Having a blog is one thing, but coming up for content to write about is another! Today I will give you 4 ideas on what you could write about if you are a tour or activities provider.

#1 Top 7 things our guests say about us

“Top x things” are articles that always catch people’s attention. Build out this blog post’s content by leveraging from:

• Recent TripAdvisor and guest reviews

TripAdvisor review integrated to blog post

• Utilise photos you took of people on tour
• And if you have a letter you have received in the mail why not scan it and include it as well
• Aim to also get a video review from your clients (using your iPhone is fine) a few days before you plan on writing the blog post

#2 The perfect itinerary when visiting “insert your location here”

Your guests will most certainly be doing a pre and a post activity or looking for pre or post accommodation. Why not make it easy and create an itinerary for them?

• Pretend you were one of your typical client and put yourself in their shoes when you write the article
• Aim to list 3 accommodation providers you recommend for your visitors to stay at. Do not just use a bullet list but highlight the benefits of each with a link to their website
• Insert some quotes from your past guests (try not to make them up!). Things like “I really enjoyed visiting xyz’s winery down the road – they had really packaged the wine tasting experience well and for $5 dollars it was a great way to end our day
• Insert a map as well. Google Maps allows you to easily create a personalised map (view here how to do it)

#3 10 things to visit on your way here from “insert closest airport”

Extend your reach by thinking about where your visitors are coming from. Create an itinerary from the airport. You will kill 2 birds with one stone as you will also be able to send them this blog post as a nice “thank you for your booking here is how to get to us” email as soon as they booked. They will really appreciate the personalised contact. Don’t forget to include elements such as:

• Tolls: is there a toll road on the way? If they are renting a car make sure you include information on how to pay the toll
• Is there a nice place they could stop half way for breakfast/lunch/dinner
• Will they land late? Do you recommend an accommodation house close to the airport?
• Are there specific things you recommend for couples vs. for families with kids in tow?
• It would also be nice to add a Google Map of the best recommended route

Creating a custom Google Map

#4 What to look for when booking a “insert your activity name here”

Now is the time to shine. Without naming your competitors (whilst being fully aware of your differences and USPs) build an article that highlights your USPs and why they are so important. If you are a hot air ballooning company for instance, you could come up with points such as:

• What is the safety rating of the provider
• Is early pickup and drop off included
• Will I receive a free photo
• Will I be fully refunded or just given a voucher in case the trip needs to be cancelled due to weather?
• Who is the pilot? is he/she a local?
• Why not creat a little video about your business and posting it on YouTube and embedding it in the blog post?

How often should I be blogging?

Blogging continuously adds fresh content to your website. This in turns attracts search engine robots to your website and shows them that you are being “active” in cyberspace. Give it a good 6 weeks and you should start to reap the rewards and see your search engine rankings improve.

On average, aim for at least 2 blog posts per month. Plan your topics in advance using our simple to use one page social media communications calendar. If your online competitors have a more active blogging strategy than yourself you may well need to up your blogging to 1 or 2 posts a week. If blogging is not your thing or you don’t have the resources to do it in house our team at UntangleMyWeb.com can help you by helping you define your communications calendar and blog on your behalf. Just
drop us an email if you would like one of us to ring you back.

Why bother – 0urs is working just fine! 

Over the years I keep on thinking I have seen it all when it comes to dicey email setup. Yet once a month there is a new winner. Are you one of them?

Can you afford to have a risky email setup run your business?

• During the QLD floods, many companies couldn’t use their email to communicate to their clients because their email server was located in their building and the power supply to their buildings had been turned off.
• Are you one of those? You need to ring your wife/on site manager/cleaners to turn the office computer on as you forgot to confirm a booking and your email only lands in that computer’s inbox
• Once your emails have been downloaded to one computer they don’t get downloaded to your others
• You don’t want to display your email address on your website because your inbox suddenly gets clogged up with spam (remove the email from the website and watch those bookings drop!)

1. Use a professional email address

2. Get given access

At UntangleMyWeb we often hear stories of operators in distress (and some still in denial) from the power of technology for their business and the resistance to embrace it in order to maintain profits. If you know an operator experiencing these challenges, please share the link to this article with them, knowing you are not the only one can sometimes be just the nudge you need.

“The Impacts of New Technology on Tourism & Hospitality Operations and Employees”

(report distributed 24th February 2012: written by Michelle Shuttlesworth)

Technology for the hospitality and tourism industry is advancing. Hotels, Motels, B&Bs and experience-based businesses all have to quickly adapt to these changes.

Demands of guests are rising with the evolvement of new technology, so it is important that these businesses fulfill these demands and keep up with changes like:

• updating hotel management systems
• online booking systems,
• and transitioning to social networking.

Implementing these changes can cause a lot of stress on employees which can be detrimental to their health and work, but if business managers can create an easy transition then it could be very beneficial for the business and employees.

Choosing technology that will support their business processes and day to day activities will allow managers and employees to have a smooth transition 

Technology has revolutionised the business world with its nonstop inventions and updates on already new devices like smart phones and the iPad. The tourism and hospitality industry, with its main purpose of service, is greatly affected by the constant development of new and improved products of this digital world. The employees have to learn and adapt to these constant changes which can be very stressful. Too much stress can be very unhealthy and affect their work. This report will bring notice to the negative and positive impacts that new technology has on the industry and their employees.

The technology of communication and computers play a large role in the day to day activities of accommodation providers and tour operators. Most people call or go online to make a reservation. Computers can hold the bulk of the work in these businesses. For example, there are specific computer programs created just for hotel use. These programs are called property management systems (PMS). They help hold guest reservations, guest information, and billing information.

Most larger establishments (UMW edit: and now a lot of smaller establishments thanks to the Smart Tourism Website) have their own website that contains:

• general information
• amenities
• rates of rooms
• place to create your own reservation.

In the article “The Impact of E-Commerce and Social Networking on the Hotel Industry,” Jonathan Jaegar, a graduate of the School of Hospitality Administration at Boston University, discusses the positive and negative effects that social media and third party internet has on hotels. He claims that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are a great way to advertise and give “hotel operators the opportunity to directly connect with a new generation of travelers” (Jaegar).  Hotels are being smart in taking advantage of these networking sites to advertise discounts to encourage demand and increase profits. Internet marketing is smart and innovative and gives hotels the opportunity to “create a positive image” and gain more customers (Jaegar).
However, Jaegar says, this method does not always end in larger profits. He says that hotels must calculate a break-even amount to know how many rooms can be sold at the discounted rate before they can sell all of these rooms and at a lower price.

Jaegar proclaims that “third party internet sites have exploded.” Some of these websites include Travelocity, Expedia, and Orbitz (UMW edit: Wofit, Booking.com, Stayz are some of the sites available in Australia). Hotel consumers have started to go to these websites because they believe they will find the best possible rates. Though it’s good that these third party internet sites help sell these vacant rooms, it can also lead to some negative effects. When people go to Travelocity or Orbitz, it takes away some of the profits from the hotel. What most people do not know is that the discounted rates can be located on the hotel website itself, not just the third party websites. (*UMW: Even though Jaegar’s example is referring to Hotels, this applies to almost all businesses in the Tourism Industry- particularly Accommodation providers.)
Booking straight with the accommodation providers website can guarantee room type and any other specific requests. (UMW: Be sure to remind your guests of this on your social media sites!)

In summary, what does all the above mean for my tourism business?

In conclusion of this first post (we don’t want to overwhelm you) there are many changes that will affect not only how your bookings are taken, but also how your day to day business tasks are completed. You probably find that you have made a lot of these changes already. This might include:

• Taking Credit Card Payments online using an online merchant account
• Using Email for correspondence/bookings
• Using MYOB or other account systems (we love the web-based system called Saasu)
• Ordering business supplies online
• Online Bookings
• Adding a TripAdvisor listing

Congratulate yourself on what has already been conquered… (it may seem like there is a lot to get a hold of but a little patience and determination will go a very long way)… and get ready for the next blog post which will be looking at:

• how this technology boom affects you and your employees
• where it could lead to for future business
• what is required from you to stay in the game

We will also provide you with some tips to get into the technology swing and how to source help when you need some motivation.

Here at UntangleMyWeb.com we get many questions from tourism operators with regards to online booking systems, such as:

• Which one do you recommend?
• Does this one integrate with my reservation system?
• Is it ATDW/TXA friendly?
• Will it allow me to integrate with Google Analytics?
• When do I get paid by the booking system provider?

The Tourism Ekit provides a solid base and reviews over 40 systems but it doesn’t (yet?) include a full review of each of the features of online booking systems.

This article lists and review some of the new (and not so new) features that distinguish a good from a great online booking system.

Design and look and feel

Control the look and feel of your system

Does your  online booking system allow you to control the look and feel of the online booking component, are you stuck with a standard template or require the services of a web developer to tailor the system to your customer needs and brands?

Integration with your content management system

A feature we love is when online booking system providers make the job of tourism businesses much simpler. The folks at Rezgo have done exactly that with their WordPress plugin. They have developed a little application that is free to use and allows to mirror your online inventory into your website directly. No need to reinvent the wheel and upload your description both on your website and on your online booking system.

Customer Relationship Management System (CRM)

A nifty feature that has started to appear over the past few years is the access to a CRM within your online booking system. Some systems offer it, some systems integrate with major CRM systems and some don’t. Is this a feature you require?

Mobile devices

And one of the most important features: how mobile-friendly is your online booking system? Is there a special layout or even application available to those customers wanting to make a booking from their smartphone?  What about for you, the business owner or manager, can you easily check your bookings and assign rooms using a smartphone app when you are out of the office? GuestPoint have  got both an iPhone booking app and an iPhone management app integrated to their software.

Sales maximisers

Does the system support upselling with optional extras

Can your guests buy a champagne breakfast in addition to booking their room? What about if they want to make their decision closer to their arrival date, can they update their booking online?

Email marketing integration with key systems or solid email marketing capabilities

Keeping contact with your past guests is so important. Does your system offer an email marketing functionality or – even better – does it integrate with key systems such as MailChimp.com?

Support for different currencies

This one is rather self-explanatory. Can your customers pay in their own currency? Systems such as Rezdy offer this as part of their core features

Partner Bookings

Does your system allow trusted partners to login and access your point of sale? For instance, can concierges log into your system to make bookings?

Promotion codes

Imagine being able to send your clients who haven’t booked in say over 12 months a special promo code (you would do so using email marketing). Does your system allow you to redeem promo codes?

Social media

Facebook app

Does your system seamlessly integrate with Facebook to allow your likers to buy from Facebook? Have a look at what the Booking Button has setup.

Support

Support via live chat, web based

How can you get support from your online booking system provider? is it on the phone? do they have a database for you to look at? even better, do they have LiveChat?

Training

How is the original training provided to you? Can you use a test site? Will you be given one on one training? Do they have videos to support it?

System

Cloud hosting

With loading speed being crucial for both yourself and your clients, it is important to consider where your system is hosted. Does it reside on your computer? Is it in the cloud? or a combination of both? Systems such as GuestPoint allow you to use a combination of local and cloud hosting that seems to offer the best of both worlds!

Payment models

Last but not least: how and when will you get paid? Does the money go directly in your bank or is it held by the online booking system company? If so, when will it reach your bank account?

If you have an online booking system and are not sure it supports such functionalities, why not give them a call? Many of them offer variations of the above options.

Are there other features that make your operations much easier?

1. Modify or develop your social media plan

(Click to enlarge)

Assess your social media plan and see what’s working for you. For example, use Facebook Insights to see which types of posts engage your users the most. If you’re posting day-by-day, this is a good opportunity to reevaluate how your Facebook Page fits in with your overall social media strategy.

Here are seven questions you need to answer to get a social media strategy in place:

1. What are your goals for your social media activities?
2. How do you plan to achieve these goals?
3. How will you monitor and respond to conversations about your brand?
4. How do you plan to engage your audience through your content?
5. How often will you communicate your content?
6. What purposes does each social network serve to your business?
7. How do you plan to improve your social media activities overtime?

2. Create a lasting impression with your cover image

(Click to enlarge)

One of the more exciting features of the Timeline is the cover image, a large image featured at the top of your page. Use this opportunity to create a lasting first impression for every single person that visits your Page. You can change the image frequently, allowing you to create a new impression every time. Try uploading an image that best represents your unique selling proposition; once you’re comfortable with the new timeline, you can start getting more creative with your cover image.

Keep in mind, cover images must be at least 399 pixels wide and must not contain:

• Price or purchase information, such as “30% off” or “Download it from our website”
• Contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page’s About section
• References to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features
• Calls to action, such as “Sign up now” or “Invite your friends”

3. Use the profile photo to display your brand

(Click to enlarge)

Your profile photo is the first thing users see when browsing through Facebook’s search results; use this opportunity to create further brand awareness for your business. Keep in mind that Facebook displays this image at 180px by 180px and any image with a lot of details may not look as good.

4. Choose your tabs wisely

(Click to enlarge)

If you have custom tabs installed, it is important to change the custom tab image. Use the new dimension of 111px by 74px to create bigger, attention grabbing icons for your tabs. If your tabs have simple names like ‘Welcome’ or ‘Accommodation’, make the effort to change them to something more actionable or informative such as ‘Get 20% Off’ or ‘Special Offers’.

Keep in mind, with one space locked for native apps like Photos means that only three tab panels are viewable at any given time. So pick your top three tabs to display and change the order of apps accordingly as they will likely be the first to be interacted with, or entirely ignored if not optimized for the new experience.

5. Update or create your landing tabs

(Click to enlarge)

Your landing tabs can now only be seen if users click on the tab icon under the cover image or you link directly to them. This is not to say that fan gating is not an option, as you can entice fans to Like your page in order to reveal sweepstakes, voting contests, and other promotions.

Have a 520px tab? Don’t worry, it still works in the new Timeline format

(Click to enlarge)

Even if you have already switched to Timeline, your 520px tabs will still function. With the extra 290 pixels, your 520px tabs will get centered in the middle of the 810-pixel layout without any adjustments.

6. Go back in time and tell your story

(Click to enlarge)

With Timeline, you can now add company events dating all the way back to its beginning. Take this opportunity to go through your company’s history and mark your company’s milestones such as the date you were founded, your first customers, when you moved to a new location, when you added new services, or increased staff.

Fans like to see businesses adding a personal touch to a Facebook page, and everyone enjoys a good startup story. Take this opportunity to tell your business’ story, add personality, let people know how it all began and share with others about how you got to where you are today.

7. Highlight what’s important

(Click to enlarge)

Learn to highlight posts (expands to widescreen) you think are important. This will allow you to emphasize key moments on your Timeline in a more strategic and unique ways. Experiment with this feature as it may prove to be more engaging than a Landing Page.

8. Pin your posts

(Click to enlarge)

While you no longer have the ability to create a default landing tab, you can now “pin” your posts to the top of the Timeline. Similar to marking a blog post “sticky,” a pinned post remains at the top left of the Timeline for seven days. Keep in mind, you can pin only one item at a time. Once the seven days are over, the post will return to the date it was originally posted on the Page’s timeline.

Use this feature to spotlight new and interesting content. You can even use it to create call-to-actions or special promotions with the opportunity to have your post shared by users.

9. Encourage users to send you a personal message

(Click to enlarge)

Businesses can finally send and receive private messages with users. This allows for much deeper consumer interaction, and will also enable Page managers to take extended customer inquiries off the Timeline and into a private message.

These inquiries can be better serviced in a more one-on-one manner, reach out to the consumer with a private message and resolve his/her question. It’s a good opportunity to yield both a happy user and a clean Timeline.

10. Ultimately, focus on creating more engaging content

It has been shown time-and-time again that businesses posting content that shows behind-the-scenes activities, exclusive updates or promotions encourages user interactions and promotes higher engagement rates. Using interesting milestones to craft the story of the business over time can help to stimulate conversations around major achievements. Remember to update the Timeline with new milestones as they happen.

Once you’re happy, publish your Timeline

Timeline for businesses will certainly shake things up for everyone who’s looking to make an impact on Facebook. One thing is for sure: The way content is shared and viewed within a Timeline Page is incredibly important. Businesses that consistently create engaging updates and share important milestones will continue to gain users’ attention. The switch to Timeline will put the focus on getting users to Like you because your content is informative and engaging not because they are being forced to like you through a fan gate. Create and rotate new apps for engagement, pin relevant and timely content, and update the feed with user-friendly dialogues to stay relevant in this new space.

It is important to understand that there is a big difference between a simple “on the fly” translation function on your website (such as Google Translate) vs. a multilingual website which has been structured and written to support different languages and stand-alone monolingual websites.

The multilingual functionality and optimisation is a topic that can be approached a number of ways depending on your goals and strategy. You will need to assess your marketing strategy and budget constraints before committing to the best approach for your business.

So, what are your options?

Option 1: On the fly with Google Translate

Google translate is a service that allows visitors on your website to select their preferred language to read your content. It is an “on the fly service” where your content is instantly translated. This also means that your content is not written (nor indexed in the search engines memory) in the language that Google will translate the website in.

Advantages: Free to install, quick fix solution with translations in 58 languages.

Downsides: Not always accurate translation, doesn’t get picked up by search engines, doesn’t help your site to be found in other countries in the selected language.

Suitable for: Quick fix, low budget. This is a great temporary solution while you are determining what target markets you would like to focus on and optimise your website for.

Other options: Apart from Google Translate there are other “on the fly systems”. Here is a list of WordPress friendly options: http://inspirationfeed.com/wordpress/plugins/top-10-useful-translation-plugins-for-wordpress/

Option 2: Multilingual site with translated and optimised pages within your website

This signifies that one or every page of your website will be translated into one or more foreign language of your choice (depending on the requirements of your target market). You may however not need to translate every page in each language. You may even decide not to have an English version of a page but only a Chinese version from instance.

Each translated page should be written with the following in mind:

• display content specific to the particular products and services you want the target market to view
• provide information about your company
• have a contact form
• links to social media (to provide more visual information/experiences)
• offer testimonial from someone of the target market
• and MOST IMPORTANTLY, be translated by a professional so it is written correctly.

Advantage: You can target a specific market that you have made feel special by dedicating a webpage or more to their language. Your page will also be indexed by search engines for this language and will have the chance to rank on search engines for searches in the language.
This is a cost-effective option to integrate with your website, with the majority of the cost in getting the formal translation of your selected content (budget for approximately 8c per word) and adding a new page to your website. If you have a content management system like WordPress you will be able to add this page yourself and even commission the translation overnight!

Downside: The translation won’t just be word for word but you will need to include the requirements of that specific target market within the content (for instance, how do Chinese visitors buy?). Since there is a translation cost involved you may not afford to translate all your blog posts. However most travellers will be “buying with their eyes” so don’t discount the power of your images, even when text is misunderstood.

Suitable for: Businesses that know their target markets, want to appear in search engines in their international markets.

Option 3: Dedicated websites per target market

This is a separate, standalone monolingual website that sits independently from your English website. This can be a direct translation of your site and will NOT be considered duplicate content by search engines.

Advantages: The whole website can be 100% tailored to the needs of your foreign target market. You will also have better search rankings as you have a dedicated URL and multiple pages of content to be crawled by search engines.

Downsides: Additional costs of building a new website as well as hosting, maintaining and translating more than one website.

Suitable for: Businesses generating a large portion of their revenue from an international market and want to fully leverage these target markets.

Which one is the best?

So which one should you choose?

• If you want to offer your visitors an approximate translation of your website and don’t have any budget then Option 1 is where you want to start
• If ranking on search engines overseas is part of your marketing strategy then you need to start at Option 2 and could consider Option 3.

Always remember to check your Google Analytics statistics to see which one of your target market may most benefit from a translation. Here is a Google Analytics report showing the average time on site based on the country of origin of the visitors. You can see for instance that the Swiss visitors may benefit from having pages translated in French/German/Italian (Switzerland has got 4 national languages) as they are currently sitting at 64% below the average time on site… Could it be because they don’t understand English or is it because the offer isn’t targeted to them?

And which option does UntangleMyWeb.com recommend?

Our Smart Tourism Website supports option 2: multiple languages within the single website. The multilingual add-on is packed with powerful language management and translation features such as:

• Easily way to translate pages side by side
• Affordable professional translation built in
• Assign translation jobs right from within your website
• Translation for visitor comments

Step 3: Relate to your past guests using social media

Social media is a real asset to tourism businesses as it gives past customers the opportunity to brag about their holiday and tell the world about the wonderful experience they had. TripAdvisor in particular is often compared to the online version of a guest book. The key difference being that those wonderful comments that guests left are now viewable by potential guests and read by search engines instead of remaining locked in the tour bus!

Situation

Your guests are here, about to have a wonderful experience which you need to capture to entice potential future clients to book with you instead of your competitors.

Case study

One of the most cost-effective ways to ensure you capitalise on past guests experiences is to share them via social media. Let’s imagine you are a tour business in the Northern Territory. There are 2 different phases during which you need to conduct different activities to ensure you maximise all those wonderful guest experiences:

Phase 1: During the tour

Ensure the tour guide has a camera/video camera/iPhone handy to capture those exciting moments and ask guests a few questions on camera about their tour, what they preferred, how they rated the experience or to share a few quirky stories.

• Once back in the office, upload these videos to your YouTube channel as well as your Facebook business page and feed them into your website.

Use this camera to take pictures as well (with the guests’ permission).

• Once back in the office, upload these photos to your Flickr page as well as onto your website.

Phase 2: Post tour

Approximately 10 days after the guests have left email them and ask them to leave you a review on TripAdvisor, your Facebook Page or a website of their choice. Make sure that you include the direct links to your TripAdvisor review page and Facebook Page.

• To do so all you need is create an email template on a system like MailChimp.com and regularly upload your list of past guests. If you upload your list of past guest the day after their visit you can for instance setup what is called an Auto Responder that sends then the pre-configured message on “day uploaded + 10″.  Once the system is properly configured, all it will require is for you or your staff to add the guest’s contact details one day post visit and the technology will take care of the rest!

How many of you have landed on a website and found it too cluttered, not user-friendly and went back to Google looking for another website that makes it easier to find what you want? Unfortunately this is too common in the tourism industry. You can have well optimised website sending lots of traffic from Google but once visitors land on your site it just gets too complex and they leave. It’ similar to paying for a lot of advertising which generates many phone calls or walk-ins and having a grumpy receptionist who turns people away.

Benchmarking your tour business against Australian competitors

Step 2: Attract your visitors to your website

(if you are looking for step 1 refer to this blog post)

Situation

Your website is live, your Google Analytics reveals that it’s getting traffic but you are not quite sure how many of those visitors convert into buyers… You definitely know it can be improved and are looking for solutions on how to make quick fixes that will maximse the return on investment (tell me how to get this done for my website)

Case study

One of the most cost-effective ways to ensure you turn as many website visitors into buyers is to look at what is happening when they visit your website. For less than $170 you can get 3 independent users to review your website and they will video their experience as they navigate your website AND give you clear pointers on how to make simple yet effective changes. We find it’s a real eye opener for most people.

For example, is your buy now button hidden in the menu or just a small link below the page fold that the majority of visitors simply miss. Take a look below:

Where is your book now button located on your website? Is it on every page AND below the description of each and every one of your tour?

Quizz: how customer-friendly is your website?

Score

There is a total of 30 points.

• 25 points and above: well done, your website conversion rate should be as high as your phone conversion rate. Is this the case?
• 15 points and above: your website lacks key elements that travellers request and use all the time. Your conversion rate could dramatically be improved
• Less than 15 points: there is some serious work to do. At the moment your website isn’t being the sales and marketing sales machine your business requires.

Is your website going to support the improvements required?

Hopefully by now you have identified some quick changes you can make to your website and realise that your website needs to be your top-performing sales person. The question remains: is it physically and economically practical to improve your website?

The first element you need to look at is your content management system, which is the engine powering your website. Is it like an old Renauld car or can it be tuned and oiled? If you are not sure what website CMS you have take a look at www.builtwith.com or talk to your web developer.

If you are using WordPress, Drupal, DNN, Joomla, SilverStripe well you are in luck as these systems come with lots of little applications that can be plugged in to make your website conversion-friendly at a low cost. If your website is powered by systems such as Dreamweaver, FrontPage or god forbid Flash you are better off investing in a new website as it will be much more cost effective!

What system do we recommend?

Here at Untangle My Web we have been training tourism operators for 5 years and we have heard and seen horror stories when it comes to websites that don’t and simply can’t convert. We have seen it all. For instance, one of our workshop attendees was told by her graphic designer that he was not going to add their phone number to their website homepage as it would “break the design”. Well that’s clever. How were clients going to book a table at that restaurant?

Our directors Fabienne and Adam decided 3 years ago that enough was enough and developed the Smart Tourism Website which is a search engine friendly, conversion-friendly, mobile optimised and social media ready. Take a look for yourself at our tourism website designed for tourism businesses!  It has all the features travellers expect and operators need.

Next week we will look at how to use social media effectively.

This week’s post is going to delve into the specifics of what it takes to market a tour business online. You may have read our last post “Getting online with an online marketing strategy: a case study”, which provided a simple, 3-tiered high level online marketing plan. Well today we will focus on Step 1 of the plan only and give you a real-life example of how search engine optimisation can make or break a business (we had to change names for obvious reasons)!

Before we get started… let’s see how your tour business compares to other Australian competitors…

Benchmarking your tour business against Australian competitors

Step 1: Attracting visitors to your website

Situation

It isn’t a secret anymore: if you have a website but aren’t optimising its content for search you missing out on a really cost effective marketing tactic which leaves you relying on costly marketing channels such as AdWords.

Your website is like a newly-opened shop. Unless there is signage and advertising it will remain the best kept secret. Only 50% of tour businesses in Australia invest in optimising their website for search which provides the other 50% a big competitive advantage!

Solution

One of the most cost-effective ways to ensure travellers find you on Google is to research the keywords your target market is likely to use and optimse your website for those keywords. This is the first step to showing on Google and attracting the type of visitors that are most likely to book your product. This is one of the first steps of the discipline is called Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). You can either:

• do this yourself (ATDW’s tourism ekit is a great place to start www.atdw.com.au/tourism_e_kit.asp)
• or engage the services of SEO professionals (starting at approximately $300 per month). Such services include Keyword Research and Link Building.

See it in action

This quick exercise will show you how it all works:

John’s bike tours

Let’s pretend that your business is called John’s bike tours and that you are selling bike tours in Airlie beach. You want to find out what keywords you should optimise your website for. Let’s say that your Search engine optimiser recommended the below keywords:

• bike tours airlie beach
• airlie beach bike tours
• airlie beach tours

Do you think they are accurate? How many people are searching on these keyword per month?

If you are not sure how people are finding your website take a look at the keywords in Google Analytics to see exactly what keywords people use. If the top 10 contain lots of brand related keywords it’s a signal you have an SEO problem because you want to attract more new customers not people that already know about your business.

How to get some visibility of what is happening to your business?

To assess if your SEO strategy is working you need to have visibility on at least 3 metrics:

1. Your real time rankings on Google for those keywords
2. How many visitors are you getting from each and every one of these keywords?
3. Last but not least – how many people are actually searching for these on a monthly basis?

The Digital Dashboard picks up where Google Analytics leaves off by providing visibility on all of these metrics. Here is a screenshot.

• The first column shows the keywords
• the next one (green) shows your rankings in Google for this keyword
• the next column  (purple) shows the number of visits to the website
• finally, the local searches column (yellow) shows how many people search for these keywords, in Australia, on a monthly basis. This is the opportunity.

So what’s the verdict?

• The keyword to go for is “airlie beach bike tours” as there are over 5,000 people actively searching for it per month.
• How are you ranking for it? Well, you are in position 15, that means on page 2 of Google and you only received 15 out of 5,400 potential visits. Not good
•  If you were the owner of John’s bike tours would you be happy with this ranking? Most definitely not.

Finally, I haven’t mentioned the competition column. There is no point optimising for keywords which are too competitive, for example if each of the top 3 spots in Google have hundreds of links pointing to their website and you only have a few then you may need to reconsider which keyword to target. Our keyword research identifies the no-go keywords before you waste time trying to optimise for them…

Next week we will look into enticing your visitors to buy on their first visit of your website…

Imagine this…

You have just launched your B&B in the Gold Coast hinterland and are about to embark on an online marketing journey which will include getting a website developed, getting to grips with Facebook and other social media for business, and marketing your business online.

It’s a big task to do while running the business and delivering outstanding service to your guests however you understand that 95% of domestic and international travelers research their trip online so you really do need to get onto it. You have spoken to a number of people about what they have done to attract customers online but you aren’t really sure where to start or what you need to do. Your business is struggling offline and your current web presence is dismal apart from the website you already have (it was made 3-5 years ago by a friend).

So what are the very basics you should have in an online marketing strategy to at least have a semi decent online presence?

Step 1: Attract your visitors to your online presence

Think about a website as a newly-opened shop. Unless there is signage and advertising your shop will remain the best kept secret around. The same happens online; you need to attract visitors to your website, it’s as simple as that. One of the most cost-effective way to do so is to research the keywords your target market is likely to use and optimse your website for those keywords so that it shows up on the top of Google. This discipline is called Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and can consist of:

1. On Page Optimisation – Page titles and meta descriptions, in content keyword inclusions, heading styles (H1, H2, H3 etc), bolding, underlining, hyper linking, image optimisation, site speed, site maps… the list goes on
2. Off Page Optimisation – inbound link building, directory submissions, blog posting, social media linking, social bookmarking etc.

You can either do this yourself (ATDW’s tourism ekit is a great place to start) or engage the services of SEO professionals (starting at approximately $300 per month). For detailed information on SEO practices and how you can use them for your business take a look at our series of SEO blog posts: http://www.mywebschool.com/blog/seo/

Only 4 out of 10 accommodation businesses in Australia use SEO in their business so if you get this right you will start to rank above many of your competitors on the page one of Google.

Step 2: Entice your visitors to convert into buyers

Once visitors land on your website you want to make sure you have all the elements in place to entice them to book online or at least enquire, traditionally this would be the role of the sales assistant (and you would want to make sure he/she is well trained to close those sales!).

Your website content needs to be able to handle questions from the most difficult of clients. This discipline is called Conversion Rate Optimisation. Have a look at www.whichtestwon.com to understand how a small change in the colour of your book now button could improve your bookings, you can also look at our Bounce Rate Optimisation – How to stop people from rejecting you blog post for further information.

In terms of our case study, as a B&B you need to think about how travelers are likely to navigate your website in order to write content that is likely to convert. For instance, your “rooms and rates” page should include photos, prices, booking buttons and testimonials such as ones from TripAdvisor (e.g. Rooms and Rates and here Room Details)

You also need to be bookable online. The most effective, fastest and cheapest way to achieve this is to install an online booking system on your website. The Tourism Ekit provides with a comparison chart of online booking systems suitable to Australian accommodation providers.

Finally, a little tip: check out the free live chat tool called Zopim (www.zopim.com). It will allow you to start a conversation with every single visitor to your website. With the average Australian B&B getting approximately 50 unique visitors per day, that is one fast way to get bookings! See a live chat example on our demo B&B site here: www.smartaccommodationwebsite.com.

Step 3: Relate to your past guests using social media

Social media is a real asset to accommodation businesses as it gives past customers the opportunity to brag about their stay and show the world about the wonderful experience they had. TripAdvisor in particular is often compared to the online version of a guest book. The key difference being that those wonderful comments that guests left are now viewable by potential guests and read by search engines instead of remaining locked in the cottages!

One simple way to leverage TripAdvisor is to send a personalised email to your past guests after they have left and ask them to leave you a review on your TripAdvisor page (ensure you provide them with the direct link!). Just like Witches Falls Cottages on the Gold Coast, your B&B could soon be ranked amongst the top accommodation providers of your region.

For those of you that are interested in upgrading your website or getting a new one be sure to check out our blog post on Planning a Killer website and download our free resources below!