Using video to boost your business

Travel is visual, and one of the best ways that travel agents can communicate with their customers is through the power of video. Not only does this captivate and inspire customers, but it can help our Travel Counsellors explain a destination beyond the spoken word.

Our Marketing Team were back for round two of Afternoon Tea this week – the Monday afternoon online workshop which home-working Travel Counsellors can tune into with a sweet or savoury snack – to learn more about the key trends in marketing and get a greater insight into the world of content and promoting their business online.

WHY IS VIDEO SO IMPORTANT?

Today, every Facebook news feed is full of videos, and that’s not without good reason. A post containing a video receives, on average, 135% more reach than a post with photos.

We shared a Lapland video from a trip a member of our head office took last year as suppliers dropped their Santa breaks for the 2018-2019 winter season and it was our most successful social post of all-time on the head office Facebook page, reaching over 125,000 people.

Video content can be so powerful – especially for those exciting messages such as Lapland going on sale and the release or early summer deals. Watching videos is so much easier than reading a big block of text, especially when you’re scrolling or trying to quickly consume content, as people nowadays have short attention spans.

WHY VIDEO WORKS FOR TRAVEL COUNSELLORS

96% of people are more likely to trust a recommendation from a person than branded content, which is important as we want video content to come from Travel Counsellors and their customers – whether that’s a holiday, a fam trip or anything else. It’s reassuring from customers knowing you’ve been there, you’ve seen it and the information you’re passing on is first-hand.

The style of the customer and Travel Counsellor-sourced videos provide more authenticity than planned out shoots. Sometimes the camera is a bit wobbly and there may not be the same sweeping shots as in professional videography, but it makes it feel more real and puts you at the heart of it. That’s why it gets more reach because it looks legitimate.

The first time the Lapland video was posted on social media in January 2018, it helped to generate the booking of 187 room nights compared to zero in the same week the year before, while also achieving a video reach of 90,000 and over 30,000 video views.

NOW OUR TRAVEL COUNSELLORS ARE GETTING INVOLVED

With video now being a vital component of the online landscape, it is important that we keep pace in order to provide our customers with as much of an up-to-date service as possible. Thanks to sessions like Afternoon Tea with Marketing and a video module on our Coach training platform, our Travel Counsellors are being encouraged and shown how to create their own video content with support from head office staff.

Travel Counsellor Linda Allen has already started to see the business benefits from using video. She said: “I love the videos, it makes my page much more interesting. I posted a lot of Mauritius content in June and did end up with a big booking.

“I think it helps to mix it up on the page and it does depend on luck too. If someone is thinking of a particular destination, then they see a video, it creates more interest than a regular post.”