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Any advice on marketing for travel-related startups/makers?

Seeing that the travel industry is dead now, what advice would you give about marketing/growth that can be done in the travel industry now? Also, what should we do to prepare for the future when the recovery starts?

  1. 2

    Stories! Stories!
    Even now, when the travel industry is dead, people just are looking forward to going somewhere as soon as the dead season is over. So, meanwhile, you could entertain them with unusual/strange/weird/funny situations/places/whatever related to your business somehow. If you make them read the story you would probably make them remember your business' name.

    1. 1

      Thanks for sharing! Yup I agree, there would be a lot of pent-up desire for travel once the dead season is over. Will think about interesting angles for storytelling and see if that works out too :-)

  2. 2

    Do anything that pays off long term:

    • Redesign that website
    • Start that travel podcast
    • Write some long form SEO content
    • Launch a community for your audience
    • Start your travel newsletter
    • Reach out to your best customers and get testimonals
    • Put a bunch of social content in the bank
    1. 1

      Thanks Harry! Great ideas! I'll be working on creating more content now and storing it in the bank for the recovery period, am thinking about how to start a community too - perhaps centred around travel biz owners who have been affected by COVID

  3. 2

    What I've been doing:

    • Offering promocodes/discounts in exchange for email addresses to try to build a group ready to go when the light turns green

    • Offering your audience to "travel from home", whatever that means to you. Maybe it's tours or videos of your destinations etc, as long as you're not advocating travelling now.

    • Doubling down on case studies / testimonials. Now's the time to collect all that UGC floating around that you couldn't get to when things were busy!

    1. 1

      Great ideas! Really like the one about creating an offer to "travel from home", possibly like a virtual tour

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