As part of our effort to help you and your business keep afloat during the pandemic, we’ve put together some marketing tips. These could help you attract some guests, particularly local leads. You’ll see why it’s important to communicate with locals and how to communicate with them. We’ll also offer some tips on how to be closer to your community. Finally, we added some tips on how to reach those locals that don’t know about your business yet.
Understand the best ways to talk with guests
You should always have an open communication channel with people that have interest in your tour. Have your local phone number displayed on your site so people can contact you whenever they have a question. It’s easy for guests to move on to another experience if they have any doubts. Whoever is taking the calls should have a good understanding of your business. The person taking calls should have answers about the activity, pricing or cancellation policies.
Something to also keep in mind is that older generations prefer phone calls over other communication channels. They prefer talking with people and appreciate the convenience of having an answer to their questions right then. Keep this in mind if you are targeting an older audience.
Email is always a good option
An email address is a great tool at your disposal. You can set up different addresses to handle different guest enquiries. One of the advantages of using email over the phone is that you can prepare your reply. This is especially useful for frequently asked questions. You wouldn’t need to spend much time clarifying your cancellation policy if you use an email template. Simply copy and paste. Email is also great to handle difficult cases, for example, when someone leaves a negative review.
As we previously talked about in our past blog post, taking the conversation away from review sites and social media works to your advantage. You’ll regain control of the situation and will have time to prepare a solution that leaves both parties happy most of the time. On a side note, if your tour sees returning customers, you should create a recurring newsletter. You can communicate any promotions or important events for your tour. Letting them know if you are open for business.
Use social media to your advantage
Besides calling them or sending out an email, social media is the best way to reach out to your fans. People love to access information. Especially during the pandemic, with everyone staying at home. Facebook is a great platform to keep up to date with their friends and other pages they follow. You can use a hashtag and make it easier for guests to share their pictures with you. If you use PicThrive you can also post some great shots that are sure to get some attention.
Instagram is also a great platform mostly dedicated to pictures and short videos. Your guests will love to see small snippets about your tour. Posting a story that highlights how much fun other guests have had during your tour.
Why target locals?
With so many travel restrictions, the people closest to your activity are now your best clients. They can’t wait to do something outside their home. However, they also need to be confident they won’t get sick outside.
A good way to put their mind at ease is to highlight across your communication channels all the steps you take to keep your guests safe. Be sure to highlight what you do to limit the number of people on the tour. Also, show how you clean the equipment and if you offer anything for your guests to keep themselves clean.
You can offer discounts for locals, convincing them of taking a day trip to experience your adventure. Always keep in mind that you should follow any local regulations. Especially, those imposed by the government during the pandemic.
Get involved
Get involved with the local community. If you can raise funds or do an activity that helps the local economy you’ll not only feel good, but also get a bunch of exposure. A unique way to get everyone involved is to start a photo competition on social media to get locals engaged and involved. Perhaps sharing what they love about your community, you can be as creative as you want!
Be a part of the community
Partner with complementing businesses, you can offer activities at a discounted rate and you’ll all make a profit. For example, your guests could go through ziplines in the morning and rafting in the afternoon. It’s a good way for people to get “two birds with one stone”. Making it worthwhile to make the trip to your experience.
Be sure to offer incentives for locals. During the pandemic, people are more likely to take advantage of a good deal. It might be a good idea to offer a discount or include something extra to make the deal irresistible.
Where should you advertise
Facebook and Instagram offer a great advertisement management tool. With it, you can define your audience according to the criteria you select. The one that’s most relevant for today’s post is location. You can choose to target individual cities or communities.
We’ll focus on Facebook, particularly their Audience insight tool.
The first thing you need to do is decide if you want to target people that are already connected to your page or everyone else on Facebook. After that, you’ll be able to define the location you want to target along with other demographics like age, gender and interests. If you want to go deeper you can select the advance tools!
From there just upload a picture or video, along with your message!
Stay positive!
We understand that almost everyone is struggling through all this. We hope that these tips help your tour and bring you closer to your community. Which is what this is all about, getting through this together. Also remember that with PicThrive, there are no hidden costs or subscription fees. Meaning you don’t have to worry about getting charged when you are not making any profit.
Please share this article with others if you find it useful. If you are doing something else that we missed let us know, we’d love to share it too!
