5 Reasons Why Your Travel Company Absolutely Needs a Blog

It can be daunting to start a blog, admittedly. You may have seen the articles I wrote on the 9 Fatal Mistakes New Bloggers Make (and How to Avoid Them), so I understand your concerns. But here’s the thing:

Businesses that produce blog articles experience 126% higher lead growth than those that don’t. [source]

So it’s pretty clear that the rewards for success far outweigh the risks if you know what you’re doing.

Now, onto business. Here are my five reasons your travel company absolutely needs a blog.

Let’s use the example of Safari Drive — a company that sells safari tours to a (typically) 50+ audience whose children have flown the nest.

Their customers are both time and money-rich, and looking for an experience that they might previously have not been able to find time for.

But packing for safari tours is a complicated business and thought of being underprepared in a harsh environment can put people off, which isn’t ideal for a company like Safari Drive.

However, by displaying their expertise in the form of a useful, informative blog post, they make the whole process much less complicated for their potential customers.

So we came up with this:

By building up a database of articles on topics their customers often ask questions about, they streamline the process. And, not to mention, having a base of 24 to 51 articles boosts traffic by an estimated 30%, per Araron Orendorff on Content Marketing Institute.

Blogs, believe it or not, are trusted by a whopping 81% of consumers — that’s easily more than TV adverts, search-engine ads and online banner ads — so it’s important to give your provide your customers with a voice, and opinion, they can trust.

Take The Leap as an example. Their target audience may think they have all the answers, being between 17–21, but in reality they need reassurance, advice and a friendly voice to encourage them.

By using one person to create (or at least be the voice of) all your content, you can create a one-to-one conversation with the customer and engage them on a personal level. Even a response to a comment feels more reassuring, allowing you to build trust in your service.

By creating content that engages your customers, they’ll feel inclined to share it with their friends or loved ones if they’re really interested.

As such, your blog posts can be more far-reaching than you could ever anticipate.

Think of your Facebook timeline or Twitter feed — how often do you see content from sources you would never visit yourself due to your friends sharing it?

The key here is to be genuinely informative.

Pushy sales pieces will put people off straight away, so it has to come from a reliable, trusted source that offers genuine insight into the topic.

We worked with Momentum Ski on a post that tied directly in to one specific product, but because the content was more informative and narrative than sales-driven, this was the response it got on Facebook alone:

Putting all of these informative articles in one place, where they can be compared to each other, is a incredibly useful for the target audience, and lets them decide at their leisure without feeling pressured.

And, to put things in perspective, small businesses that blog generate 126% more leads on average than those that don’t.

Any ambitious company will know that good SEO can be a great ally.

By pushing your company to the top of search engine results pages (or ‘SERPs’), you naturally generate more visitors — and you know what they can turn into. The fact is, search engines love valuable content, and blog articles are an amazing way to produce exactly that.

If you update your blog regularly, all your new content will be indexed by search engines, which will create more online exposure.

When it comes to blogging, the figures really do speak for themselves. Companies that blog actually receive 97% more inbound links, and 434% more indexed pages than those without a blog.

There are hundreds of blogs on how to boost your SEO on WordPress, and, to prove a point, here’s the one that’s top of the search engine results.

All of what I’ve talked about until now really comes down to one thing — turning leads into sales.

A well-written article can attract a customer to your site, but to really get them involved you have to give them more. By demonstrating your value as a service, with your unquestionable knowledge to back it up, you have the customer’s trust.

Your reputation may lead people to your site, but ultimately your blog could be what keeps them coming back.

So let me leave you with a few statistics;

82% of companies that blog daily acquired a customer using their blogs, as opposed to 57% of marketers who blog monthly, which goes to show that a little effort can go a long way.

And finally, in the US 67% of consumers have made a purchase based on a blog post — so why not make sure that next purchase is made on yours?

Now, what are you waiting for? If you run a travel company, get in touch and see what we could do for you.

Looking for more tips? I’ve put together a handy email course, How to Grow Your Travel Business With Content Marketing, which is full of ideas to help get your company up to speed with your competitors.

Thanks for reading! Are you a travel company owner or marketing director that wants more bookings?