If you are running a small to medium-scale tour and travel business, it is only normal that you will be swamped with a host of operational tasks day in and day out. However, thanks to the emergence of sleek technological solutions, you will be easily able to reorder sales, payment, marketing, as well as administrative processes within your travel agency. Marketing your travel business is the core function that can be now be initiated through a suite of technology solutions available at your fingertips!
And seeing as the travel and tourism sector witnesses cut-throat competition all the while, getting better control over all the aspects of your business will work wonders for you in the short and long term.
When it comes down to the marketing segment of your travel business, there exist a host of free marketing tools on the internet. These handy tools are designed to aid small businesses to better schedule, automate, curate, optimise, distribute, as well as design their respective marketing endeavours.
If you are someone who is looking for help on this side of your enterprise, then it will be wise to discover fresh online tools. There are both paid and free versions of the same online tools that you will come across during your forays on the internet. There will always be the option of investing more in a tool once you are satisfied with its free version.
As a starter, the smart thing to do will be to test a free version of the marketing tool. With the free versions, there will be limited access to all their features. But you will be in a better position to go for the full version or not after using the basic version of the tool.
With online free marketing tools, upgrading is not much of a deal. The target should always be to carefully gauge all the pluses and minuses of the product before investing heavily in it.
In the following section of this Pathfndr blog, we will be listing the top ten free marketing tools that we think are best suited for burgeoning travel businesses.
Google Analytics
The first in our list of free marketing tools happen to be Google Analytics. It is mainly used to measure and analyse website traffic and the success related to the same.
Google is the leading search engine in the internet world, and that gives it the licence to collect an enormous amount of data on one’s website traffic flow. So, when someone signs up for an account with Google Analytics, they are allowed access to that data automatically.
Once you have access to that mine of information, you will be able to check where the origin of that traffic lies. It could be social media, organic search, or website referrals. You will also find out how long people have stayed put on your travel website.
Neil Patel SEO Analyzer
This is a totally free SEO analyzer that provides you with an extensive SEO analysis report for your site. The report will hand you the nitty-gritty of any serious SEO issue that your site might be facing from time to time.
This is vital for you to know as it could sabotage the visibility of your website on search engines. It is crucial to have the SEO correct when you are dependent on organic traffic to your travel site.
Feedly
Feedly is an AI-powered news aggregator application that tracks down news feeds from internet resources. It is able to achieve this by studying your domain inputs and keywords.
With Feedly at your fingertips, you will be armed with the capacity to opt personally for what to read and what to share on your channels. This is possible with all the information getting assembled onto the control panel. By using Feedly, you will stop worrying about what you are supposed to share on social media.
You will also be able to stay up to date with the current news and trends in the travel industry in order to understand a superior perspective for your travel business.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is primarily used for email marketing and automation of marketing. By choosing Mailchimp, you will be able to set up a section and lengthen your contact list by inducing actions from landing pages, social posting, and adverts on Instagram and Facebook, as well as pop-up forms.
Once you reach that spot, you will be able to automate marketing texts. After that, it would be easy to send them to your customers at the opportune time of your choice.
Canva
Canva is a free marketing tool that you can use to produce pictures for a variety of purposes – presentations, blog posts, company logos, social media platforms, posters, and anything and everything related to working on stills.
Canva allows any user with zero to medium experience in handling this kind of software to effortlessly pick it up. One can process stunning imagery for one’s travel marketing particulars by utilising the substantial number of in-built templates and optimised sizes that this marketing tool comes loaded with.
Lumen5
Lumen5 is very handy when it comes to making new videos from your already existing content. With the free version at your disposal, you will be permitted to generate a maximum of five videos per month. Lumen5 works its magic by converting your pre-loaded travel content into video format, with the aid of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
It makes use of additional supporting material from its own stored library of music, photos, and video clips. Lumen5 works with all these subject matters to give birth to fresh videos that fit perfectly with your layout and storyboard.
Buffer
Buffer is essentially a marketing tool for scheduling the travel content that you post on social media platforms. If you are able to time the release of social media posts on your travel site beforehand, then it will no doubt simplify the whole process.
This way there will be no need for you to come back to the drawing board and intermittently craft your next post. Rather than doing that, with Buffer’s help, you will see yourself getting the curating and composing actions done in a single seating.
Once the content of the posts is finalised, you will simply set them accordingly on the calendar. These posts would then go live on your social media accounts the moment their turn comes.
InShot
We are all very well aware of the fact that videos are an indispensable part of marketing in the travel and tourism sector. Under these circumstances, a free marketing tool like InShot lets you edit your travel content videos on your smartphone itself.
Despite what many people would make you believe, taking premium quality videos using just your phone is not that expensive. The right smartphone, a tripod stand, ample light, plus a great background selection, can give you the scope to capture amazing videos for your travel business.
But to get to that finished product, you will most likely require a decent video editing tool. This is where a free marketing tool such as InShot can create all the difference for your content.
Active Campaign
Active Campaign offers a host of free and easy-to-use marketing tools to help you simplify your travel business. You can download useful features like subject line generators or webinar templates using Active Campaign.
These come in very handy in the processing of marketing campaigns. You will also find a social media calendar template, plus content templates with a view to managing your marketing team.
Hubspot CRM
Useful chiefly for managing one’s contacts and other important marketing tasks, Hubspot CRM is a versatile free marketing tool available for download on the internet. With Hubspot CRM in your system, your job to monitor website activity in your office will become a whole lot easier than before.
This tool will equip the user to divide email lists into segments, automate the sending of emails, as well as monitor the pipelines of sale.
For a travel business to prosper, the people who run the show will need to facilitate smoother communication firstly between the people who are working inside the company and then among the professionals who are running the show and the clients who have availed travel services from the company. Any travel agency that establishes seamless connectivity between its workers and customers, looks bound for success.
How Free Marketing Tools can Help Elevate Your Travel Business?
Marketing is arguably one of the most vital aspects of any business. When you have a strong marketing plan, the odds of your travel company getting a higher number of clients to increase manifold. On the other hand, poor marketing tactics slow down the growth of any company and lead to a downward spiral in revenue generation.
Seeing as the travel business is wholly dependent on the power of brand recognition and client retention, your marketing stance will be of prime concern to you. To that end, the list of ten free marketing tools that we have discussed above is sure to aid you to help your travel business to grow and reach new heights.
With that, we have reached the end of our travel article on the theme ‘free marketing tools’. To read more travel-related blogs that will give you new ideas to grow your travel business, visit the Pathfndr website today.