Travel marketing is a competitive space, with multiple businesses all vying for awareness, attention, and recognition.

Branded content can be easily lost in a sea of competition, with established brands often owning the space. Reputation and deep pockets can sometimes prove decisive, meaning those left out in the cold need creative and well managed solutions to complement their marketing efforts to find a way to cut through the noise.

So how can you stand out from the crowd in this saturated market?

How can you build brand authority without breaking the bank?

How can you build a community of like minded customers who not only lay the foundations of your brand, but also contribute to the continued success and growth of your business?

The answer may be easier than you realise. Your customers are your greatest advocates, so why not leverage their enthusiasm? It sounds simple enough! Social media and review platforms are places of great influence. The power of reviews, photos, and video content can be a treasure trove of authentic content that your travel brand can leverage.

UGC can reduce your need to produce new content internally. The right UGC can become an excellent marketing asset without the associated costs.
Here are some best practice ideas that you can get going with right away and unleash the power of user-generated content to elevate your travel marketing activity.

Types of UGC

If you want to make the most of UGC, you need to take the lead in encouraging your customers to share their travel experiences in the right places, with the right people, and at the right time. Some effective strategies include;

Social Media

Build your own branded campaigns that encourage travellers to reminisce about their own experiences and share photos, crafted video content and stories using a specific hashtag. It’s all about encouragement. Not only will this increase your brand’s visibility and messaging, but it also creates a repository of UGC that’s directly linked to your brand messaging, magnifying and enhancing your own organic content efforts.

Competitions and giveaways

Another tried and tested approach is to create a series of competitions and giveaways that encourage your audience to share their travel stories and experiences. Everyone loves something for free, right? Have fun with it; engage in the content that your audience shares, and use the fun and liberal nature of the competition to build an identity and develop your community. By giving something away, you’re also promoting your brand and product to new audiences and incentivising them to engage.

Engage with reviews

Responding to reviews and engaging with your customers is a sure-fire way to gain traction and proactively engage with your customers. As well as promoting your community ethos and spirit, this can encourage and inspire travellers to share their experiences and engage with your brand.

The Value of User-Generated Content

UGC can be showcased in various formats—text, videos, images, and reviews—as long as it is created by your customers rather than by your brand. As this content is authentically created by your customers, it can be seen as trustworthy, reputable and unbiased. Engagement with real people sharing their genuine experiences can have a profound impact on brand reputation.

Showcase user-generated content

Once you have a steady stream of UGC, the importance of how you showcase it can’t be underestimated. This is your chance to promote your brand’s core values through the endorsement of your customers and advocates.

Social Tagging

Tagging the original creators is essential. You want your audience to see the relationship you’ve nurtured, and by giving them the credit they deserve, it enhances your reputation as a community-led brand and will encourage more users to participate. Before sharing UGC, it’s essential to ask for permission from the content creator. By doing this, you’re also developing a deeper relationship with this set of brand advocates, meaning they’re more likely to contribute again.

Website Integration

UGC is likely to include keywords and phrases that your future customers will use and search for themselves. What better way to build authority and reach than with content created by your own audience? As well as this, it’s super cost-effective.

Positive feedback and real-life customer stories will influence potential customers’ booking decisions, increasing conversion rates as users move on from initial research to an intent-based search.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is another great way to promote the content that your users create. UGC has the ability to be more engaging than email-based traditional marketing content. Stories, videos, and photos from your real customers can capture the audience’s attention in a crowded inbox and increase the chance of interaction with your marketing efforts.

Measure the impact

To ensure your UGC strategy is effective, key metrics will be important to track. These will help you test, learn, and refine your UCG efforts and strategy.

• Engagement Rates: keep a close eye on likes, comments, shares, and overall engagement with UGC posts.
• Website Traffic: Integrate with Google Analytics to analyse the impact of UGC content on your website traffic.
• Conversion Rates: Measure the influence of UGC on website conversions, such as leads, bookings, and revenue.

While engagement rates, reach, traffic and conversions are vital for evaluating the performance of UGC for your brand and online community, tracking less tangible metrics is equally important. These include social listening to analyse content and conversations about your brand, monitoring brand mentions, understanding tags and keywords, and tracking user demographics, preferences, and behaviours.

Respect the content creators.

While working with UGC, it’s important to respect the rights of content creators. As a brand, you must always make sure you have permission before using someone else’s content and endorse this content with the required credit. This will help to build your community, foster goodwill, and also avoid any potential legal issues.

Summing it up

User-generated content can be a powerful tool in the travel marketing space. Alongside your own branded content and marketing efforts, UGC can add authenticity, boost engagement, and build trust.

By encouraging content creation, showcasing UGC effectively, building a community, and measuring the impact, your travel brands can embrace UGC as a key component of their marketing strategy and watch their brand’s credibility and reach soar.

Here at Jam, we’re here to help you every step of the way. From building the right UGC strategy for your travel brand to crafting, managing, and developing your ongoing activity.

Connect with us today to discuss how we can help you develop a winning USG strategy for your travel brand in the crowded travel marketing space. At Jam, we’re not just about strategy and ideation, we’re here to guide you through every step of the process and work with you as an extension of your marketing team. Just provide your details below, and we’ll reach out to you shortly.