiday destinations and planplan out their next vacations.
But how does this translate to sales for your business?
What should you post on social media to get people to book their next travel adventure with you so that you can increase your sales?
Luckily, there are a few things you can do to amplify your social media reach to drive travel website sales.
Here’s how you can use social media to get more customers for your travel website.
Choose Your Primary Channels
The first thing you need to do to drive travel website sales is to select your primary social channels.
Identify two or three social media channels for your marketing campaigns. It’s a good idea to start small and only add more channels when you have enough content to publish on multiple platforms. You must also have enough bandwidth to engage with your audience there.
There are two strategies you can use to identify the best channels for your social campaigns:
Choose Channels That Feel Like “Home” for You
The successful use of social media to drive travel website sales depends on how comfortable you are with a particular platform.
For a travel business, it’s important to get on a platform that’s very visual. That makes Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook great for your business. Among these, you can pick up a platform you’re most comfortable with to get started.
Working where you are comfortable reduces the learning curve of utilizing social media to drive travel website sales because it’s easier for you to create content for it and connect with your target users.
Choose Channels That Are Popular Among Your Target Customers
To use social media to drive travel website sales, you need to target channels that are popular among your customers.
For example, if you provide yoga retreats targeting mid-aged women, Instagram is a great fit for you. But if you offer business and corporate retreats and hope to appeal to the key decision-makers in organizations, LinkedIn will be your best platform.
Exhale Yoga Retreats, for instance, provide out-of-town yoga retreats to help people relax and unwind. Since they target young and middle-aged women, Instagram is their primary social media channel.
Image via Instagram
Determine What to Share
Once you choose your preferred platforms, the next step is to start figuring out what content you’ll share.
Your social posts will determine if users will engage with your business or continue scrolling through their feeds.
The types of posts you can use to promote your business on social media to drive travel website sales include:
Awareness
Your target customers need to know you first before they can consider buying from you. For this, you can use awareness posts and inform social media users about your company and what you do. Make these posts visually engaging by using the best graphic design solutions for promoting your travel business.
Ideally, you want to share what makes you unique and different from other travel websites. Also, you should share information about the products or services that you’re providing.
The image below shows an example of an awareness post by a travel company.
In the post, G Adventures tells its followers and potential customers what it stands for – providing authentic travel experiences while supporting the local communities. To drive sales, they have added a link to their website where customers can book the trip.
Image via Facebook
Engagement
This type of content will help you connect with your audience and collect social media feedback about your content, products, or services. These posts have to be conversation starters and should get the audience talking.
Stickers on Instagram Stories are great here, as you can use them to let your audience ask you questions, collect feedback, put up polls, etc. The idea is to build trust among your potential customers by engaging with them.
Action
Lastly, be sure to publish posts that encourage users to perform a specific action. This can be clicking a link to view offers on your website or signing up for your newsletter. Similarly, you could get them to visit your blog.
Chubit Travel published a post advertising their new trip. They added a link that travelers can use to book the trips in the caption as well.
Image via Instagram
Create Amazing Destination Videos
Another way to use social media to drive travel website sales is to create amazing destination videos to entice users to book a trip with you.
Find a video of guests enjoying a past trip and share it on your social media pages.
Alternatively, you can use video editing software to compile images and videos of guests enjoying their vacation on your trip. You can make the video informative by creating a story around it and also explaining the costs involved and how the users can book the trip.
Such visuals are great for cultivating interest in your travel packages and can help you generate more sales.
To motivate people to visit Corfu in Greece, TUI created a promotional video for the destination. They published the video on YouTube and added a link for users to learn more about the destination and book a trip.
Image via YouTube
Use Paid Ads
Paid advertising is another way to use social media to drive travel website sales.
With paid ads, your posts can reach a large targeted audience, and you can add links to them to drive action.
Paid ads on social media can take many forms. You can choose to use images and videos to showcase individual destinations or carousel ads to showcase different travel packages.
When designing your ad, make sure your call-to-action is clear, so users know what to do after viewing the ad.
Inform Your Audience About Offers and Launch Competitions
Do you have any ongoing offers or promotions? Inform your audience about them on social media. Promotions and sales can bring in loads of customers for your business.
Start a campaign on social media to create a buzz around the deals and promotions you have on offer. Use a mix of organic and paid promotions to share posts about these promotions.
You can also partner with a travel influencer to reach a wider audience and get people to buy from you.
Alternatively, you can run a competition to encourage users to interact with your business to win a prize. For example, you can ask users to subscribe to your email newsletter or comment on your post to win prizes.
Competitions are a great way to attract potential customers. And you can turn these people into leads by capturing their information from the competition.
The key here is to ensure that the prize for the competition is valuable enough. Else, you might see muted participation in the competition.
In the example below, TUI has a competition where users can win money off their next trip. To participate, users have to sign up for TUI’s newsletter.
Image via Twitter
Conclusion
With the growth of social media, it’s essential for companies to use it to grow their businesses, especially for travel brands where visuals speak volumes.
So, go ahead and use these tips to engage your customers on social media and get them to your website to buy from you.