According to Mintel, 99% of moms are using Social Media. The platforms we chose for our target Zoe were based on the documented most used by the target. Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram are all used on a weekly basis by Moms (Mintel, Marketing to Moms) TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram were chosen because of high usage along with data taken from our competitors and how the target consumes information for vacations.
Our marketing strategy will consist of an omnichannel approach with SEO/SEM, affiliate marketing, paid and organic social media paid as well as email marketing.
Channel Research
52% of Facebook users said friends’ photos inspired them to book a trip and 50% of travel companies have a booking widget right on their Facebook page.
Overwhelmingly, travels looked to social media to inform their travel destinations with top vacation inspiration sites: Facebook (29%), Trip Advisor (14%), Twitter (6%), Pinterest (4%)
According to Fattiretours.com the most used platform for those posting during vacation is: Facebook (62%), Instagram (46%), YouTube (33%), Twitter (26%), Snapchat (24%), Reddit (18%), Pinterest (17%)
Social media use post-vacation is heavy. Webfx states that 76% of travelers post vacation photos on social media, 55% liked Facebook photos associated with a friend’s recent vacation post, and between 40-50% of travelers are posting reviews on the operator, accommodations, and activities post-vacation.
Opportunity (webfx) – 35% of all travel will be booked by mobile by 2018 (at the least, half of our target will be booking via mobile) the top five uses of smartphones during vacation: taking photos, using map features, searching restaurants, seeking activities and attractions, searching flight information (sprout social mobile travel infographic – via webfx)
Email Campaigns
Key for EpicTrek during all stages of the funnel for marketing to help to drive bookings and nurture previous consumers to re-book.
Inspiration and Shopping stage campaign
EpicTrek will use an “abandon cart” strategy to remind customers who have logged in about the quiz they completed and trip boards created.
- 70% of consumers abandon their cart before checkout.
- 2-3 reminder emails will be sent for abandoned cart recovery.
Booking/Pre-Trek
EpicTrek will email customers who have just booked an adventure with us confirming their booking with trip details and CTAs to download our EpicTrek mobile app for enhanced features while on their adventure. This transactional email will encourage consumers to participate in adventure challenges for prizes & content sharing.
Post-Trek
E-mail served once a consumer has completed their trip encouraging them to leave feedback, reviews, and content sharing using the #EpicTrekAdventure hashtag on social media. EpicTrek will continue to nurture our customer relationship with email reminders and planning the next trip. Sometimes the best part of finishing one journey is planning the next one!
Social Strategy
Increase brand awareness and help generate bookings through always-on content, paid social and organic postings. EpickTrek will use “influencer” marketing primarily on a micro-level, especially by encouraging core consumers to create and share their own content from adventures with our unique hashtag (#EpicTrekAdventure).
We will feature/utilize consumer content on all channels. Components to include in our social budget include:
- content creation
- paid advertising
- paid partnerships and software
Our business model is designed to drive sales through our website, so EpicTrek’s marketing will rely heavily on digital and social spending. Our business goals for social strategy are:
- Increase brand awareness
- Drive traffic to our website
- Generate new leads
- Grow the business revenue
- Build a community with captivating content
Paid Social
Create audience personas and use detailed targeting options through ad set creation to hyper-target our demographic.
These detailed targeting options may be based on: (Facebook Business Reference):
- Ads they click
- Pages they engage with
- Activities people engage in on Facebook related to things like their device usage, and travel preferences
- Demographics like age, gender, and location
- The mobile device they use and the speed of their network connection
Deliver targeted messaging to our competitors’ customers.
Twitter
Sponsored ads targeted to drive website clicks and generate traffic. Organic content shared daily. Top of funnel content shared i.e. free downloadable information on our website such as infographic, checklists, white papers, etc.
Instagram
Invite micro-influencers to book an adventure with a discount code encouraging them to share their content with the #EpicTrekAdventures hashtag. Offer discount codes and branded gift bags/backpacks with EpicTrek swag such as gear for them to wear on a hike to micro-influencers to start to drive visits to our website at launch.
Example Influencers to partner with:
- @MissHollDoll (39-year-old hiker and content creator) 291,000 followers
- @WalkingonTravels (Mom, wife, and travel writer who loves to create and share content especially through her blog) 22,500 followers
- CarfulofKids -(mom with three kids, loves to take road trips and go on adventures with her family. 2,830 followers
Paid advertising highlighting adventures and trips similar to Twitter and Facebook paid ads. Drive traffic to the website and help generate brand awareness.
Paid partnership advertising with companies such as REI.
Facebook
Focus primarily on paid ads such as video, carousel, and collection ads. Generating traffic to our website. Serve re-targeting ads to consumers who interacted with our content or visited our website but didn’t complete a booking.
TikTok
The #outdoors and #trip hashtags on TikTok have 27 million followers combined. Target tweens of adventurers and adventurers. Create an #EpicTrek challenge with hiking content for users to recreate. Create eye-catching content of short clips for paid advertising. Utilize influencers such as @RioTravelers, a married couple who has adjusted their content for travelers and adventurers during Covid.
SEM Strategy
- Retargeting Display ads through social media channels.
- Advertising on popular YouTube Channel “Outdoors with the Morgan’s” – based on SEO keyword algorithm search
- Keyword purchase to include: outdoor trips, outdoor trips during covid, outdoor trips near me, outdoor trips for families near me, outdoor trips for adults, vacation planning, vacation places, vacation packing list, vacation places near me, vacation package deals, vacation planner
SEO Strategy
Keywords
Our target requires a multi-faceted approach because of Zoe’s lack of experience with the offering. Based on our research, we found that moms of teens are eager to search for vacation adventures for the family to enjoy. Our short-tail keywords include a mix of “typical” trip searches as well as vacation and outdoor focused searches. With our long-tail strategy, based on Google research we find our target associating with long-form searches related to cost, covid, kids, proximity: best outdoor vacations and family vacations would be our best volume searches.
Short tail
- outdoors
- outdoorsy
- outdoorsy RV rental
Long-tail
- Trip with kids, trip with friends, trip with a dog
- Weekend getaway, Getaways near me, getaways with kids
- Vacation planning, vacation places, vacation packing list, vacation places near me, vacation package deals, vacation planner
- Good trips for teens, good trips for families, good trips for couples
- adventure planning
- vacation rentals near me, vacation with a teenager
- outdoor trips, outdoor trips during covid, outdoor trips near me, outdoor trips for families near me, outdoor trips for adults
SERPs trends
For our target, answering her questions is paramount to helping her. Since she does not know where to start for her adventure, we must start broad and reach her when she’s looking for information. The trends we see with our keywords show top lists as ranked high on Google’s algorithm. Our content should include both vacation keywords associated with the outdoors and then content that is top of the funnel.
Top of the funnel content ideas:
- Top 50 Best vacation with teens
- Top 20 Good trips with families
- Top 10 local trip ideas
- Top 20 vacations with kids
If Zoe is looking for outdoor vacations:
- Top 20 outdoor trips for families
- Top 30 best outdoor vacations
- Top 10 outdoor vacation ideas during COVID
- Top 50 outdoor vacations in the US
Cornerstone Content
It’s great to have top lists for our Google algorithm but to really stand out and garner the opportunity of optimizing for the most shares, a strategy that places us as the penultimate source for vacation information is ideal. The recommendation to have a blog portion to the site where Google keywords selected can reside in the content. The cornerstone content article on the site should follow a comprehensive article inclusive of the following outline. Separate posts per each subheading in the article should contain internal links into and outside of the cornerstone article. Each subheading should be answering the questions commonly asked through the google searches associated with our keywords above. Since studies show that content consumers resonate with stats and data, each subheading in our cornerstone content should have it.
The Ultimate Guide to Planning The Best Vacation With Teens (keywords used here are the highest volume and lowest difficulty for maximum exposure) Article should be 1,100 words or more
- Find out what your family is interested in
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- sub to this content we can link to our gamified quiz/questionnaire
- answer the Google question from above “what are the best vacations for families?” (for rank)
- answer the Google question from above “what can you do outside with your family?” (for rank)
- Statistic from data – Families spend most of their time outdoors with kids – outdoor playtime is an integral component of most families’ free time – Mintel Family Entertainment Aug. 2019
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- Get the logistics out of the way
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- What is your budget
- How far are you willing to travel
- Does COVID affect your decisions?
- statistic from data: 67% of 2000 internet users aged 18+ say travel by road trip by car is their choice of vacation travel before a vaccine is available
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- What can you do outside with teens?
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- Why hike with teens
- tips for hiking with teens
- learn while hiking
- best hiking reads
- hiking movies
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- Ideas to start locally
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- The benefits of visiting National Parks
- Gamify your family journey with badges
- Benefits of park service days
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- How to pack
- Gear suggestions
- Best times to buy
Connecting to Social Media
Our social media posts should always drive traffic to our website. Specifically, each post should link to our cornerstone article either directly or indirectly through the blog post (which then links internally to the cornerstone content)
SEO Key Performance Indicators
The SMART goal defined for our SEO efforts is to: Reach page 1 of SERPs for the low difficulty high volume long-tail keyword, best vacations with teens. If a cornerstone article is launched with a website this goal should be realized within the first 9 months of launch. Indirectly, the goal should be a standard industry benchmark Google Analytics goal of time on-site starting with a stickiness of 40-50 seconds. Ultimately, a good indicator that our content is effective leads to an average time on site of over 2 minutes.
Process Flow
