10 Best Ways to Sell Tours Online

So, you've got your tours and activities up on display, an online reservation system in place and the online bookings are coming through. Should you stop here and be content with the current setup? Probably not. In constantly changing industries with shifting trends, businesses and companies need to alter and modify the way they market their products/services and adopt the current trends.

The same goes for tour and activity providers. The competition is tough, and with an impending travel boom looming, many tour/activity providers have ensured they are on top of increasing their sales.

Are you getting the best possible results out of your marketing methods? If you're in doubt, it's time to start the new year with fresh marketing strategies, aim for higher sales goals and boost your bookings and reservations.

To help you boost your tours/activities sales, we have compiled the ten best ways to enhance and improve your sales in your tour/travel company. Here are some handy methods to get your services in front of your target market, ensure a better sales performance and build your brand reputation.

1. Provide high-quality media content.

People make purchasing decisions with their eyes first, especially when it comes to travelling. Does your content appeal to consumers? Does the media uploaded attract potential tourists and travellers? To make sure this happens, images should be high definition and not pixelated or inconsistent. Higher quality media heavily influences trust in hesitant online customers.

Also, be sure to ask any previous customers for pictures they might have taken on their experience and remember to make reviews are accessible to the public! For nearly 9 in 10 consumers, an online review is as important as a personal recommendation.

2. Include concise tour descriptions and bullet point highlights.

To increase and boost tour/activity sales, think like the customer. Make sure your tour descriptions are concise, clear and to the point. Employing a clever strategy of information layout will ensure that a user becomes engaged in your product offering. Although it's tempting to add a ton of information regarding the tour/activity, it's important to remember that customers are browsing through various tour/activities choices and are looking to finalize their decision ASAP. Adding in irrelevant and loads of information will be detrimental in making the best purchasing decision.

To avoid this, use bullet points as much as possible and highlight the most attractive features of the tour/activity.

3. Various pricing options — always a good idea

The more the variety of pricing options provided to customers, the more conversions on sales you will see through your reservation system. This tip allows you to cater to all potential customers with different budgets. And it works in favour of vendors, too — having a slightly lower price for less busy times of day will fill up your manifest and ensure that your business is working at peak capacity throughout any given day.

4. Digital marketing (paid advertising)

Digital marketing is directly linked to more exposure and more sales. Working with digital marketing teams and professionals will help you get the most out of your digital marketing strategy and implement a cost-effective method for advertising your tours/activities online. Here are just some of the digital marketing techniques you can employ to boost sales:

-Search Engine Optimisation [SEO]: Make sure to index the information on your website according to the most popular searches that people make on Google. The more relevant the information to people's searches, the more likely your website is to show up first on the search engine.

-Paid Advertising [Search Engine]: Pay per click ads is a quick way to increase sales than any SEO process, but it will cost more, so be sure to make your decision according to your budget. When setting up an Ad through Google, for example, you can specify which search terms the advert should be associated with. A good digital marketing professional will advise you on which terms to put against your ad.

-Paid Advertising [Social Media]: Social media is a powerful tool for marketing your product/services only if you know how to use it effectively. It is vital to develop a strong media presence and open up as many channels as possible for customers to engage with and learn more about your business. Social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Youtube are perfect for this purpose.

By staying active on these channels, you can communicate directly with potential customers and showcase your business more creatively. Remember to upload and update your social media channels with customer reviews, interesting content and photos sent from customers that capture fun experiences!

-Paid Advertising [Retargeting]: Have you ever noticed after you express interest in purchasing something, you suddenly receive an ad for it? Don't worry, you're not being spied on — this is just a very clever 'remarketing' technique. Once you hit a certain threshold of first impressions, retargeting can be used to increase the effectiveness of your advertising budget.

Remember to ensure your budget is used mostly on people who show interest in engaging with your services to boost sales.

6. Email marketing

Email marketing may be more effective than you think in boosting your sales. However, knowing who to send emails to and what to include is crucial. We recommend sending out exclusive offers in emails to help direct traffic back to your website. You can offer discounts on bookings and deals for a limited time period and encourage the recipient to take advantage of limited-time offers. This is especially helpful during slow months when you need to stimulate sales.

7. Break down barriers to booking

Ensuring your site is easy to use on various devices such as laptops, tablets, iPads, and smartphones are essential. For example, if the booking button for your tour or activity is not visible immediately on the front page or is hard to find, this can negatively affect the rate of conversion for sales.

Call to action buttons or CTA's are best placed on the home screen within the first-page fold [what can be seen when the webpage loads] or in webpage elements such as a sticky header that follows a user down the screen when they scroll. Clicking on a CTA should direct a customer to book there and then. Coupled with pricing options, this will be a winning combination.

8. Have a consistent social media posting schedule.

Having a strong online presence doesn't mean simply being present on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or Twitter. Consistent posting and updating your various platforms with fresh content is what keeps it alive and attracts new potential customers.

A social calendar tool is perfect for this purpose. This tool will enable you to preload many posts — you can configure content to be posted to your audience without needing to push the 'post' button. This can also be an effective method for identifying which posts deserve an additional marketing boost.

9. Identify your target demographic

Market targeting will help you direct the ideal tours and activities to the relevant audience. But first, you need to identify your target audience and segment it accordingly. Aim for the 'True Friends' customers and invest in offering them tours and activities they are likely to be interested in. Although this will take a bit of research, once you have all your information such as age range, gender, relationship status, earning level, country of origin, general interest etc., you can start to create specified services for your target audience. This saves time and money that would otherwise be wasted investing in an audience that is not interested.

We also recommend creating individual ad campaigns for separate audience segments, such as Valentine's Day offers for couples in areas that celebrate the holiday. Or you could create a special limited time offer on Father's Day.

And finally, our last method to increasing sales and boosting revenue is:

10. Try new methods until you hit a formula that works flawlessly.

Digital marketing is all about experimentation and making informed decisions based on the measurement of those experiments. After running a digital marketing campaign, it is imperative to do a retrospective at the end and see what worked and what didn't. Optimize as you go further into the process, and eventually, you will begin to identify the fool-proof formula that will increase online sales conversions. And once you implement the correct formula, be prepared to start seeing an increase in sales and revenue and referrals from previous customers.