Struggling to think of new PR ideas for your travel brand?
PR campaigns are a great way to increase brand awareness, increase traffic to your site and attract new audiences. With the travel sector growing faster than any other industry, staying ahead of competitors can be challenging. The continuous developments in technology has meant consumers always have a range of options to choose from.
From improving SEO rankings to increasing conversion rates, strong PR campaigns are the key to bringing positive results. Here are some great ways to get ideas for your next PR success.
Always have a plan
Former US President Benjamin Franklin once said: ‘If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.’ The best travel PR campaigns are the ones carefully planned in advance.
Before you start brainstorming ideas, take time to know your audience. A top tip is to start with the 5 W’s – who, what, where, when and why? Once you have defined a clear target market, start to think about their interests and why your brand meets their needs.
With seasonal industries, timing is everything; brands must carefully plan the right time to promote new products or services. By setting clear objectives, you can ensure your campaign is consistent with your brand.
It’s all in the USPs
Getting inspiration for your new PR campaign is easier than you think. Now you’ve outlined a clear plan, it’s time to research your competitors.
Study the top-performing travel campaigns in the past year and what made them so successful. Then think about how your brand can incorporate some of these qualities. USPs are vital to attracting consumers so make sure your ideas let them know why your brand is different.
The perfect message
Once the ideas begin to flow, it can be easy to get off track. As you have clearly defined your brand’s target audience, it’s time to focus on what they want.
Take time to look at online search patterns and consider the consumer journey from potential lead to customer. What attracts them to buy? Which terms are they searching for? And what are they looking to receive? Once you’ve identified this, you will be able to put across strong messaging that relates to your demographic. For example, if your brand is targeted at families, you will want to avoid promoting ‘all-night beach parties’.
The power of the internet
Whether your campaign is focused on in-store advertising or other offline media coverage, never underestimate the internet. With 4.4 billion people online and 3.5 billion of these on social media, it’s vital to have a digital strategy in place.
Think about which platforms your demographic is most likely to use and create a series of posts to target them. Collaborating with a successful blogger or influencer is a great way to attract an existing audience to your brand.
The best and worst
With so many travel brands fighting for the top spot, producing an award-winning PR campaign may seem out of reach. But given that a great PR campaign can give brands new customers, traffic and sales, this isn’t true. To give you some much-needed inspiration, here is an example of a travel campaign flying high – and another that didn’t quite land.
British Airways’ safety video
Once considered the boring part of travel, airline British Airways decided to transform dull safety information into a humorous PR campaign. Using big-name celebrities such as Michael Caine, David Walliams and Jourdan Dunn, the flight safety instructions are delivered under the direction of comedian Asim Chaudry’s Chabuddy G character.
An overall success, the campaign has increased the brand’s awareness generating over a million views on Youtube.
Video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ9Xpzi4qkU
KLM (Royal Dutch Airlines) #PrideAmsterdam
With the focus on diversity, Dutch airline KLM launched its campaign called #PrideAmsterdam. To tie in with the message, the brand tweeted an image (below) showing a range of seatbelt combinations. Social users quickly picked up that only the traditional belt would work successfully and the others would forever be mismatched.
This turned a PR campaign to promote acceptance into negative marketing and was quickly taken down.
Image: https://www.purple-sprout.com/what-not-to-do-10-bad-marketing-campaigns/
Once your PR campaign is a success, don’t be afraid to repurpose it. Just like the British Airways video, many ideas can be developed over time so that they remain associated with your brand. In addition to this, simple ideas can be recreated using different content such as blogs, adverts and email newsletters.
It’s more important than ever to make your brand stand out from the rest. PR is the best way to give your brand the recognition it deserves – these simple steps can help lead to a positive outcome.
Coming up with ideas to give your brand that all-important lift-off is not always easy. Choose a travel PR agency to make sure your brand reacts to the latest in travel and creates top PR campaigns.