Companies operating tours and activities have a very powerful weapon in their marketing arsenal. If used properly, your tourism business can communicate with 1000s of your customers’ friends and family and convert them into new clients. If not, you have essentially ignored and alienated your future customer base. You have the power of interesting photos and social media. When combined in the right way, you have a superpower that can have a massive and powerful impact on your business.
If you offer your customers photos after their tour, you are doing more than just getting an auxiliary revenue stream. Photos are a powerful tool because it is more likely to be shared than any other media due to the speed at which a user can share it (Active Media Technology). Your guests are going to naturally help you grow your business, provided that you have the right tools.
Travel photos are unique within social networks and garner significant attention amongst users. Travel is the number two live event shared, right behind relationship updates of getting married or engaged (Go-Gulf). Users are more likely to favourite or like vacation pictures that look like a special moment (63%), the person sharing looks happy (58%), and the person sharing looks natural and genuine (48%) (youGov).
Photos are not static objects anymore, once a photo is shared, a conversation begins. This is because 74% of all internet users in 2014 actively used social networking sites and the number one activity was photo sharing ( (Pew, Go-Gulf). Facebook, the most popular social network, sees over 200,000 photos uploaded every 60 seconds (Quora). About half of its users cite photos as the major reason they use the site (Peww).
Photos garner a lot of attention and significant time is spent interacting with images, as 31% of users comment on photos on a daily basis (Pew). Photos receive the most viral growth as well, even if a brand is trying to promote itself, receiving 87% of total interactions amongst users (eMarketer). About 25% non-facebook users, still use the site to view photos or posts (Peww).
However, all this attention will be meaningless and lost without the right tools to capitalize on the value being created by your guests. It’s like having a superpower and not being able to use it.
If your guests shares the photos you provided the typical way, the photos disappear into the blackhole of social media; outside of your reach and control. It means that the social networks are the only ones profiting from your photos and its viral growth. Their users are looking at their friends in the pictures and do not have a way to interact with your brand.
It’s the equivalent of paying for an online ad and not connecting a link back to your website. You would probably reprimand your marketing manager if they forgot to link an ad back to your website. Why would you do this with photos and give up your most powerful marketing tool?
You can harness your photo and social media superpower in the right way using PicThrive’s Smart Photo Gallery technology. It’s like upgrading your batmobile, gadgets and armored suit to have a significant advantage over others.
The zipline or whitewater rafting photos you sell, for instance, can now be used as true social media marketing tools to help you get more customers. With PicThrive, when photos are shared you actually capture the traffic and excitement that is whipped up on social media and convert it into real customers.
You have the ability to reach 1000s of new potential customers and not waste it. In doing so you can get more reviews on TripAdvisor, helping improve your online reputation and attract more guests. You can connect with your guests on social media and get more followers and likes. Collect emails of new potential customers and more.
With PicThrive, you are finally able to get control of your photo superpower and hypercharge it to easily convert social traffic into real customers. It’s all simple, fast and easy to do.
About PicThrive
PicThriveis a photo sales and customer engagement tool that is currently in private beta.Sign up now to get early access to a powerful customer engagement and marketing tool for your business.
PicThrive is on a mission to be the number one customer engagement and marketing platform for businesses to connect with clients and their network of family and friends using multimedia. We believe it is important to always innovate in engagement and conversion tools that maximize the user experience and get the best results possible for your business.
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[…] to have the right tools or else the ability to use photos as a marketing tool is lost. In our post Photo Marketing for Tour & Activities is a Superpower, If your guests shares the photos you provided the typical way, the photos disappear into the […]