Running impactful social media campaigns for hop-on-hop-off bus tours requires strategic planning and execution to engage potential customers and drive bookings. Here are our tips for travel operators to consider:
Your social media campaigns will perform best when there is a structure to build around. You will want to have a strategy and keep some best practices in mind to give your posts the best chance of success.
Identify your target audience: The first step in any marketing strategy is to identify your target audience, and social media is no different. Look at whatever data is available to you and try your best to pinpoint your current clients’ demographics. What age brackets do they occupy? Are they primarily families, couples, or groups of friends? What countries or regions do they typically come from? Identifying these traits will help you decide what type of content to post and who to cater to.
Hashtag awareness: Hashtags can be a helpful way for potential customers to find you. Create and promote a branded hashtag that is unique to your hop-on-hop-off bus business, and put it everywhere: on the outside of your bus, on the inside of the bus, on uniforms, on your app, mention it in your audio guide, put it in confirmation emails, and even have your agents mention it in passing when seeing a guest taking a photo. “Don’t forget to tag us and use the hashtag!” Also, use hashtags with the location of the city and country you are in, so potential travellers searching for things to do in your location will find you. You also might want to look at any competitors you might have and see what hashtags are popular for your industry and area.
Engage with your audience: Actively engage with followers by responding to comments, answering questions, and addressing concerns promptly. Personalised interactions help build trust and loyalty with potential customers.
Location tagging: In addition to hashtag searches, many travellers do research using location tags on Instagram. They investigate and sort through beautiful images captured in-destination to get a feel for what they can do and see. Don’t forget to tag your city location or even neighbourhood, if it’s recognisable, in your organic social posts.
Consistent posting schedule: Maintain a consistent posting schedule to keep your audience engaged and informed. Use scheduling tools to plan and automate posts across different social media platforms, ensuring a steady stream of content showcasing your tour’s highlights.
Creating engaging content
Now that you know the strategy you should use in your social media campaign, the next step is to create content that will draw your audience in and make them want to learn more.
Visuals are key: Share high-quality photos and videos showcasing the unique experiences and attractions passengers can enjoy on the tour. Use eye-catching visuals of iconic landmarks, onboard amenities, and happy customers exploring the city, and always incorporate your colour palette. Rotate between delightful, simple close-ups of the experience, tour guides and frontline workers, and wide-angle imagery that encompasses a whole vibe.
(UGC) Here’s the Palisis team on a tour in Zurich, capturing the sights.
User-generated content (UGC): Encourage passengers to share their experiences and photos using a dedicated hashtag. Reposting user-generated content adds authenticity to your brand and encourages others to book the tour. Ask for permission before reposting and reiterate that you plan to give them photo credit; this builds appreciation and good vibes. Actively engage with UGC, like and respond to the social posts, and acknowledge their efforts. Take it a step further and showcase UGC on your website or even in email newsletters.
Add some personality: Crafting smart and witty captions for your photo can go a long way. The image draws fans or future fans in, and a humourous caption creates a lighthearted balance with anticipation for a great time with your brand. Tasteful and appropriate humour also sets customers at ease and gives them a sense of familiarity with your brand.
Offer insider tips: Position your brand as a valuable resource by sharing insider travel operator tips, travel hacks, and exciting facts about the destinations covered on the tour. Provide useful information that adds value to your followers’ travel experiences. Like a concierge adds value to a hotel, your team can do the same.
Encourage tour guides to capture content: There are many ways for your hop-on-hop-off bus tour guides to capture fun and engaging content. Organise friendly competitions with recognition for the winners and enticing prizes. Specify the type of content you want them to capture, video or photo, length, focus, and format. Incentivise guides with bonuses for capturing specific content during tours. Implement themed programs, like Traveller Story Tuesdays, to engage the team and spotlight frontline employees.
Ask for help building your library: Leverage your team’s creativity to enhance your social media. Consider dividing responsibilities and assigning marketing staff to regular feed posts and tour guides to Reel clips and story content. This approach ensures a diverse and engaging social media library while allowing team members to showcase their creativity.
Partner with local businesses: Collaborate with other local businesses to reach a wider audience and tap into niche markets. Partnering with relevant establishments like attractions, food tours, or unique experiences can help amplify your social media reach and cross-promote to attract potential customers.
There are a few ways to work advertising into your social media strategy. If balanced with other types of content that aren’t explicitly sales-focused, advertising on your socials can be a great strategy.
Run promotions: Run exclusive promotions on social media platforms to incentivise bookings and increase brand awareness for your hop-on-hop-off bus tour. Offer discounts, giveaways, or free upgrades to encourage participation and drive engagement.
Boost a well-performing post: This is an easy way to get additional eyes on an already well-performing post. It will vary slightly depending on the platform, but on most social media, giving a post a “boost” just means you take a post you have already made and turn it into an ad that will be pushed into the feed of more potential customers.
Use marketing platforms to target your specific audience: There are several methods of identifying who will be most interested in your product (in this case, your hop-on-hop-off bus tour). Within the paid advertising section of most social media platforms, you can target in various ways: specific demographics like age and gender, location, interests and behaviours, or how someone is predicted to act in the future. Through this, you can target travellers in-destination (location targeting) or travellers thinking of going to your destination (predictive targeting.)
The power of consistency
From this list, we can’t emphasise enough the value of consistency and engaging with your followers. Lots of brands quit too soon because they don’t see immediate results. You might receive a bunch of likes or follows at first, but then it slows down. Don’t give up. Try different tactics, stick with them, and when you find what works—repeat!
Don’t get stuck on the notion that the number of followers solely determines social media success. Various metrics hold significance beyond mere follower counts. For hop-on-hop-off bus tour operators, the emphasis should not be strictly on vanity measures such as likes, but rather on cultivating an interactive account that promotes commenting, tagging, and sharing.
Consider these tips as you ramp up for the busy season. Hop-on-hop-off bus tour operators can effectively leverage social media to promote their services, unique selling proposition, engage with potential customers, and drive bookings. Incorporating some of these tips into your social media strategy can help you accomplish these goals.