Besides reading reviews about your business on TripAdvisor, people will browse your profile. Is one extra sale worth it? Two? Getting the best out of your online marketing involves squeezing out the little percentages in every space you occupy.
Check Out Our 12 Steps:
1. Be descriptive in the business name. People should be able to get a basic impression of what you do just from the name of your profile. If it’s ‘Howard’s Tours’, you’re missing out a bit here. ‘Howard’s Hawaii Tours” or “Howard’s Hawaii Day Tours”’ is much clearer.
It’s not about jamming your profile name with keywords for the sake of Google (a practice that TripAdvisor restricts), but rather letting people know who you are, where you are and what you do as concisely as possible.
2. In your “About” description, make every word count. Skip the fluffy marketing sentences such as ‘Your time here is limited, so make the most of it!’ or ‘We provide a personal service which is tailored to you.’ Create a quick summary sentence about what you do (including what makes your company stand out) to hook visitors into reading the rest.
Many tourists don’t know how to differentiate one tour operator from another. This is why TripAdvisor reviews can help so much. Use your description to help further that sense of being the ‘safe choice’. In an opening sentence or two, make a reference to how many hundreds or thousands of tours you have conducted. Maybe say which year you launched to show your experience. Quote a testimonial. Show that you’re the operator that a smart person would choose.
The key here is to think of hooks – what opening sentences will interest people more than others? We LOVE the way Broadway Up Close Walking Tours does this. They’re a highly successful tour company in New York:
“Ever wonder how a Broadway show is created? Or which Broadway theaters are haunted? Are you obsessed with Hamilton: An American Musical? Look no further – we’ve got the tours for you! Since 2010, Broadway Up Close has provided…”
What a great way to open their description. You’ll need to strike a neat balance of interesting hooks, showing why your business is great and description of the tour.
3. Fill out ALL your profile details – email, website, phone number, address. Add as many photos as you can. Make it look like a lot is going on. Something noticeable on TripAdvisor is that lesser-ranked operators often have near-empty profiles. This makes them look inactive, even when they’re not! So be sure to fill all the boxes!
4. Add photos and lots of them. Show photos of your guests having fun on the tours, engaging with guides and if good weather is noticeable in the background all the better. These types of photos have a much larger impact on visitors than images of the sun setting over the horizon. According to TripAdvisor, travelers engage 41% percent more with pages that have 30 or more photos. Make sure you don’t wait for people to add photos on their own. Upload your own photos and ensure they are high quality.
5. Use video. According to TripAdvisor, hotel profiles with videos receive 34% more engagement than those that don’t. You can imagine that this applies to day tours as well. Through short videos you can give visitors a sneak peak of what they will see and do if they book your tours.
6. Check and update your profile information regularly. A lot of businesses skip this part. Put a reminder on your calendar to check the info every three or six months. This also includes refreshing your photo gallery. Also consider adding in regular blogging content with our blogging service.
7. Test all links and contacts. It’s common to see that businesses have put an incorrect link to their website. They have no idea, but if they had tested it just once, they would have known.
8. Keep Google in mind. The priority here needs to be the reader first and not Google, however it’s possible to experiment with keywords to strive for better ranking — you just need to make sure that you don’t destroy the readability of your profile! Take a look at your profile and see if you can’t sneak a keyword or two in there to optimize for Google searches.
9. Integrate booking links where possible. TripAdvisor has a ‘book now’ button where people can book directly through your site. You need to consider whether this is right for your business. If you know your numbers, do the math. An extra bump in sales might not be worth it if they start taking commissions from bookings you would have gotten anyway. To get this feature enabled, you need to be listed on one of TripAdvisor’s partner sites — for example, Viator.
10. Respond to all your reviews. Responding to reviews increases the chances of someone engaging with your TA page. In fact, a TripAdvisor study showed that accommodation venues that respond to 50 percent or more of reviews experience 24 percent more engagement! Another study showed that 77 percent of users agree that seeing a hotel management response makes them more likely to book. It’s hard to imagine that this doesn’t also apply to other businesses.
11. Use your social media platforms to promote your TripAdvisor profile. If your TripAdvisor profile makes you look great, put links to it on your Facebook page’s description or your Twitter profile. Potential guests can then see the wonderful job you have done. Take it one step further and make sure that your branding and styling matches across all social channels. Our designers specialize in this if you are looking for some assistance.
12. Use the words of happy tour-goers. Open your TripAdvisor profile description with a single-sentence quote from a testimonial (or two). It’s a great hook to begin your description because most operators don’t do this, ultimately distinguishing your company from the rest. Every time we see a quote at the start of a profile, we’re interested and keep on reading. Even if you don’t want to open your description by quoting a testimonial, you should take advantage of quoting one or two somewhere.
To top off all the above, if you want to make sure your website is looking just as special don’t hesitate to get in touch with us!
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