Work with a professional brand development and graphic design team to ensure your new Travel Company launches into the market place ahead of your competitors.
When you’re launching your new travel company you need to make an impact – diving in head first rather than just dipping a dainty toe into the marketing pool. That doesn’t mean rushing in recklessly. It means using all promotional and marketing channels available to get your new travel company known as far and wide as possible.
As a first step, check out your competitors. They are all selling holidays online and making concerted efforts to maximize their internet presence. This is simple supply and demand – travelers demand the right to browse for their next holiday on the internet and once their decision is made, to book it at the click of a few buttons. They have no desire to leave the comfort of their own home to see if a destination ticks all the boxes of their mental checklist.
Your new travel company needs more than a great website to vie for travelers – you need a fantastic website. But that’s not all. Take one step backwards because until you have a well defined brand identity you can’t move forward. How are your competitors branding themselves? Is it immediately apparent if they are offering luxury tropical trips, spa holidays, bus tours or cheap getaways? Those that are well branded have a visual identity to reinforce what they are offering.
Put simply, when a customer clicks on a travel company website or looks at their brochure, they want to see if the offerings match their requirements. If not, they will bounce right off the website or put the brochure to one side and try somewhere else. And this is where the magic of brand design comes into play. A well defined brand encompasses everything about the company and highlights its unique selling points. It makes things crystal clear for the reader by use of an appropriate logo and slogan, right through to a well branded website and brochure.
Nailing the right brand identity for your Travel Company is far from easy – you must use a professional business to help. These brand development experts will assess your company, products and target market to create the right brand identity for you. The travel industry is highly competitive so you need to get your brand right, the first time. Priceline.com is a good example of a company that is upfront about selling cheap vacations. From the company name to the welcoming statement on the website homepage – “Shop for discount travel” – the traveler knows precisely what kind of deal they are getting.
So what will a professional brand development company deliver? Firstly appreciate that a good all-round company will offer a range of integrated services: brand design, graphic design, search engine optimization for your website and help with managing social media. They will use all of their skills to help you launch your Travel Company via as many promotional channels as possible.
http://comforttour.ca
Once the professionals understand everything about your products and where you want to pitch your Travel Company in the market place, they will start by producing your logo design. This is fundamental – it will appear on every single customer facing item you ever produce. An outstanding logo is one that captures the very essence of what your company is all about.
Your Travel Company slogan or tagline will then follow. This is a short catchphrase that is intended to convey your brand promise in less than five small memorable words. TUI Travel’s memorable tagline is “More than a Smile.” Superb! This absolutely reflects what every traveler wants from their next holiday. Other great taglines used by national tourism boards include: “Canada – keep exploring”; “Britain – you’re invited”; “Incredible India!” Every single one evokes a basic emotion and encourages the would-be visitor to book their flights straight away!
As the most important tool to sell you holidays, your professional brand development company will then turn their attention to creating that fantastic website. The graphic designers and communications experts will work closely with you to create a website that can compete with the big boys and outshine your competition. The key points for your professionally designed Travel Company website are:
- Clear definition of products. From the homepage and beyond, your product and company message must sing out loud and clear. Whether you’re a Priceline.com budget break Travel Company or a specialist dealing in safaris in Africa, the images and the way the information is written – the tone of voice – must all come across in one coherent design.
- Visually enticing. Who can decide on their next vacation without a host of images? In this business, more than many others, the use of ‘wow factor’ photos is wholly appropriate. And lots of them. The more visually attractive a city, a hotel, a beach appears, the more likely a traveler will want to visit it in person.
- Engaging. The copy must make your visitors stay to read more. Describe your brand promise, why your holidays are better than others and ensure you come across as a trustworthy expert in your field. Also add your own blogs about travel destinations – these can be informative, fun and make great reading for an interested visitor.
- Informative. Include detailed descriptions of the location, accommodation and everything the package includes. Use bullet points, sub headings or tabulation to break up text which could otherwise be heavy going. The easier the text is to read, the more the reader will take away.
- Price. It’s absolutely critical, crucial, vital and essential to include price information which is easy to find. A Travel Company website without price information is like a phone directory full of blank pages – of no point whatsoever. Savvy travelers will compare websites to ensure that they are getting the best deal and if you’re not upfront with your prices, you’re out of the running.
- Special Offers. As part of your marketing strategy you will be creating a range of discounts and incentives or encouraging your hotel /resort partners to do so. For example, early bird discounts encourage upfront payments whereas last minute bookings offers will fill spaces that would otherwise remain empty. As soon as your specials are defined, they must be put on the website, preferably the homepage. If you’ve got great special offers, you need to flaunt them. And just as important, when they have expired you must remove them and replace with your newest offerings.
- Clear call to action steps. You want your website visitors to convert when they are on your website – to take some kind of action. The call to actions options have to be clear, bold and not overlooked and usually involve the strategic placement of brightly colored buttons, allowing the visitor to click through to:
- Check Availability – and associated price of the holiday
- Book Now – to book and pay for the holiday online
- Contact us for more information – using an online form which captures their contact details
- Call us to chat – if someone wants to a live agent
- Sign up for our newsletter – to add their contact details to your database to receive future information and promotions from your Travel Company
When you are working with a professional website design company, you can be reassured that the design and security of your booking and paying online section will be flawless. They will draw on their experience to create a website section that takes the paying customer through the minimum of steps to book their package / flight / cruise and move smoothly onto paying. It goes without saying that the professionals will set up a system to process payments with the utmost security in mind.
When your professional brand development team delivers a website that covers all of the above points, you will be thrilled with the finished product, from its overall branded look, the clever copy, the well laid out pages with logical navigation and the ease with which someone can book their holiday.
But there is one more crucial element that the professional team will have been quietly and effectively working on behind the scenes – that of search engine optimization (SEO). The most fantastic Travel Company website isn’t worth much if it doesn’t rank highly on the search engines. Rest assured that your professional team will be using their communication and internet expertise to hone your website for the best ranking possible using SEO.
There are other areas you can be active in to increase exposure of your Travel Company and to improve SEO of you website. Your brand development company can guide you every step of the way. These include:
- Blogs. As mentioned previously, well written and amusing blogs can be of great interest to readers who may potentially go on to share them with friends.
- Social media. Create profiles for your Travel Company on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others, depending on your target market. These are great promotional channels, the potential of which should not be overlooked. More than 950 million users of Facebook can’t be wrong!
- Discussion forums. Get discussing! Join forums in your area and offer interesting topics. The more comments and feedback, the more publicity your Travel Company will get.
- E-newsletters. Design great electronic newsletters detailing your newest offers and send them out to your database. Personalize them to encourage recipients to read them.
- Pay-per-click advertising. Set up pay-per-click marketing campaigns on Google and Facebook. These paid-for marketing options won’t break the bank if managed properly and will help to drive more traffic to your website.
While it might seem like a lot, all that we have discussed so far are your logo and tagline, and your website design and promotion! There is certainly a lot to do to get your Travel Company launched effectively. I am sure you can see the absolute futility of trying to do all of this without the input of a professional brand development and graphic design company.
And there’s still more! In your marketing strategy have you considered what printed promotional materials you require such as business cards, flyers, brochures, posters and signage? These all need to be professionally designed in line with your brand identity, to suit your target market and to direct people to your website. You may require items for a trade show; you may need brochures for people to browse when they pop into your Travel Company office. Whatever you require, use the professionals to create the most visually eye catching and informative material possible, all shouting out your very own brand with coherent use of logo, colors and font.
Hopefully this article has given you the overview of all the promotional options available for your new Travel Company, and made it as clear as day that the only way forward is to hire a professional team who can lead you by the hand. New Design Group is based in Toronto and has over 10 years experience in the planning, co-ordination and implementation of a complete branding development program for a variety of industries. We are a highly skilled group of experts in graphic design, website design, search engine optimization and communications, and are meticulous in our approach. We are also friendly, approachable and like to work closely with our clients every step of the way.
If you want a brand to compete with the big boys, New Design Group is the company to work with. Contact us if you would like to discuss your requirements for a more than successful launch of your new Travel Company. We like to help others succeed.
Call New Design Group on 647 271 7463.
