Grow Your Activity Business With These Adventure Marketing Tips

Adventure activities are hugely popular right now. In fact, a recent TripAdvisor study found that outdoor activities, nature and parks made up 34 percent of attraction page views between May and September 2020.

This gives adventure tour operators a unique opportunity to reach new customers and drive bookings. 

But, with that in mind, does your business have an adventure marketing strategy in place that will market your brand to new prospects and ensure you stand out over your competitors?

If not, here at Fotaflo we have listed five tips that will help you build an effective outdoor adventure marketing plan. 

5 Adventure Marketing Solutions That Will Drive New Bookings

When it comes to the vast majority of adventure tour operators, they aren’t implementing robust marketing strategies. 

They may be posting blogs on their website, paying for ads on Facebook and posting on Instagram, but in most cases there is no real strategy behind it all. 

Just like any aspect of your business, when it comes to adventure marketing ROI is critical. That’s why we’ve listed some tips to help get you started. 

1 - Know who your customers are

The key to building an effective adventure marketing strategy is to first understand who your prospects are. Your marketing campaigns should be built around targeting your ideal customer. 

You can build a profile of your ideal customer by creating buyer personas. These personas will give you an idea of what your prospects are looking for in each stage of the buyers’ journey, and how you can help guide them through a journey that results in booking an activity with your brand. 

Understanding who your customers are will help your brand:

• Learn where your prospects live online and what marketing channels you should be targeting as a priority.
• Better understand what type of content will drive successful results. 
• Build a buyers’ journey that encourages prospects down a funnel that leads to making a booking with your company.

2 - Use customer photos to build brand advocates that promote your name

One of the most effective ways to increase adventure marketing ROI almost instantly is to start using a photo marketing solution to build a base of brand advocates that tell their peers about your brand.

In fact, word-of-mouth has long been the best marketing tool for tour and activity operators. 

By sharing photo memories with your customers on a custom-branded page that can be shared on social media channels, your adventure tour business encourages these clients to share their recent adventure with their friends and family who are considering an adventure activity. 

If people see their friends or family members enjoying an experience with your brand, they are significantly more likely to make a booking as well. 

3 - Experiment to see what works for your business

There’s no secret sauce to marketing success. What works for one adventure tour business might not work for you. It all comes down to the prospects that you are targeting, what they want to consume, and where they want to consume it.

The best way to find what works for you is to experiment with a variety of campaigns. This should include a mix of:

• Email remarketing
• SEO strategy for organic traffic that includes website content and blogging
• Paid search
• Partnering with local tourism boards
• Social media campaigns
• Photo marketing initiatives

4 - Ensure you have great reviews from past customers

One of the most effective marketing tactics for your business is having great online reviews on third-party websites from past customers. That’s because customers typically always read reviews of your business before booking. 

If the reviews are great, prospects will likely make a booking. If the reviews are bad, prospects will probably move on to one of your competitors. 

Read our blog, How To Generate Reviews Online Through Thank You Videos, to learn how you can encourage customers to leave high-quality online reviews of your business. 

5 - Make sure to measure the success of your marketing initiatives

There’s no point taking the time to implement an outdoor adventure marketing strategy if you aren’t spending time measuring whether it is effective or not. 

That’s why it’s important adventure tour operators identify success metrics for every marketing campaign they launch. Metrics to measure how effective your program is could include:

• Page views
• Search engine traffic
• Social media engagement
• Conversion rate
• Online bookings
• Click-through rates

The metric you choose will depend on the campaign you are launching and what you are trying to achieve with it. 

Are you interested in learning more about implementing an effective adventure marketing program and how Fotaflo can help? Book a free demo of our innovative photo delivery system and marketing platform today.