Keeping a consistent brand experience helps build awareness of your business and instills trust in your brand, and this goes beyond just the branding on your website. Your branding should remain consistent across social media and your advertising. Then, utilizing these avenues to drive more relevant visitors to your site is an absolute must.
Social media is a great way to draw in potential guests. Share all the great photos and videos that highlight your property, especially if you aren’t able to place them on your site (too many images can slow down your site). When describing your business or responding to visitors, use the same tone of voice that you use on your site so that your brand will feel familiar. Use properly sized logos and images for each channel you’re activating on–different social channels have different requirements for images and posts.
Remember the importance of engaging with your audience on these channels. It’s not enough to have a page with business information and a link back to your site. Staying engaged is important to having a successful social media presence, whether it’s sharing the latest updates about your hotel or attraction, responding to customer inquiries and reviews, or liking your guests’ photos of your hotel or attraction. If you find user-generated content of your property that’s appealing, try asking for permission to repost it. This is a great way to convey to potential travelers what visiting your property will be like. Over 67% of travelers found inspiration for their next trip on Facebook and Instagram, so the possibilities to reach and influence travelers to book are limitless.
And while defaulting to organic reach on social media has benefits, you’re likely to have more success if you try a paid advertising strategy to get your message in front of the right audience at the right time.
Part of your paid strategy can include display ads. Display ads provide the opportunity to engage with your target audience with appealing ad formats. However, travelers can run into a number of ads, so your goal is to catch their eye and guide them to click on or view your ad (and influence them to book later).
Test out animated display ads that match the branding on your site. They are more engaging than static images and make it easier to create a narrative that your target audience can connect with. Our design team performed an a/b test between static and animated HTML5 ads and found that HTML5 ads had a 13% higher click-through rate (CTR) and resulted in 8% more conversions than traditional static JPEG ads. Based on these results, our team aims to provide all of our customers with animated HTML5 ads for better performance—for free.
On these ads, pair a great CTA with compelling copy. Make sure you’re using clear and simple text to describe your property, attraction, or brand. Think of verbiage such as “explore the San Diego sea caves” or “a paradise getaway for nature lovers”. We recommend using 80-characters or less to avoid obscuring your CTA.
If you’re looking for help with your ad creatives, our award-winning design team takes your branding from your site to build out HTML5 ads so visitors have a consistent experience with your brand. It’s great for staying top of mind as travelers narrow down preferences, and ultimately, book.
In case you missed them, head to 4 Ways to Simplify Your Website Design and Increase Your Site’s Readability in 3 Simple Steps for the rest of the series.
Watch our webinar, 9 Tips to Help Convert Visitors on Your Website to learn more or connect with a Sojern expert to discuss digital marketing strategies.
Learn how expanding to add Facebook and Instagram to your strategy can boost your reach.
Unlock the full potential of your marketing efforts with our guide on mastering the marketing mix.
Unlock the secrets to navigating the marketing funnel and drive bookings like never before.
We’re ready to help you take the guesswork out of your digital marketing. Contact us to tap into the travel industry’s most intelligent marketing platform.
