Going live recently is a new OM4Tourism website for Boshack.
Chrissy & Deryck Brockhurst offer Australian outback experiences within an easy drive of Perth, with a choice of lakeside camping, farmstay or hotel accommodation.
Notice that the home, tour and package pages all include a contact form at the foot of the page.
This is a strategy we have adopted and recommend to our clients, because we have found it increases the likelihood of site visitors getting in touch. Chrissy & Deryck are already seeing a significant increase in the number of enquiries they receive, because of the contact forms.
We believe this is simply because people will often have a half-formed question in their mind whenever they read a web page. Putting the form right there on the page makes it easy for them to put that question into words and click to send it to you.
Also notice the use of ‘outback’ in the domain name. This was a result of keyword analysis that told us this is an important keyword for Boshack.
This article explains more about choosing a domain name.
You don’t have to create a whole new website to get better at online marketing.
Live History is an example of a site that we have converted to our platform, giving the business owners, Judith and Chris Cornish, more opportunities to get their story out to their target audience.
The new site has the same look and feel of the old one, and the content has been transferred to the new structure. So why is this one better?
Because it has all the online marketing tools that are vital for positioning the business, bringing in traffic, encouraging conversation, increasing conversion and boosting bookings. For example:
- Keyword analysis told us to put Hobart into the domain name to attract more searchers wanting things to do when they visit the city, helping to put Live History on the Internet highway instead of the backstreets.
- Like all OM4Tourism sites, this one is designed to be highly visible to search engines, bringing more traffic to Judith and Chris’s door.
- A blog with email subscription enables Judith and Chris to post regular news and updates to keep visitors engaged and enrich their site content.
- Clearer testimonials and accreditation are important conversion tools - they tell site visitors that this is a good quality experience.
- Easy access to booking and travel information with a prominent contact form helps visitors to incorporate the tour into their holiday and encourages them to enquire and book online.
In addition, Judith and Chris now have access to Google Analytics to help them track where their site visitors are coming from and what terms they key into Google to get to the site. They can then incorporate these search terms into their content to attract even more attention.
Here’s Judith’s response to the site set-up process:
Thank you so much to both you and Glenn for getting us set up with this new site. I know that it won’t be long before I am blogging with the best of them and our testimonials are flowing in from satisfied clients!
As Live History develops, Judith and Chris will be blogging their news regularly and uploading more images and testimonials. As they develop new performances, they can add new pages to the site very easily - if you can manage Word, you can create a page in an OM4Tourism website. And as the content builds over time, so will the authority and PageRank of the site, turning it into an online magnet for Hobart visitors.
I’m delighted to be launching OM4Tourism - a site dedicated to online marketing resources for small to medium tourism businesses.
We decided to launch a site just for tourism operators because:
- you have told us how important the Internet is to your business success, and
- we believe small tourism businesses offering unique experiences have a great deal to gain from online marketing.
At PublicityShip, we have already enabled small businesses to grow through online marketing. To find out exactly how our very first online marketing clients, ocularists Paul & Jenny Geelen, achieved phenomenal success purely through online marketing with us, check out this case study.
We have continued to develop our services since then, and established our first two tourism sites: NingalooBlue.com and GreatOceanRoad-Torquay.com.au
Why Tourism?
Small tourism businesses offering unique experiences have far more to gain from online marketing than large operators, wholesalers or online agencies.
Why? Because with smart online marketing, you can now reach your target customers directly, wherever they are in the world, placing you on a level playing field with bigger businesses. To find out exactly why this is happening now - and why Glenn turned his life upside down to create businesses based on this model - read this article.
We also know that the tourism industry is rapidly responding to the enormous changes occurring due to the widespread availability of broadband. Travellers are researching, booking and writing about their experiences online, and the rate of growth is extraordinary.
The popularity of blogging is growing fast too, which is good news for tourism because blogging represents a fantastic way to help your clients understand the experience you offer them, in a way that can be much more authentic and up close than a website on its own.
Scan some of the 1.7M+ travel postings on Technorati travel blogs for a while, and get a feel for how many travellers are sharing their thoughts and experiences using blogs as the medium.
This is why we have developed online marketing strategies and services to help tourism operators market themselves online.
How We Can Help
Most tourism businesses have websites. But a website is not a marketing tool on its own. Keyword Analysis, Search Marketing, Content Marketing, Email Marketing and Affiliate Marketing offer significant opportunities for tourism operators to reach travellers while they are researching and planning their trips, and to increase bookings and visitor numbers.
We’ve put together a carefully researched and tested set of services, that will enable you to get online marketing at your own pace, spreading the cost and drawing our support as much or as little as you need us.
We can also guarantee dedication. Travel and tourism is close to my heart, having spent six years working as a travel writer and then editor of national travel industry magazine, Traveltalk. This brought me face to face with a wide range of tourism operators and fired up my determination to help this passionate group grow their businesses.
After joining Glenn Nicholas and Julia Sutton as manager of their new business, PublicityShip, in 2006, I established the Hidden Jewel Awards for small tourism operators because we saw how these businesses were struggling to enter the spotlight at established state and national awards schemes.
Thanks to Glenn’s extensive experience in business development and IT, I also quickly learned the ins and outs of online marketing, and recognised the potential for tourism operators to take advantage of the Internet’s level playing field. Since then I have been itching to launch this site.
We Want to Hear from You
We’re dedicated to helping you market your business online, so that you can claim your share of the growing number of travellers planning their holidays online. So do contact me with your feedback, requests and suggestions.
To kick off a few ideas, I’ve just published an article based on interviews with 12 tourism operators from around Australia. It examines some of the most common challenges faced by businesses marketing to overseas visitors, and I’ll be posting on each of those challenges in more detail. You can read the complete article here.
