Managing Your Online Presence For Tourism Businesses Presented by - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Managing Your Online Presence For Tourism Businesses

Presented by RTO 9

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

Introduction

Max Sadlowski CEO, BentoSMB Inc.

Welcome to this workshop! We have a busy morning, with a lot to cover. Today, we will talk about the following topics:

• Websites - Importance, platforms, and SEO
• Social Media + Paid Ads
• TripAdvisor + Google My Business
• Professional Touches
• Q&A

At the end of today’s workshop, it is my hope that you all have some solid ideas on how to better manage your online business presence and feel empowered to do some more research and learning to build a great online presence for your business.

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

ICEBREAKER

Using your device of choice, I want you to lookup a local attraction (not your own) through whatever means you would normally look it up. Then write down the following:

1. What is it’s rating? Stars, out of 5, etc. 2. What are the next steps in your search? Are they clear in your results? 3. Are there reviews? Are those important?

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

Websites

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

Often the first or second stop for anyone searching your business online, your website is one of the most important aspects of your online presence.

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

Website Checklist

• Who are your users and where are they coming from?
• What do those users expect from your site? What information are

they looking for?

• What are their next steps after visiting your site? How are they

going to interact with your business next?

• Does your website do everything you came up with in these

questions?

WEBSITES

You might already have a website, but if you need a new site or are thinking to rebuild, take note of the tips in these slides.

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

EXERCISE #1

Let’s spend 10 minutes answering these questions for a business in the room. We won’t critique the site afterwards, I will leave that up to each of you as you build your own list.

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

PRO TIPS

We have built over 100 websites aver the last 4 years, many of which have been for small local focused businesses. Here are the pro tips that will up your game in being able to provide a better experience for your user and get more out of your investment.

• Use a hosted platform (PaaS) such as Weebly, Wix,

SquareSpace, or Shopify if you are managing

• yourself. If using a pro, ask them what platform

they will use, how long they have worked on it, and how they manage technical issues.

• Ensure your site is mobile optimized. Over 60% of

web traffic is now mobile based, so it is critical your site is ready for those devices.

• Your home page should hit on the main things

your users are looking for and give direct steps for what they might be looking for next.

• SEO is critical to helping your search ranking.

Ensure you fill out those fields and ask your web developer what they do to help with SEO.

• Website speed is super important. Your home

page should load faster than 3 seconds. After that people get frustrated and potentially look elsewhere.

• Provide links to all your other online resources and

presence locations. Create links that allow people to easily add google, tripadvisor and facebook reviews.

• Hire a pro. There are a lot of developers out there,

some good, some terrible. Do your research, and don’t base your decision on price.

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

NEW INTERACTIONS

Websites continue to evolve and how people interact via your site is changing. Here are some of the best ways to extend your site to better serve your users.

Chat Bots

Simple tools now exist to add a chat bot to your site. It allows more instant communication for your users and is preferred by more people then picking up the phone. You can do a lot with them to preprogram responses, book meetings, and answer frequent questions all without human interaction.

Help Centers

Most users prefer to find the information they need themselves, so give them an easy way to do this. Many platforms have a FA and/or help center that allows users to search and find answers.

Social Proof

Testimonial and reviews are critical to any business. Adding social proof to your website in the form of testimonials and star ratings is easier then it has been in the past. Automated methods allow you to amalgamate multiple sources and show them on your site instantly or with your review.

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

Understanding Search Engines

When you search, most of us use Google. Why is that? It’s because we trust that Google will return the best results to us time and again, quickly. If they didn’t, we would use another service. Search engines rank content against keywords and deliver results in order. To get into that list, your content needs to be relevant to that search. The algorithms are sophisticated, so to understand them completely is not possible, but the goal is to always show the best result. When a user clicks that result and stays on the site, it tells the search engine its a good match. But if someone clicks and then leaves right away, the search engine sees it might not be a good match. THis is just one variable, but it’s important.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

SEO is a huge buzzword, so many businesses worry about it, but do not fully understand how to manage it. Much of it is technical, so it can be daunting. Let’s look at some pieces together and shed some myths, as well as give you some tips.

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

Technical Setup

Much of SEO is in technical setup. Ensuring a connection with search engines, properly formatted pages, meta tags, structured data, and many other areas are things that need to be setup by an expert. The content that goes in here can be managed, but the technical implementation is important. Many platforms handle some of this for you though.

Content

While meta, titles, and structured content is still important, search engines are placing a higher importance on the actual content of the page. Having content that aligns with your brand and the topic is

• critical. Images and video also help with delivering a richer

result, so they get ranked higher.

Proof

Search engines look for ways to validate your content is legitimate. Backlinks are a major player in that validation, showing other domains have endorsed your content.

Speed

If your site is slow, your SEO will be slow as well. Your site should be optimized for speed, specially

• n mobile.

Hacks

There are many ways to try and spoof the search algorithms, but they don’t last long and can result in blacklisting of your domain, so don’t do it. It’s not worth it.

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

• 1. Speed - Your site needs to be fast. Remove

anything that may slow down your site that isn’t critical

• 2. Links - While backlinks are important, forward links

are important as well. Link to other trusted and relevant sources of content related to your content.

• 3. Create For Humans - Old SEO was for bots, but the

bots are smart now. Focus on creating sites that are for humans.

• 4. Encourage Backlinks - These are critical to SEO

success, so set up a strategy to promote others linking to your site, your blogs, and your content.

• 5. Get Google Analytics - It’s super easy to install, and

it’s important to understanding your site traffic. It also proves some legitimacy to Google.

• 6. Unique Titles and Descriptions - Every page

needs a title and description, and this should be unique and relevant for each page.

• 7. Watch Your URLs - These should be readable and

not contain stop words. Use hyphens, not underscores.

• 8. Use Social Media - Social media links count

towards backlinks, and popular profiles linking to your content have been shown to increase SEO.

• 9. Image Alt Tags - Make sure you add them, and use

the right keywords to ensure your content is represented.

• 10. Unique Content - Create and publish unique

content on a regular basis.

Source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/10-most-important-seo-tips-you-need-to-know/

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

Social Media + Paid Ads

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

BUSINESS PAGES + ORGANIC REACH

Business Pages A must for any business, a facebook business page is

• ne of the top places people go to verify a business

It’s easy to setup, but maintenance is also critical. Here are some tips:

• Post at least once a week (scheduled or not)
• Review business details once a month, keep

things up to date

• Post closures and changes
• Add images and content that applies to your

business

• Get a bunch of reviews

Death Of Organic Reach Facebook is now a Pay to Play model. If you want to reach new clients, even past clients, you won’t get far with unpaid posts. Facebook makes all of it’s money off of ads, so they are pushing more an more businesses to use them Organic reach has steadily decreased, and competition for advertising space is at an all time high. Understanding Facebook Advertising, how to use it effectively, and how to get the most bang for your buck is more important than ever.

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

FACEBOOK ADS - WHAT IS IT?

How Does Facebook Make Money “We make money by selling ads, Senator.” For those who watched some of the Senate’s inquiry into Facebook, one of the questions was how do you make money. Facebook essentially only sells ads to generate income and run the platform. Your personal information and how you use the platform is what allows them to sell advertising to marketers. Marketers build campaigns based around anonymized data, building on demographic details, behaviours, sites visited, and interactions with Facebook Pixels. Unlike Google Ads, Facebook is a passive advertising platform. What Details Do They Collect No-one knows every data point that they collect, but generally we know that they collect and allow advertisers to target ads based on:

• Demographics - Age, gender, marital status,

ethnicity, location, language spoken

• Behaviors - Mobile device type, Anniversary,

Having a Baby, Recently widowed

• Interests - Based on your interactions, such as

posts, videos, and what you have written on the platform

• Website Interactions - Products reviewed,

subscriptions, adding things to carts, specific button presses.

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

BOOSTING POST VS CREATING POSTS

Boosting posts is something we almost never recommend. Creating ads and fully leveraging the tools available often yields better results. Let’s talk about why. Limitations

• Limited ability to select an audience, interests,

and demographics

• Only allows you to create one ad, and it matches

your post, limiting learning from different content shown to users

• Only allows for one ad set, limiting learning

between different targeting.

• Minimal analytics meaning proving ROI is

difficult

• Copying and duplicating results can be very

difficult What is Boosting If you have ever used a business page, you have seen the boost button. You may have clicked it, and you may have boosted a post. Boosting is a simplified way of advertising. When you boost, it creates a campaign, adset, and ad for you automatically. It’s simplified and prominent for people, and it works to generate good money for Facebook. There are a lot of limitations though, and any serious business will almost never boost a post.

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

Audience Network

• Available in native, banner, in stream videos, and

reward videos (ex. watch a video, get coins)

• Can extend the reach into apps and other websites
• utside the Facebook platform.
• Not limited to demographics
• Works best with high quality video ads
• Can be used with remarketing very well.

FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM + AUDIENCE NETWORK

Ads created in your Advertising Account by default go out to three places: Facebook, Instagram, the Facebook Audience Network, and Messenger. It is important to know what each of these are what audiences you are interacting with. Messenger

• Inbox and Sponsored Messages
• Both allow you to connect with all users of Facebook.
• Messenger is often used by all ages and

demographics, not limited to older generations.

• Great for remarketing or as a notification system for

abandoned carts or new promotions.

• Relatively new and unsaturated

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

PRO TIPS

After working with a lot of small businesses, we have seen some of the things that work and some of the things that don’t when it comes to social media management. Here are some of our tips for maximizing return.

• Post organically. While it doesn’t get the reach it

use to, it’s still important and should be part of your strategy.

• Use software to help manage your account. Sprout

Social, Hootsuite, and Buffer are all really great tools to help you manage accounts, see analytics, and respond/interact with people all from a single source.

• Make sure to be interacting with people, use your

posts to attract attention and get some sort of

• response. When you get a response, interact with

them, answering questions and acknowledging their presence.

• Strategize your social. Do not just blindly shoot

messages up or boost posts, have a strategy that connects to a measurable goal.

• Utilize paid advertisements. Successful social

campaigns that help promote businesses on social media all have paid components. Without it, goals will fall flat

• Learn more about each platform and utilize it’s

uniques features. For example, IG has polls that can be added to stories. A great interaction tool.

• Hire a pro if you don’t know what you are doing. As

with websites, there are good and bad, so do your research.

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

TripAdvisor + Google My Business

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

Business Listings Generally, a business listing on TripAdvisor is free to get started depending on your location and business type. Confirming a profile allows you to:

• Edit business details, such as address, phone,

email, hours.

• Add and remove photos, report errored

photos, and comment on photos as the business

• Respond and report reviews on the platform.
• Measure analytics on the profile, clicks to the

site, and the number of people connecting. So Why Have A Listing? If you are a local tourism based business and have been around a while, there is a good chance you already have a listing. So why not own the listing? Responding to reviews that are not trueful is a major factor to owning the listing. Analytics can also help to see if you should spend time actually focusing on the platform. You may have a lot of people that go to the listing, but you won’t know. Most Trip Advisor pages are optimized to do well in search results, so likely even if your site is the top result, TripAdvisor isn’t going to be much further. Good to own that and make sure it’s accurate.

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

Getting Your Listing If you are an established business in the tourism area, you likely already have a listing. The general public, as well as TripAdvisor can create profiles and reviews without having any affiliation with the

• business. (another reason to check and claim your

listing). If you do have a listing, you can choose “Is this your business” next to the title and follow the prompts. If you don’t have a listing, you can start at TripAdvisor.ca and create new business. In both situations, they will take you through a system to prove your identity and ownership of the business. Limitations TripAdvisor is a bit different then other listing platforms, as they have specific rules for who they

• list. To be eligible, you must be one of the following:
• Accommodations
• Holiday Rentals
• Airlines
• Attractions
• Restaurants

By far the more ambiguous one is attractions, and for many businesses, they will fall into that category.

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

Business Listings Business listings on Google My Business are completely free, and like TripAdvisor, are easy to gain access to. Things to do with a Google My Business profile:

• Edit business details, such as address, phone,

email, hours.

• Add and remove photos
• Respond and report reviews on the platform.
• Measure analytics on the profile, clicks to the

site, and the number of people connecting. So Why Have A Listing? Most people in North America start their searches on

• Google. Business listings on Google come up front

and center and are super important. Not owning the listing means that making changes and responding to reviews is not possible. It also takes a while, often 2-3 weeks to verify before you can respond and edit, so it’s important to do this in advance. With it being free, there really is not reason not to have the listing configured and owned.

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

Getting Your Listing If you are an established business in the tourism area, you likely already have a listing. Like TripAdvisor, the general public, as well as Google can create profiles and reviews without having any affiliation with the business. (another reason to check and claim your listing). If you do have a listing, you can choose “Is this your business” next to the title and follow the prompts. If you don’t have a listing, you can start at business.google.com to create profile In both situations, they will mail you a postcard with a code on it to verify you own the business. Sometimes, the phone number can also be used if it is established. General Uses Unlike TripAdvisor, all businesses can and should be

• n Google My Business. Any business type can

participate.

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

EXERCISE #2

Together, let’s search for your business on TripAdvisor and on Google. What will we find? How have these platforms been managed for your business.

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

Professional Touches

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

RESOURCE #1

Head over to Udemy.com and search for anything we have discussed today. The first result is probably what you

• want. I have personally completed many Udemy courses, from advanced server configuration, SEO, programming

languages, and drone piloting. If you need help learning something, you will find a great course here. Pro tip - They have sales every other day, don’t buy a course for $200+. https://www.udemy.com/

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

RESOURCE #3

Sprout Social is one of the industry leaders in terms of social media management, analytics, and reporting. If you are a larger business and need a tool to help manage things a bit better, this is a great tool. It’s not the cheapest, but you won’t miss social messages and will be able to manage everything centrally. https://sproutsocial.com/

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

RESOURCE #2

SEM Rush can help you understand your traffic, your paid ads, and what your competitors are doing. It’s a great tool for identifying gaps in the marketing and where you may see additional gains. It is a complex tool, and therefore has a higher price as it does so much. $100 / month and up. https://www.semrush.com

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

RESOURCE #4

BabyTel is a service we use for our office phones, and for small business it is a great solution with a ton of features and low price tag. Combine with a soft phone, desk IP phone, and automated answering systems, it adds a lot of polish to your customers experience and bridges the online and physical gap nicely. https://ca.babytel.net/en/

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

RESOURCE #5

Mailchimp is a terrific platform for managing newsletters, automating email campaigns, and building nice looking email templates. All of this is free to use for small lists as well. With integrations with most website platforms, it allows you to get sign ups quickly as well. Add a professional touch. https://mailchimp.com

ONLINE PRESENCE FOR TOURISM BUSINESSES - RTO 9 BENTOSMB INC.

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Have Questions? Please ask them in the Q&A area of the webinar control panel. If you are watching the recording or would like to ask more in depth questions, please feel free to reach out to me below or connect with your RTO 9 representative. max@bentosmb.com @bentosmb