Lead Acquisition Strategies in the Hospitality and Tourism Industry

Today, however, the ultimate technology monitors and SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) analyses and ranks every lead according to specific metrics. There is a process between getting a new lead and the point where they convert into your new client. According to Jelena Cerovic from Skylead, “the space between the two is called the lead acquisition process.” 

To remain competitive, businesses need the best and most current information about their target markets. Once a lead becomes targeted, it goes through a lead acquisition process. It starts with finding vendors in line with your parameters, classifying bought leads, and collecting enough information from potential customers to personalize the offer. These are essential steps that should be considered when applying the lead acquisition strategy. 

This middle part of the funnel may include purchasing qualified leads from different vendors. By simplifying, buy leads that fit the target criteria. How can these strategies be implemented in the tourism and hospitality sector? Read about the successful digital marketing strategies for the hospitality and tourism industry.

Get on the Right Track with Google Ads

Google Ads have been trending in the travel industry since before 2020. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit that year, search volumes dropped overnight because people stopped searching for certain things. Travel, hospitality, and other markets saw a search-demand drop to nearly zero.

Things have changed, however, and hospitality businesses and touristic destinations still make their best marketing efforts to continue sales in 2022. Founder and CEO of HospitalityNet, Henri Roelings, comments that “the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation by ten years, and today’s travel consumers have become more digitally and tech-savvy than ever.”

As the Google Ads Support article points out, “travel planning is on the rise: search interest in ‘passport appointments’ increased 300% over the first four months of 2022, and ‘luxury hotels near me’ has over two times the search interest it had during the same period in 2019”. 

Through Google Ads (previously known as AdWords), you can bid for a position in Google’s paid advertising networks which are two platforms: Search Network, where you can place your ads at the top of Google Search results for specific search keywords, and Display Network, where you can place your banners on various sites across the internet.

Results rely on the quality of keywords on your website, how detailed your ads will become optimized to match reliable keywords and the amount of budget you are willing to bid on each keyword.

Google allows advertisers to segment customers based on habits, such as affinity audience and custom affinity audience; unlike other digital marketing efforts, pay-per-click ads can immediately direct a stream of potential customers to your website. This way, Google creates the initial contact points in the lead acquisition process. 

Google Business Profile

Creating a free business listing through Google is one of the best ways to attract new customers. Google Business Profile, formerly Google My Business, is an accessible business listing you can create and optimize to get more traffic on your site through Google search and maps. 

Not only does it make your business visible right away, on the right-hand side of Google search, but it also provides phone number information, a website, and the means to chat with the business directly. 

Facebook Ads

Facebook continues to be the most effective advertising platform for targeting new audiences and driving brand awareness, according to research from the travel industry ad platform Sojern.

Micro-segmentation (targeting specific audiences by breaking down data centers and cloud environments), content expansion, analysis, and increasing site traffic for a reduced cost are the main benefits of the Facebook Ads tool. This advertising method tends to be consistently more effective than other approaches in helping marketers reach valuable audiences interested in tourism and travel, allowing you to easily create campaigns on your own.

Facebook can identify people considering travel, even before they’ve settled on a destination. The process of connecting with specific groups is to target the individual of interest in the tourism and hospitality sector.

A Stringcan article comments how “in the past, Facebook allowed you to choose who sees your ads based on certain criteria such as country, state, and ZIP code, but it now has even more features that allow you to refine your audience and maximize your spend.”

SEO

Travel SEO has become a buzzword of its own. It requires continual monitoring and optimization to ensure you’re building visibility and authority for your website. Nearly half of all travelers start planning with a search engine since the scale of consumers takes a self-serve approach to purchase options, and it’s no different in the travel and hospitality industry.

Although, to get a complete optimization of this SEO strategy for any tourism and hospitality company, selecting keywords that present a better opportunity for ranking is essential to get more and new opportunities based on online behaviors, news, culture trends, language trends, and seasonality.

PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Ads

As a method of advertising, Pay-per-click advertising is one of the best ways to get in front of potential tourists immediately.

A Hubspot article comments on Google Ads and Facebook Ads, writing that “while they both run pay-per-click (PPC) ads, they do so on separate channels and often target users at different stages in the buyer’s journey.”

Statistics show that 65 percent of customers click on PPC ads and that paid advertisements have an impressive 200 percent return on investment. Instead of simply hoping online users see your luxury hotel ad, PPC advertising allows you to target your ad and increase conversions.

Pay-per-click (PPC) for the travel industry comes down to how efficiently you can deploy your budget to bring in more high-quality leads. These leads, of course, tend to be travelers who will hopefully go on to book your hotel, rent your cars or visit your destination. However, you can implement tactics to drive more foot traffic to your location:

• Generic keyword search campaign – Create a search campaign focused on generic yet relevant keywords for travel and tourism.
• Google Display Network (GDN) – Create a GDN campaign targeting a particular interest relevant to your business.
• Facebook Radius Targeting – This feature allows you to target specific audiences within a given radius or proximity. 

Consider several techniques to put into practice for PPC Ads, but the advertising method depends on your chosen objectives as a business in the tourism and hospitality area. 

As mentioned previously, the travel and tourism industries are growing, and as a result, the luxury hotel market is growing, too. They suffered a stopping when the pandemic hit; however, in 2022, many countries lifted their quarantines, so touristic options and destinations for vacations on search engines have been active again. Moreover, with this significant growth comes excellent competition. 

Get Your Resort on the Market

Nowadays, we have a market where people still click on ads, incurring our cost per click, but they aren’t driven to buy or purchase. That’s why companies must have a potential digital marketing strategy to face this massive saturation in their target market. 

Implementing these strategies in your business is right according to your corporate goals. Google ads, PPC, SEO, and Facebook ads will allow your business to get a further digital presence and potentially get to the top best spot in search engine result pages or SERPs. With all these strategies, there’s a definite guarantee of obtaining more leads and potential customers, leading your business to better and constant growth; this way, you’ll avoid wasting time and resources and work at maximizing new opportunities in the market.

Go beyond researching keywords for travel and tourism and box out your competitors, and have an ace up your sleeve by successfully targeting more travelers in the new year.