As a tour operator or a travel agency, you probably spend a significant amount of time and money on advertising. As well you should, because you can’t grow your business and increase your revenue without well-thought-out advertising strategy.
Advertising has always been important, but never more so than today. In fact, the advertising industry has transformed in recent years under the influence of social media, putting more emphasis on customer engagement and building trust among consumers than ever before. The focus has shifted from merely building a brand image to building brand loyalty.
The task is far from trivial, and failure to accomplish a healthy dialogue with the customers can ruin a company. This is why many companies outsource this segment of advertising to specialized social media marketing agencies.
But what if we told you there was a much easier, cheaper, and less time-consuming way of accomplishing this? A way that requires minimal effort on your part, and, if executed properly, one that could dramatically increase your online booking sales? We present: customers reviews.
Yes, travel product reviews. On your web pages. We are not suggesting you should abandon more conventional forms of advertising, of course, but customer reviews are often overlooked and underrated as a way of generating social buzz about your travel services.
What would be the benefits of letting your customers post reviews of your services on your website, you ask?
Building customer relations
When you let your customers share their experiences and rate your services in an open manner, you are letting them know that their experiences and satisfaction matter to you. That you are invested in providing the best possible service and improving that service based on customer feedback.
Increasing credibility
When customers can read the experiences of other people who have used your services, it adds tremendously to your credibility. Suddenly, your travel products are no longer just collections of photographs, descriptions, and numbers, but also of real people’s stories.
Boosting online booking sales
The research shows that adding customer reviews to your product pages increases online sales dramatically and most, if not all, big online retailers use customer reviews systems. There is science behind it, and if you’re not already using one of such systems, you should reconsider it. It’s practically free money!
Collateral advertising
Although collateral advertising is an actual thing in advertising, I use the term in a different sense here. What’s so great about customer reviews is that they generate advertisement without focusing your effort on the advertisement, and instead allow you to focus your effort where it’s most needed – providing an excellent service, which in turn, generates great customer reviews. It’s a virtuous circle of win-win, really.
By recognizing that our product should not only support our client’s operational needs but also simplify their customer engagement and feedback process, we introduced – Yotpo.
Yotpo is a top-notch customer review service which we now offer integration with. You can choose from simple yet powerful and fully customizable premade widgets to completely custom-made solutions using their powerful API.
Benefits of having online reviews
- Achieve a rate of 6-8% of customers who leave a review, which is about 8x the industry standard!
- Allows your customers to share their reviews on their Facebook and Twitter pages, exposing your brand to even more people.
- From easily set-up premade widgets to completely custom-made solutions, it’s all your choice.
- Customers also have a rating of credibility and other customers can view their profiles and statistics, so they can be sure they are reading a genuine review.
For more information, you can visit Yotpo’s homepage.
