Marketing has changed drastically in recent years and continues to grow as new social media platforms, customer preferences and software automation solutions develop. Businesses of any size or industry can cash in on these innovations and reach new customers – more efficiently than ever before. This is especially true for travel agents and agencies. So this post breaks down these travel agent marketing tools and shows how you start implementing them in your business straight away.
Since social media and internet marketing has dramatically shifted how we can reach our customers, we must narrow in and clearly identify our target markets in a customized way.
We need to understand where they spend their time, what their values are and how we can provide solutions to specific problems they’re face.
And we must identify which platforms they spend their time on, what their state-of-mind is on those platforms and how our messaging will subsequently perform there.
As such, the first section of this article examines this idea in greater detail before presenting the best travel agent marketing tools for your business.
Outline
- Introduction: Your Customers & Where They Spend Their Time
- Google My Business Optimization
- Software Specific To The Travel Industry
- Market Research & Lead Generation Tools
- Email Automation & Email Marketing Tools
- CRM Tools
- Social Media Tools
- Video Making & Creatives Tools
- Digital Marketing Automation Tools
- Landing Page & Sales Funnel Building Tools
- Tips & Hacks
- Conclusion
Introduction: Your Customers & Where They Spend Their Time
This first section examines two fundamental points that you should first consider.
These two ideas will allow you to take full advantage of the tools presented below:
- Knowing exactly who your customers are and where they spend most of their time
- Understanding your customer’s state-of-mind while they’re visiting these particular platforms
This is a crucial starting point and foundation to any successful digital marketing protocol. Let’s use an example to demonstrate this critical point.
Consider a Facebook user. Why are they on this platform and what is their state-of-mind?
Well essentially, people are on Facebook to be entertained, to connect with friends and family and to share engaging posts.
Now consider that same prospect but while they’re on Pinterest. Here, people are looking for inspiration, to have questions answered and problems solved – and also for shopping.
Let’s further this example by considering YouTube or Google.
These tools (similar to Pinterest) are useful for reaching prospects with buyer intent. That is, you’re reaching users that are in a buyer’s mindset.
So before you decide which tools, marketing strategies and platforms you’d like to use, it’s helpful to analyze your prospect’s state-of-mind and how that relates to your own objective and offer.
This way, you can frame your offer, messaging and content to match that user’s expectations while on a particular platform.
Since a full rundown on internet advertising best practices is beyond this article, I’ve put together two followup posts specifically for travel agents and digital marketing:
- How To Use Digital Marketing As A Travel Agency
- A Definitive, Step-By-Step Visual Guide To Facebook Ads For Travel Agents
Now let’s dive in to the first fundamental marketing tool useful for travel agents!
Google My Business Optimization
Setting up a Google My Business page is an important first step if you have a store location.
Essentially, above all else, you want to be indexed and searchable on Google. And you want those search results to be optimized to include as much useful information as possible for any potential clients.
So regardless of the other methods and tools you use, making sure your all set up for local Google searches is a perfect starting point for optimizing your business online as a travel agent.
Since I won’t be going into the full process of getting set up with Google My Business, here is a link from Google that gives you a step-by-step guide for getting started.
For our purposes, I want to focus on some items that will help optimize your Google listing for conversions and a better customer experience.
Here is a short list for ways to optimize your Google My Business listing:
- Make Sure Your Business Is Listed Under The Most Relevant & Accurate Category For Your Industry
- Use Clear, High-Quality Images In Your Listing
- Be Sure To Add Relevant Contact Information, Such As Your Phone Number, Address, Hours & Website URL
- Make Sure Your Messaging & Information Matches Your Website & Social Media Accounts
- Encourage Customers & People to Leave Reviews
In addition to these suggestions, ensuring your actual website is optimized for Google is also a best practice.
Paying attention to content SEO (search engine optimization) and on-site optimization can boost your rankings and conversions.
We won’t explore too much SEO here, but just know this can be a fantastic marketing strategy for any business online. However, it does take patience and effort to start seeing results.
For example, ranking articles on the first page of Google can take up to 35 weeks or more – depending on the industry, niche and keyword competition.
However, once you are optimized and ranking, you’re essentially driving free, organic traffic to your website and business.
To get started, you’ll first need to develop a consistent content strategy, such as starting a blog and writing articles based on keywords that your target audience are searching for.
If you’d like further reading on SEO and how to optimize your website for Google rankings, here is a totally free lesson from the HubSpot Academy.
Software Specific To The Travel Industry
It seems to appropriate to kick things off with a list of travel-specific software solutions.
These tools provide various booking, consulting, marketing and business management resources that will be particularly relevant for travel agents.
The primary goal for many of these tools is to increase automation, efficiency, communication, product development and time management.
So let’s check them out, shall we!
All-In-One Travel Business Automation Software Suite
- Automates Your Sales, Marketing, Operations & Finances
- Easily Create Your Own Travel Products & Packages
- Automated Upselling & Multi-Channel Sales Integrations
- Automate Supplier Communication & Business Operations
- Easily Manages & Automates Finances & Accounting
- Marketing Automation Tools & Coupon/Promo Creation For Lead Generation, Nurturing, Upselling & Reselling
- Insightful Reporting & Data Analytics
Client & Itinerary Building Management Software
- Easily Create & Manage Flights, Booking & Accommodations
- Customize With Your Owned Content
- Easily Integrate Itineraries With City Guides & Destination-Specific Content
- Easily Message & Send Client Itineraries
- *Team Discount Options Available
Online Booking & Scheduling Software
- Manage & Sell Online Through A 24/7 Reservation & Booking System
- Easily Integrates Bookings Through Facebook & Google
- Safe & Secure Payment Gateways
- Seamless & Simple Online Booking Form For Great Customer Experience
- Easily Update, Manage & Customize Your Customer Manifest Across All Devices
- Pricing Plans That Scale As Your Business Grows
Itinerary & Tour Management Software Perfect For Tour Operators
- Easily Create Quotes In Minutes
- Make Online Itineraries Using The Online Itinerary Builder
- Manage Different Payees & Third-Party Suppliers
- Dynamic Pricing Feature That Automatically Adjusts Package Pricing Based On Seasonal Changes Or Demand Shifts
- Compatible With Third-Party Accounting Software
- Built-In CRM
- Data Analytics & Reporting
- Seamless Integration With AXUS Travel App
Market Research & Lead Generation Tools
Understanding your industry and customers through market research is essential.
Ultimately, this knowledge will help guide your lead generation efforts as you discover the interests, values and demographics of your target market and the various problems or questions they have.
By fully grasping your market and the different pain points your target audience experiences, you’ll be in a position to offer comprehensive solutions and answers to those problems – often for free and in exchange for their email or contact information.
And this is backbone of a good lead generation campaign.
So let’s check out some useful tools for adopting this strategy into your travel agent business.
Comprehensive Market, Social Media & SEO Research & Analytics Tool
- Analytics Into Competitor Strategies
- Insights on competitors strategies for both organic search results and paid advertising methods
- Keyword Research Tool
- Understand which keyword customers are searching for
- You can use this information to craft enticing offers and content for ads and to capture leads
- Traffic Analytics
- Analyze your competitors traffic to see what’s working for them
- Get insights into trends and media consumption habits of your customers
- Find new markets and niches to target
- Market Explorer
- Analyze new markets and niches with audience insights and competitor benchmarks
- Explore & Analyze Local SEO Competition For Ranking
- SEO Writing Assistant
- Helps to optimize your content for ranking in search engines
- Track Your SEO Ranking Postiion
- Analyze Competitor Social Media Strategies
- Also comes with a social media scheduler
- Many more features….
Create Quizzes, Surveys, Polls, Calculators & More
- Easy-to-Use Platform to Create Interactive Content For Websites, Ads & Social Media
- Proven to Increase Engagement & Post Performance
- Interactive content is shown to increase organic reach via sharing and the viral effect
- Interactive posts boost conversions, sales, ROI and revenue
- Easily Create Quizzes, Assessments, Tests, Calculators, Polls, Forms & Surveys
- Also Create & Manage Your Own Chatbots & Giveaways
- Add Your Own Brand & Logos to Customize Your Projects
- Comprehensive Analytics & Optimization Tools
- Use Graphs, Charts, If/And Questions & More
- Fantastic Tool For Lead Generation
Market Research & Competitors Analytics Tool With A Sales Funnel Focus
- Market Mapping & Benchmarking
- Funnel Optimization Using Competitor Insights
- Customer Behavior Data
- Understand the sites and places your target audience is visiting online
- Analytics Into Best Performing Pages & Top Performing Competitor Sales Funnels
- Sales Funnel Insights For The Whole Customer Journey
- From Awareness, Consideration and Evaluation to Purchase and after-purchase Experience
Totally Free & Comprehensive Keyword Research & Suggestions Tool
- Get Keyword Search Volume, Competition and Trend Insights
- Analyze Competitor’s Domains & SEO Strategies For Insights Into What’s Working (or not working)
- Keyword Suggestions to Help With New Ideas
- Content Ideas Generation
- See what the top performing content and currently ranking pages are for particular keywords
- Get Backlink Data For Websites
Email Automation & Email Marketing Tools
Communicating consistently with your prospects and your existing customers ensures that you stay fresh in their minds as they become more familiar and accustomed to seeing you in their inbox.
You’re also establishing more trust and authority while pushing people further down your sales funnel and closer to a purchase.
By setting up value-adding, engaging and quality email sequences – while also segmenting and customizing your emails based on your different customer archetypes – you’ll be way more likely to make conversions and sell new products and packages via email marketing.
So let’s check out some useful email automation software for your travel agent marketing!
Free Email Automation With All-In-One Inbound Marketing & Business Management Options
- Intuitive Drag-and-Drop Email Builder
- The Free Plan Gets You An Email Autoresponder & A Powerful CRM
- Multitude of Bonus Business Management Features Available For Upgrade
- Landing page sales funnel builder
- Marketing, sales & service solutions
- Impressive Amount of Training, Tutorials & Bonus Features
- A/B Split Testing & Data Analytics
Small Business Email Automation With Decades of Experience
- Simple Drag-and-Drop Email Builder
- Hundreds of Templates to Choose From & Customize
- Many Advanced Segmenting & Tagging Features to Customize Email Sequences
- A/B Split Testing & Data Analytics
Extremely Simple to Use & Comes With A Landing Page Builder
- Incredibly Simple Drag-and-Drop Builder
- Make Emails, Embedded Forms, Pop-Ups & Landing Pages
- Tagging, Segmenting & Personalization Features
- A/B Split-Testing & Data Analytics
- Email Optimization Tools Such As Email Sending Based On Time-Zones
Simple & Awesome Email Builder With Built-In Photo Editing Tool
- Awesome Drag-and-Drop Builder With Live Editing
- Enhance, Edit & Add Effects to Images With the Image Editor
- Indistry-Specific Email Templates to Choose From & Customize
- A/B Split Testing & Data Analytics
Powerful Email Builder With Marketing Automation, Webinars & A Landing Page Builder
- Simple Drag-and-Drop Email Builder
- Tools For Automated Marketing
- Visualize and automate your sales funnel and workflows
- Set conditions, actions filters to easily manage your email and marketing
- Create Lnading Pages & Webinars to Engage More Fully With Your Audience
- Segmenting, Tagging & Optimization Features (such as their Perfectly Timed tool)
- A/B Split Testing & Data Anlytics
Recommended Read: Full List of the Best Email Marketing Software Solutions
CRM Tools
Let’s say you’ve started gathering email and setting up followup sequences, communicating with your prospects and customers in engaging ways.
Of course that’s amazing, but eventually you’ll realize that you’ll need a system and an organized way to manage all of those contacts.
This is where having an effective CRM (customer relationship management) tool in your travel agent arsenal can be extremely helpful.
Having a good CRM tool allows businesses, entrepreneurs and travel agents to effectively and efficiently manage and communicate with their contacts.
This aspect of business is crucial for understanding your customer’s purchasing and engagement behavior while having better control over their average lifetime value.
Visualize & Manage Your Customer, Prospects & Sales Using A Powerful Business & Sales Management Software
- Easily Track & Manage Customer Deals, Projects & Sales
- Email & Prospect Tracking
- Meeting Scheduling & Live Chat
- Free to Use
Impressive Online Business Software With High-Quality Sales Funnel Builder & Digital Marketing Tool
- Easily Collect & Manage Emails & Contacts
- SMS Messaging & Messenger Chatbot Integrations
- Connect & Manage Your Customers Directly Within Your Sales Funnel, Email Automation & Marketing Campaigns
Social Media Tools
Being active on social media is almost a requirement to stay relevant and competitive nowadays.
And the benefits for using these platforms to grow a loyal following extend beyond reach, influence and monetization.
A core function for social media is building brand.
Building brand includes many elements, such as your content strategy – such as deciding to post entertaining, inspiring or educational content – your color choices, your messaging and your mission or objective(s).
Defining these elements will guide your social media content strategy.
And considering the scope of competition online, customers have an ever-expanding amount of choices and options for purchasing travel products, services and packages.
So building brand is one the most effective ways to differentiate your business, create an engaged following and boost sales.
So let’s have a look at some useful social media tools that travel agents can use to engage with their audience and build brand.
Popular Social Media Post Scheduler With Robust Traffic Generating Resources & Analytics
- Most Popular For Scheduling Pinterest Pins & Generating Massive Traffic Through Pinterest SEO
- Easily Schedules Out Pinterest Pins & Instagram Posts
- Join Pinterest Tailwind Tribes to Start Generating Massive Website Traffic From Pinterest Users
- Audience Demographic Tools, Data Analytics & Trend Insights
- See what’s working and which offers/content/messaging compels people to take action and/or visit your site
- Other Advanced Features to Keep Your Pins & Posts Optimized & Fresh
Competitor & Market Research Tool With Built-In Social Media Scheduler
- Comprehensive Analytics For Competitor & Market Insights
- Comes With A Social Media Post Scheduler
- Great Option If You Want to Use Both A Market Research & A Social Media Scheduling Tool
Free Social Media Scheduler & A Simple Interface
- Easily Schedule Out Social Media Posts
- Similar to Tailwind, Works With Instagram & Pinterest
- However, you lose the benefit of Tailwind Tribes as a traffic generating strategy
Free, Incredibly Simple & Powerful Design & Editing Tool
- Easily Create Professional Designs & Edits For Any & All Social Media Posts
- Templates For All Social Media & Digital Platforms
- Hundreds of Templates to Choose From
- Built-In Designs, Fonts & Customization Features to Use
- Absolutely Fantastic For Creating Beautiful, High-Converting Pinterest Pins
- That is, if you’re using a Pinterest traffic growth strategy
- Incredible Amount of Functionality Under the Free Plan
Video Making & Creatives Tools
Once you’ve got a handle on your social media content strategy, you may realize that you need to upgrade your content quality.
Especially for the travel industry, having captivating photography, video and content is essential to stand out and build an engaged following.
This is where using effective video, image and creative tools will be extremely helpful and take your content to that next premium level – whether it’s for your social media, your website content or within your advertising campaigns.
And the best part is using this software is extremely simple – requiring zero technical expertise – while also being very affordable.
In fact, many of the software below are actually free! So let’s check them out!
User-Friendly Software For Making Professional Videos, Animations, Logos & Websites
- User-Friendly Online Video & Animation Maker
- Make Free Logos & Professional Branded Content
- Build Websites & Landing Pages
- Fully Customizable Video, Animation & Presentation Templates
- Make Video Intros, Outros, Slideshows & More
Powerful, Free Video Creator & Editor For Social Media & Marketing
- Create & Edit Professional Quality Videos Online
- High-Quality Videos For Social Media, Advertising & Business
- Edit Original Videos Or Choose From An Extensive Library of Clips
- Make Animations & Intros
- Use Templates & Simplify Your Workflow
Comprehensive Video Editor With A Huge Library Of Unique Marketing & Brand Building Videos
- Video Clips & Templates Specifically For Travel Industry
- Create & Edit Videos For Social Media, Advertising Or General Business Purposes
- Use High-Quality, Unique Promotional Video Content To Make Original, Branded Videos
- Use Templates To Streamline the Whole Process
- Easily Customize Content & Videos To Suit Your Brand & Objectives
Amazingly Simple Online Design Tool For Any & All Social Media Platforms
- Extremely Simple To Use & Beginner-Friendly
- Huge Library Of Templates, Elements & Font To Create Unique, Inspiring Designs
- Create Logos, Business Cards, Brochures, Invitations & More
- Make Designs, Images & Videos With Pre-Sized Templates Optimized For Each Platform
- Pinterest Templates
- Instargram Templates
- Facebook Templates
- Blog Banners
- Facebook Cover Photos
- YouTube Thumbnails
- Email Headers
- Blog Banners
- Many more…
Recommended Read: How to Make A High-Converting Video View Retargeting Campaign
Digital Marketing Automation Tools
Digital marketing has completely changed the landscape for business owners and entrepreneurs.
Nowadays, any business or individual can set up a simple social media ad campaign, targeting a very specific customer with a customized message and offer.
So, since anyone can do it, how can we stand out?
Well for starters, by combining and utilizing your existing assets that you’ve been strengthening above.
A good digital marketing ad campaign will have specific customer targeting with an enticing offer and effective followup communication and retargeting in place.
And if you’re implementing many of the strategies above, then you’ll already have many of these assets in place, so building out a successful ad campaign will be a lot easier.
For example, you can use your existing, top-performing social media images/videos as your campaign creatives.
You can then review your market research and come up with an enticing offer that solves a real problem for a specific subset of your audience.
Finally, you can set up a specific email followup sequence for the leads that you capture.
Together, these elements comprise a successful digital marketing campaign funnel.
Although, you’ll still want to decide on a landing page design and more clearly define your sales funnel while starting retargeting campaigns sooner rather than later.
I’ll talk more about landing pages, building out sales funnels and retargeting in the remaining sections.
So for now, let’s have a look at useful digital marketing tools you can use as a travel agent!
Full Suite of Automation Tools For Building & Making Profitable Facebook Ads
- A Facebook Automation Tool With 5 Unique Tools to Use
- Connect Retarget Let’s Your Retarget Only The Most Engaged Prospects – On Autopilot
- Connect Automate Automatically Turns Your Best-Performing Facebook Posts Into Profitable Ads
- Connect Explore Finds Hidden Audiences That You Can Audiences That You Can Target With Facebook Ads
- Connect Leads Automatically Adds Leads Into Your List Directly On Facebook
- Connect Audience Automatically Combines Email Remarketing With Ad Retargeting To Boost Conversions & ROI
Recommended Read: A 384% Increase In Conversions & How this Connect.IO Software Automates Your Marketing
Simple & Powerful Digital Marketing Automation Tool
- Connect With & Automates Your Facebook Ads, Google Ads & Snapchat Ads
- Create Rules & Parameters to Efficiently Manage Digtial Marketing Campaigns All In One Place
- Easily Customizable & Simple To Use
Landing Page & Sales Funnel Tools
Having a website is crucial for modern business. It’s essentially your digital store location.
Optimizing your website for conversions and user experience is whole topic in itself, so this section will briefly introduce some key concepts and tools.
Specifically, since this post focuses on marketing software for travel agents, I’m putting focus on landing pages and sales funnels.
These elements are extremely powerful and essential for leading your prospects closer to a conversion.
Briefly, for anyone that’s unfamiliar, landing pages are essentially like sales pages.
They have one specific objective, one specific offer and serve one specific purpose. That is, they do not have additional buttons, offers or calls to action.
Websites on the other hand are more general, often have multiple pages and purposes and house all of your business information and/or blog (if you have one).
Just keep in mind that if you’re building an online marketing campaign, you’ll need to send your target audience to some specific website or sales page.
And websites do not convert very well.
They’re just not optimized for the level of specificity and personalization that comes with a good digital marketing campaign.
Using a landing page software allows you to create multiple pages that are individually customized for each of your marketing campaigns, offers and audiences.
So you’ll definitely want to explore how using a landing page software can help grow your business.
Let’s dive in and look at some landing page and sales funnel software!
Marketing Software For Landing Pages, Sales Funnels, Membership Sites & More
- Powerful Landing Page & Full Sales Funnel Builder
- You Can Build Membership Sites, Chatbots, Webinars & More…
- Share Funnel Features Let’s You Download Other User’s Templates & Sales Funnels
- Simple Drag-and-Drop Funnel Builder & Editor
- Templates To Choose From & Fully Customizable
- A/B Split Testing & Data Analytics
- Email Automation & Many Other Marketing & Business Tools
Landing Page & Sales Funnel Builder With Powerful Business & Sales Solutions
- Easily Build High-Converting Landing Pages
- Part of the Larger Hubspot Marketing Software
- Which Comes With Many Bonus Business Tools Such As Ad Retargeting & Support For Multiple Currencies
- Although there’s a free version of HubSpot, this plan does not include landing pages
- Fully Customizable, Simple to Use & Quick
- Data Analytics & A/B Split Testing
User-Friendly Landing Page & Sales Funnel Builder + Full Website Builder
- Simple, Drag-and-Drop Editor
- Create High-Converitng Websites & Landing Pages With Customizable, Mobile-Responsive Templates
- Easily Pop-Ups, Opt-In & More
- Data Analytics & A/B Split Testing
Tips & Hacks
- Retargeting
- Run Retargeting Campaigns To People Who’ve Engaged With Your Ads, posts, Videos Or Website
- The Bulk Of Sales & Conversions Often Come From Retargeting Campaigns
- Build Brand
- Establish Your Unique Angle, Story & Vibe
- Build A Following & Content Using Social Media (such as Instagram) With Engaging, Interesting Content
- Think About Everything From Color Choices to Cohesive Messaging To Build & Establish Brand Identity
- Test
- Test Multiple Audiences In Ads
- Test Multiple Landing Page Designs For Conversion Optimization
- Etc.
- Make Enticing, Irresistible & Unique Offers
- Offer Free Value, Such As Lead Magnets
- Give Away Free Products Or Services To Quickly Establish Trust & Generate Leads
- What Unique Service Or Product Offering Can You Add To Sweeten The Deal
- Join In The Conversation
- Engage With Other Profiles & People Online By Joining The Discussions & Offering Valuable Insights (not selling)
- Consider Influencer Marketing
- There Are Many Awesome Instagram & YouTube Travel Channels With Engaged Followers To Check Out!
- Create Content & Add Value
- Create Blog Posts Optimized For Google & Other Search Engines (SEO)
Conclusion
This post has presented may powerful and helpful software tools for improving online business as a travel agent.
Whether you’re new to digital marketing and online business or advanced, the tools in this post are both beginner-friendly and highly useful for campaigns of any size or budget.
While many of the options are completely free to use (or try), investing in high-quality images and videos, high-converting landing page templates and interactive software tools that enhance your marketing ROI are invaluable for any modern entrepreneur or travel agent.
Although this post does not provide a totally exhaustive list of every software available, it does provide a comprehensive collection of some more popular ones to get started with.
Finally, since this post has provided a large amount of tools and resources, starting with even just one or two of the tools is a great way to stay organized and not be overwhelmed by too many options at once.
Choosing the right tools depends on your budget, marketing and business goals and personal preferences.
But regardless, most travel agents will benefit greatly by ramping up their online arsenal with high-quality, professional quality digital infrastructure.
Let me know in the comments what marketing strategies and/or tools you’re currently using or have used in the past!
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