Are you on social media? Of course, you are. But are you harnessing its power to promote your travel agency on social media? Maybe not—and here’s why that matters!
We live in a world where 72% of potential travelers use social media to research and plan their vacations before they even pack a bag, which is why simply having a presence on social media isn’t enough.
Despite the saturated market, your travel agency faces the significant challenge of distinguishing itself from competitors and generating leads. Even on social media platforms like Instagram, where over 90% of users follow at least one business, you struggle to convert passive likes and shares into actual sales.
This is because you don’t have the right strategy and methods to capture attention and drive effective travel bookings. All this proves that social media demands a lot more than mere participation.
SocialPilot is the social media management partner for several travel agencies and businesses. Many of our users have enjoyed immense bookings by prompting their travel agencies on social media the right way. We have bought the secret strategies they have implemented in their social media marketing plans to gain success.
Here are 7 tried and tested ways to promote your travel agency on social media, which are guaranteed to convert wanderlust into real travel plans.
7 Ways to Promote a Travel Agency on Social Media [Tried and Tested]
Quick summary:
- Pick a Suitable Social Media Network
- Share Engaging Content
- Partner with Influencers
- Utilizing Hashtags and SEO
- Managing Posting Schedules
- Engaging with the Audience
- Leveraging Reviews and Testimonials
There are several ways to promote your travel agency on social media, some of which you might already be following. However, you may still not get any results because you are not doing it correctly and at the right time.
The strategies we will disclose moving forward are gathered by our experts as they are implemented by our users to promote their travel agencies. These strategies have proven successful in high growth and sales from social media, so everything you will learn here has been tested in the real world.
1. Pick a Suitable Social Media Network
People document everything on social media, from sharing travel vlogs to venting about minor inconveniences. Travel plans are often inspired by a video or snapshot seen online. As a travel agency, you should be the one sharing those captivating visuals on the right platforms. Having social media accounts on the most effective channels can significantly boost your bookings and leads.
Here is data showing the popularity and effectiveness of different social media networks and their usage by travel agencies over the years.
Each social media platform offers unique opportunities to connect with different target audiences, but the right one can significantly enhance your marketing impact.
The most popular social media networks for the travel business in 2024 are:
Often overlooked by new brands, Facebook remains a key player for travel agencies. It supports images, videos, customer interactions, and ads, with the added benefit of including links directly in posts and messages. Per our gathered data, the travel agency’s Facebook page thrives, underscoring its impact.
This platform is ideal for capturing potential customers’ imaginations through stunning visuals and engaging stories. In our expert view, Instagram is particularly effective for showcasing the allure of travel destinations.
Beyond its professional networking capabilities, LinkedIn is a valuable space for travel agencies to establish credibility. We advise all our users to be active on LinkedIn as it is a strategic platform for reaching corporate clients who organize trips and retreats for employees.
YouTube
Evolving beyond its origins as a video-only search engine, YouTube now also supports images. YouTube is an excellent channel for sharing diverse travel content and leveraging SEO and hashtag strategies to maximize visibility.
We know that being on Twitter may not directly lead to bookings. However, our experts recommend having a presence on Twitter as it is a crucial platform for ongoing engagement and community building, keeping your agency top-of-mind among travelers.
When picking a suitable network to promote a travel agency on social media, you should also be aware of your audience, their preferences, and their behaviors. If you target younger travelers, you should have a good presence on Instagram and TikTok. If you target based on the traditional traveling strategy, you should never skip Facebook.
Consider the case of City Tour MKE, a travel agency that uses SocialPilot to promote itself on social media. It leverages its social media accounts on Facebook by targeting age-based audiences, on Instagram by sharing stunning visual content, and on LinkedIn to attract more corporate tours.
See how they shared the same post on different social media platforms with different messages and marketing strategies.
They promoted private custom tours on Facebook to target and connect with holistic audiences.
They promoted their corporate events planning packages on LinkedIn, which is more relevant on a platform where people come looking for jobs.
This example of promoting your travel agency differently on all social media channels demonstrates the power of choosing the right platform for your agency and then keeping your posts and content aligned differently on each platform (even if you have the same content).
2. Share Engaging Content
Engaging content is the cornerstone of successful social media marketing, especially for travel agencies, where they can share stunning visuals and tell stories about every destination.
Once you have established the right platform for social media activity, you need to create engaging content. We would have advised you to share the same content on each platform a few years back, but that doesn’t work today. You must repurpose the content strategically or develop separate content for all social media platforms based on industry trends.
User Generated Content
This is the most authentic content for travel agencies. User-generated content generates more sales and does not require much work. Encourage your customers to share short videos or photos of themselves on the trip in collaboration with you. User-generated content is a great way to provide prospective customers with social proof.
Seasonal Campaigns
Seasonal campaigns are a great way to attract customers by showing highlights of a destination in the upcoming season with the deal. With every changing season, promote visuals and videos on social media, discount campaigns, and deals.
Announcements and Deals
Many potential travelers find travel trips expensive. To attract them, you can post about discounts when your agency achieves a milestone, run seasonal campaigns, and give coupon codes to repeat customers.
Other engaging content types that our users share to promote their business on social media are:
- Destination Highlights
- Travel Tips and Hacks
- Behind-the-Scenes
- Themed Travel Lists
- Interactive Polls and Quizzes
- Social Media Contest
- Time-Lapse Videos
- 360-Degree Videos
- Live Sessions
- Travel Itineraries
- Historical Insights
Here is an example of how to promote a travel agency on social media. Cabo San Lucas Tours is a travel agency that uses SocialPilot to schedule and publish social media posts.
They very smartly shared user-generated content and thanked and credited the owner of this beautiful scenic picture. This allowed them to capitalize on UGC, visual imagination, and the customer’s testimonial.
Again, they have created a mix of engaging content using user-generated content, discounts and deals, and visual content.
This strategy significantly increased their visibility and followers, and their engaging content strategy converted followers into bookings, giving us a perfect example of engaging content.
3. Partner with Influencers
Influencer marketing is a great way to gather the attention and interest of people in your niche. As a travel agency, you can collaborate with travel influencers from your niche and demography. Your agency can tap into their loyal following and leverage their credibility and expertise to boost your visibility.
Travel agencies using SocialPilot swear by these factors to pick the right influencer for their collaboration campaign:
- Relevance: Influencers who share content for your target market.
- Engagement Rate: Not just followers count, but also ask for their engagement rate.
- Authenticity: Influencers who share personal experience and genuine content are more authentic.
- Their Past Collaboration: Check for their past few collaborations with brands like yours to learn about their genuineness.
The next step is to craft a collaborative strategy that integrates all the campaign elements to keep it seamless for both parties. This strategy should include an influencer collaboration contract highlighting the marketing goals and campaign expectations, like the free travel packages and the necessary outcomes.
After the collaboration is successfully executed, don’t forget to monitor the performance of the collaborative post shared by the influencer for your travel agency.
Consider the example of Insight Vacations, which partnered with a Scottish-based piper-playing influencer, Lou Marshal, to promote their women-only tour to Scotland. They planned a series of posts on Instagram and other social networks highlighting the women-only sponsored trip to Scotland.
This is a perfect example of influencer collaboration, promoting the latest packages, and generating leads and sales.
4. Utilizing Hashtags and SEO
If you think SEO is just for websites, you are wrong. SEO is now emerging on social media as fast as all the social networks are adapting like the other. Travel agencies must regularly use hashtags and keywords in their posts and stories to reach the target social media followers.
Here’s how our users do that to optimize their social media:
- Optimize Profile: To increase visibility, always include travel-related keywords and hashtags in your bio, such as travel agency, adventure travel, etc.
- Optimize Posts: In the description of every post, include important, relevant keywords and a few relevant hashtags. Do the same for reels, too.
SEO in social media is a very new concept, so not many businesses have incorporated this strategy. You can be one of the initial travel agencies and leverage its benefits by enhancing your reach and increasing engagement.
Here’s an example of one of our users, Vue Travel agency, who specializes in trips worldwide. It used SEO approaches such as keywords and relevant hashtags generated by SocialPilot AI to boost its social media presence.
Also, they partnered with popular travel influencers who shared travel experiences using the branded hashtags and their relevant keyword in the post description.
Using 3 strategies in one, they shared user generated content, used keywords, and popular relevant hashtags to boost reach.
5. Managing Posting Schedules
If you are correctly following our experts’ social media marketing strategy, the next thing necessary is managing and monitoring your posting schedule. This is where you ensure that after effective planning, your execution is also seamless.
You must manage your plan smartly to maintain a strong social media presence. This is even crucial for travel agencies, as it will help them leverage captivating imagery and timely posts to influence customer decisions.
Above all, managing your social media lets you ensure the following crucial factors:
Stay Consistent
Consistency is the key to keeping your audience engaged and informed. Only a well-planned schedule that has a mix of different content types every day can ensure that your content is seen by your target audience.
Post at the Best Time
Even if you share several posts every day, if they go live when your audience is not active, they won’t help. You need to share your posts at the precise time when your audience is most likely to see them. This is how your travel agency can get a higher engagement rate by sharing content at the best time to post.
You need a reliable, holistic social media management tool to achieve this. SocialPilot is a powerful tool thousands of travel agencies use to streamline social media marketing by scheduling posts in advance. This saves time and ensures consistency, and every post goes live at the best time by scheduling them ahead of time.
If we talk about one of the examples, Dynasty Travel International is a travel agency that used to share posts manually every day. This practice prevented it from sharing posts at odd working hours when its audience was active.
They started using SocialPilot and scheduled several posts on all social media channels every day. This practice helps them in three ways:
- It reduces their manual work that used to waste a lot of time.
- They can stay consistent with their planned posting schedule to get them more seen.
- And they can share content even in the middle of the night when their audience is active, but they are not.
All these posts went live on the same day with a gap of hours, but they were scheduled a long time ago using the SocialPilot scheduler.
By leveraging SocialPilot and its scheduling and planning abilities, Dynasty Travel boosted its engagement rate and travel bookings.
6. Engaging with the Audience
It never ends with posting engaging content. You must also engage with your audience on comments, queries, and DMs. Engaging is about dialogue that fosters trust, builds relationships, and ultimately drives conversions.
Facilitating personalized experience and trust is particularly vital for a travel agency. With experience, we recommend the following aspects to effectively engage your audience and keep them connected to your agency.
Active and Quick Responses
Monitoring the engagement and performance of your posts is a golden rule of social media engagement. Our social media experts have found that if your customers have a positive experience with you on social media, they are more likely to become your customers. We advise you to respond promptly and enhance customer satisfaction to capitalize on this.
Personalized Interactions
Personal experience is the key to success in travel and tourism. Addressing your audience by name, acknowledging their preference in a customized manner, and tailoring your response to their specific needs can significantly boost engagement. Our data shows that travel agencies can increase customer loyalty with personalized interaction.
Butter Field Travel is a travel agency that extensively promotes its packages with engaging content and deals. Not just that, they are very prompt with their engagement and replies to answer the queries of their customers.
Look how instantly they have responded to the comments and queries on their posts.
7. Leveraging Reviews and Testimonials
Even after converting a potential customer into a successful booking, the story doesn’t end. For 360-degree social media marketing of a travel agency, you have to capitalize even on their review and positive experience.
The opinions of existing customers can be a powerful marketing tool in travel. Travelers’ reviews and testimonials, sharing what they like and what was beyond their expectations, can provide authentic insight into your services for more potential customers.
Reviews and testimonials matter for:
Building Trust
Reviews are essential for building trust with potential travelers. In the current age, before buying even the cheapest product, people thoroughly check reviews shared by past customers. It gives them the reassurance which can make all the difference.
SEO Benefits
Positive reviews on social media or Google can also improve your search ranking. Every social media platform incorporates a discovery feature, and reviews help in ranking as they have keywords and hashtags to boost visibility online.
Decision-Making Influence
The travel and tourism industry thrives on customer satisfaction. Travel businesses that properly showcase positive reviews on social media can sway hesitant customers toward booking.
There are 2 types of reviews. One is shared on social media as video testimonials, which are more like feedback on trip packages. These are shared through comments, stories, images, videos, or reels. Another is Google Reviews, which are more like a review of your business on Google with written feedback. Both types of reviews matter to authenticate your business and generate more conversions.
Generating reviews is not enough; you should also have a place to market them in your social media strategy to capture more customers. Dynasty Travel’s strategy is a perfect example of promoting a travel agency on social media by capitalizing on positive reviews.
Regularly showcasing their positive reviews on social media generated more sales and travel bookings. Their reviews also enhanced trust and visibility, encouraging more customers to share their feedback.
Ready to Promote Your Travel Agency on Social Media?
Promoting your travel agency on social media requires more than being present; it demands a strategic approach tailored to capture attention so your agency can stand out in a crowded market.
SocialPilot has been a trusted partner for many travel agencies, helping them navigate the complexities of social media marketing. The marketing strategies we have gathered are not just theoretical; they have been tested and proven by our users in the real world.
Implementing these methods can promote a travel agency on social media and turn engagement into bookings. As you move forward, consider how these strategies can be adapted to fit your unique business and audience with the right approach.
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