How to promote your travel agency on the web

If you are thinking about promoting your travel agency on the Internet, then this article will give you a quick summary about what’s required. Internet Marketing is a huge subject - many books have already been written on the topic, and there are thousands of internet sites devoted to it - it would be impossible to cover everything in a single post, but I hope this quick overview will work as a useful jumping-off point, that will get you going.

The first thing you need to advertise your travel agency online, is a great website. Well in fact it is possible to market on the web without a site - but as a rule it is sensible to have one. Right now there are several different methods of creating a site for your travel agency, depending on your budget and skills. You could create one all by yourself with an HTML editor, if you have the skills, or are happy to learn. Everything you need to know is readily available on the web. That’s the most time-consuming approach, but also the most affordable. Alternatively, you could hire a web-design service to do everything for you. That won’t take as much of your time - but will cost more. In the middle, you could use a system like Weebly.com or Wordpress.com to build a website - they make it easy and are also free, or very reasonably priced.

Ensure that you deploy a tracking system like Google Analytics or similar on your site. It’s remarkable how few people do this, and that’s a big mistake. Without analytics, you don’t know how many readers your site’s getting - and you also don’t know where they arrived from. Without that information you also don’t know which of your internet marketing activities are working. Most of these systems are free - so don’t bypass this step!

Getting your new web site listed in a few general directories can be a very good place to get started with marketing. Almost everyone recognizes the Yahoo directory - but it’s rather expensive nowadays at $299, and doesn’t really deliver many visitors. Free directories such as DMOZ, or inexpensive paid ones like JoeAnt or BestOfTheWeb tend to be a better bet for most people.

Sites that specialise in travel agency are quite unusual - which is unfortunate, because that type of specialist website is invariably a highly valuable place to promote your business. There is one website that specialises in travel agency and may even enable you to publish your information without charge - and that’s http://www.ClickTravelAgents.co.uk/ - definitely worth checking out.

Among the speediest ways to get site visitors to your site is employing Pay Per Click advertising services like Google Adwords. These can literally be set up in a few minutes, and begin sending visitors today! Obviously you’ll want to be careful and be sure that you’re not paying out too much - but as you only pay out for individuals who click through to your website - not for those who look at your advert but don’t click, it can certainly be a cost effective way to drive traffic. It’s vital to track your Pay Per Click campaigns very carefully to make sure they’re profitable - so it’s good that you set up Analytics software already!

One of the most valuable tasks to do next, is to develop an email mailing list, by getting your customers to provide you with their email and give permission to mail them. Use a service like ConstantContact - which for a monthly fee will enable you to store email addresses of loads of prospects and send them email whenever you fancy.

There is lots of work involved in promoting your travel agency online - but the most important thing is to get cracking, and work through it, one project at a time. Sooner than you think, you’ll have a prosperous internet site and lots of new clients. All the info you need is accessible online - so get out there and start advertising on the World wide web - it will be one of the most beneficial decisions you ever made.