An effective tourism marketing strategy needs more than a sky-high billboard and a myriad of TV advertisements.

Customer preferences are rapidly changing, and your marketing should focus on keeping at par with these developments rather than sticking with old school marketing tactics.

The era when most of your prospective customers learned about your destination through a newspaper or on TV is long gone.

For your tourism business to flourish and stay ahead of the competition, you need to shift your marketing plan online. That is where the customers are looking for destination ideas and booking.

Below are 5 of the best strategies for an effective travel and tourism marketing:

1. Work On A Great Website

If you are still counting on your prospective customers to come all the way to your offices and make a booking, you’re operating in a bubble.

The tourism sector is now experiencing the need for more flexibility. One of the ways to achieve this is to move your operations online.

Your customers should be able to book and make essential transactions online.

Make sure that your website is highly mobile responsive. 70% of your customers, especially the millennials, will probably make a booking using their mobile phones.

If the mobile interface of your site is not easy to use or is overly complicated, you will lose potential customers.

2. Utilise Influencer Marketing

People put more trust in celebrities than your average marketing guru. If a star endorses something, fans believe without questioning.

After creating a compelling and a highly mobile-responsive website for your destination business, it is now time to drive leads and hopefully begin registering bookings.

Influencer marketing is one of the efficient ways of driving leads to your website.

A simple Instagram post by a darling celebrity can drive more leads than a two month Facebook ad campaign could ever achieve.

Influencer marketing costs may sometimes be ridiculous, but often worthy. An influencer can be anybody with a massive online following, including bloggers, comedians, models, and movie stars.

3. Create A Compelling Guide About Your Destination

When those leads land on your page, they expect to see something believable about your destination. An influencer’s or any other advertising plan’s goal is to drive leads to your website. They will rarely compel them to make a booking.

It is then up to you to ensure that you have something that will make a potential customer want to make a booking. Creating an amazing, visually compelling guide is one way to achieve this.

Most of the potential customers out there don’t know much about your area yet. A simple, interesting and easy to follow guide is what they need to familiarise with your area.

Include quality photos and ideas of what they can do while they are there. Don’t be tempted to throw in too many words. Great photos and amazing designs are all you need.

4. Focus Your Tourism Marketing Plan On Customer Needs

Everybody can be a tourist, but not everyone is the kind of a traveller you are after. What is your target group? What are the needs of this group? What are you doing to ensure that you satisfy their specific wants?

Travelers are of different types: families, backpackers, couples, millennials among others. Don’t be over ambitious and opt to accommodate all these groups.

Focus on a specific group and work on satisfying their particular needs. Your travel and tourism marketing plan should be solely focused on attracting your specific group of interest.

5. Create SEO friendly content

Sometimes, tourists may not have celebrities or other travel experts to give them destination ideas, so they turn to Google and other search engines. If your customers go to Google, they should find you there- on the first page.

Optimising your website for search engines is one way to ensure an all-around tourism marketing plan.

Create SEO compliant content that will make the search engines rank you on their first pages. The content could be how-to guides, ideas on what to do on a particular destination, etc.

Tourism businesses are profitable, but without an excellent marketing strategy, they might be a disappointment. There are many digital marketing strategies you can utilize to create a compelling leads-generating tourism marketing plan.