How to find influencers that give you remarkable travel business results?

Building relationships is at the core of any business in all industries. Travel companies are constantly looking for new ways to reach out to fresh audiences who they haven’t reached yet. A large percentage of revenue generated by the travel industry comes from a steady stream of repeat customers. Companies have a lot to gain from influencer marketing, and it’s one of the hottest topics over the past few years in digital marketing that can be often misguided.

With the right approach and a formulated brief of what you want to achieve, the massive reach of influencers can especially aid travel companies by gaining an edge over competitors.

Why does the travel industry need influencers?

Travellers will always trust reviews and recommendations from influencers. They value a real person’s viewpoint that connects experiences with what your brand is selling. Just like a best friend giving good advice, they can boost a travel brand to untapped potential. Providing customers with insight on destinations, hospitality or travel services that are suitable for them, underpins a travellers choice in deciding how they wish to experience their next excursion.

The basic psychology of having an influencer that showcases your benefits to an engaged audience, can make huge strides in bringing in that steady stream. Reliable, trusted and an active customer base that will advocate on your behalf. Influencers will become your virtual travel guide boosting your business to the millennials and social-media savvy generation. Traditional advertising cannot compete with authenticity and partnering with influencers who boast your destination or brand, will only strengthen your value proposition.

So you’ve decided to look for an influencer but how do you prepare them with your product or services? How should your business market to the influencer? Finding influencers isn’t the issue, marketing to them though is and worth the time and effort you put in.

What is an Influencer Marketing Brief?

Essentially it’s an overview of your business, showcasing the benefits of your brand and how people have used it in the past. The company overview should contain the following:

  • Images you have used so far that describes your brand mood, try to narrow it down to two or three
  • Hashtags you have used from previous campaigns
  • A company overview in two sentences.
  • Knowing a little more about your intent is very important. It will come across in successful campaigns and will ensure a level of understanding between you and the influencer you hire.
  • Write a description about your campaign goal and what you’d like to accomplish
  • Describe your campaign message so your influencer knows what to write in captions
  • What are you hoping to achieve:
    • Engagements
    • Link clicks
    • Brand awareness
  • Which channels do you want the influencer to use for the campaign
  • Provide a list of deliverables to include what content you would like posted and by when
  • Who is the campaign for? Ideally it would be best to provide a target audience with a little demographic information
  • What’s included in the budget? Can include travel costs, food and other expenses
  • Deadline and go live for campaign publication

Ask For Results

Now that you’ve provided a campaign snapshot, you’ll need access to the results and gauge effectiveness of your investment. This will ensure whether the intent has been achieved and whether your influencer actually influenced your target market. Based on these results you can either establish a long term agreement with your influencers or keep refining your choices. Main points to consider include:

    • How you want the results to be measured, i.e number of engagements, link clicks, views
    • What is the content review process?
    • Should the content creator submit images and captions prior to publishing
    • Due dates
    • Payment processes and contract assignments
    • Campaign deliverables and description. You can list as many as you like here based on your campaign goals.

Providing insights and inspiration will make it easier for your content creators to get a feel for the mood and brand message you want to convey. Give tips to inspire their creative streak, provide a post caption description that highlights your key messages. The link back to your landing page or company website is the CTA (Call To Action) that most creators will direct their traffic to. Make sure it’s where you can also track the audience using Google Analytics to internally measure the success of your campaigns.

For Instagram it’s best to provide a mood board which showcases images your brand is aligned with in terms of style, tone and voice. Four to six images should be enough for a professional influencer to get an idea of what you’re after.

Follow this with some guidelines of Do’s and Don’ts. It will help your content creator in giving you something that is on point and on brand. You don’t want anything that compares your brand with competitors for example or incorporating other sponsored posts.

Once you’re armed with a simple brief, it will refine your thinking, focus your marketing goals and add a sense of confidence to your influencer that you know what your outcomes should be. Cutting through the back and forth will mean efficiency at your end and making sure your investment in the influencer you choose has results.

We’ve provided a sample Influencer Marketing Brief template for you to download, making it easier for you to set one up and to provide guidance.

 

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Authored By

Halldór Arinbjarnarson
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